(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Officials are refusing to release autopsy records for Trump shooter Thomas Crooks, and bombshell findings from Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., may explain why.
Higgins, who’s on the House Task Force to investigate the Trump assassination attempt, issued his preliminary findings Thursday, telling the public that the FBI released Crooks’s body to his family for cremation before he could examine it. Higgins, a former law enforcement officer, also said the FBI scrubbed the crime scene of biological evidence, which he said is “unheard of.”
“My effort to examine Crooks’ body on Monday, August 5, caused quite a stir and revealed a disturbing fact… the FBI released the body for cremation 10 days after J13. On J23, Crooks was gone,” he said in his preliminary report.
No freaking way @okc_facts @ToniaYeakey https://t.co/YpbRU0zidl
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 15, 2024
According to Higgins, no one—including the county Coroner, law enforcement, and county sheriff—knew Crooks’s body had gone missing until he tried examining it on Aug. 5.
“The problem with me not being able to examine the actual body is that I won’t know 100% if the coroner’s report and the autopsy report are accurate. We will actually never know,” Higgins noted. “Yes, we’ll get the reports and pictures, etc, but I will not ever be able to say with certainty that those reports and pictures are accurate according to my own examination of the body.”
Higgins also noted that by the time Crooks’s body had been released, the House and Senate had already begun investigations.
“Why, then, by what measure, would the FBI release his body to the family for cremation? This pattern of investigative scorched earth by the FBI is quite troubling,” he remarked.
Higgins added: “Again, similar to releasing the crime scene and scrubbing crime scene biological evidence… this action by the FBI can only be described by any reasonable man as an obstruction to any following investigative effort.”
Higgins’s disturbing report on Crooks’s body follows news that the body was reportedly kept on the rooftop until 6 a.m. the day after the shooting. There, Butler County coroner William F. Young III allegedly examined Crooks’s body before sending him to the Allegheny County Medical Examiner for the autopsy.
The coroner, Young, released a one-page report on Aug. 2, but has suppressed the underpinning records—including exam photos, toxicology reports and scene images.
The Allegheny County Medical Examiner denied Headline USA’s records request for Crooks’s autopsy records, saying that the “case is under the jurisdiction of the Butler County Coroner and any reports or information must be approved by that agency.” Butler County’s coroner also denied a request, saying the records are exempt from disclosure.
Headline USA has appealed both decisions.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
