Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., described the extent to which the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service have prevented the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) from obtaining crucial materials to investigate the failures that led to the assassination attempts against former President Trump.
“Things like the autopsy report, you know, the House has it under subpoena. We don’t have it,” he told reporters.
“We don’t have any toxicology reports on the trajectory of the bullets. Where did they go? We don’t even know how they handled the crime scene,” said Johnson, a ranking member of the HSGAC’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI).
The senator noted the amount of time that has passed since the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, noting, “There’s just basic information that we should have at this point, and we don’t have it.”
“We have not been able to interview the sniper who killed (Thomas) Crooks,” Johnson said.
Crooks is the would-be assassin who, during the July 13 rally in Pennsylvania, opened fire, grazing the former president’s ear, killing one rally-goer and seriously wounding two others.
According to the Republican, the sniper who shot Crooks was the first person he wanted to interview.
Additionally, he said the FBI had not provided them with any FD-302 forms, which are used to investigate through interview results.
Johnson said FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told him during a hearing in July that the bureau would provide the forms as soon as it could.
“I haven’t gotten any,” he said.
“They have done 1,000 interviews, we have done 12,” said the senator.
The Wisconsin Republican said the lack of information is consistent with the slow pace of action.
He also said that a recent briefing with the chairs and senior members of both HSGAC and PSI by Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe did not provide senators with any new information.
Johnson described the few documents that had been provided to lawmakers as “heavily redacted.”
“And in this case, something unusual. I’ve never seen anything like this,” he said of the newsrooms.
Johnson noted that this was not his “first rodeo” and noted that strikethroughs are usually black, blocking out certain parts of the text. “These are just white strikethroughs.”
—So, I don’t know. Was it just one word? —he asked.
He said that in some cases it was not obvious whether something had been hidden in the documents or not because of the white strikethroughs.
“That’s the level of opacity we’re getting in terms of their lack of cooperation with our investigation,” Johnson added.
The Secret Service has reiterated that it is cooperating with congressional investigations despite bipartisan outcry and accusations of “obstruction.”
In a comment to Fox News Digital, a Secret Service spokesperson said: “The U.S. Secret Service is cooperating with a broad range of reviews and investigations related to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. This includes multiple congressional investigations, including those by the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, and a special bipartisan working group in the House of Representatives.”
“Since July 13, we have provided more than 2,800 pages of response documentation to these entities and have made our employees available for interviews as requested. On September 12, Acting Director Ron Rowe briefed members of the U.S. House and Senate committees on the agency’s mission assurance investigation. Given the volume of requests, the jurisdiction of the requesters, and the limited ability of our resources and personnel to respond, the U.S. Secret Service is prioritizing our responses to those listed above.”
