(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A Tuesday report from the Senate Homeland Security Committee raises more questions about the actions of an unidentified ATF agent who was at the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., first revealed the ATF’s role in the deadly Butler, Pennsylvania rally about a week after the shooting. According to Johnson, a mysterious man in a gray suit was one of the first officials on top of the AGR building to examine the body of the alleged shooter, Thomas Crooks.
In his July 21 preliminary report, Johnson said the gray-suit man requested photos of Crooks’ dead body be sent to a phone number with a 215 (Philadelphia) area code. The recipient of those photos turned out to be an ATF agent, who supposedly wanted to conduct a facial-recognition search on Crooks. Johnson’s report said his staff tried talking to that ATF agent, but they were stonewalled.
The identity of the gray-suit man is still unconfirmed. But on Tuesday, the Senate Homeland Security report confirmed that an ATF agent was indeed present in Butler in his “personal capacity.”
Remember this bizarre info about a mystery man in a gray suit on top of the AGR building, who sent a photo of Crooks to the ATF?
Well, today's Senate report confirmed that an ATF agent was in Butler "in his personal capacity." Still unclear whether the gray-suit man was w/ ATF –… https://t.co/xpcttplFQR pic.twitter.com/T2KEJ1cTgE— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) September 25, 2024
“ATF told the Committee that there was an ATF agent present in his personal capacity at the Butler rally on July 13 but that ATF as an agency had no official presence at the rally and did not provide any security assistance before shots were fired. The committee has yet to speak with the ATF agent who was at the rally,” the report said.
The committee added that it “continues to seek a transcribed interview” with the agent, and that it is still seeking info “related to any ATF facial recognition searches of Crooks’ body.”
However, former ATF agent Peter Forcelli told Headline USA that the information coming out of the Senate doesn’t make sense. Forcelli expressed doubt that the man in the gray suit was with the agency. He also said Sen. Johnson’s allegations about facial recognition sound dubious.
“ATF agents don’t wear suits, except for in court. Even as a group supervisor, I almost never wore a suit. They also didn’t yet have access to facial recognition technology when I retired in late 2021 … The whole facial recognition thing makes me suspicious that it was an actual ATF Agent,” said Forcelli, who was a whistleblower in the ATF’s Obama-era Fast and Furious scandal.
“If it was an ATF Agent, I guarantee he’d have asked for the serial number on the gun, so he could request an ‘urgent trace’ and perhaps photos of the serial number and the gun itself. An ATF Agent would ask for that, if anything. But facial recognition? It’s odd. Very odd to the point that I question whether or not this is accurate.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
