Rick Crawford Answers Questions About Bombshell Report On FBI Probe On 2017 GOP Baseball Shooting

Forbes Breaking News

At a press briefing on Tuesday, Rep. Rick Crawford (R-AR), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, answered questions about a Congressional report on the FBI probe of the 2017 GOP Congressional Baseball Team shooting.

Transcript

00:00Chairman of the subcommittee, you all have been provided with this report.

00:04I want to clear something up.

00:06This is not an investigation.

00:08This is a report, an assessment, if you will, of the FBI's investigation of that incident.

00:15So it's just important to note.

00:17I know this can be a difficult topic for folks here, particularly on Capitol Hill,

00:21but we're glad you're here today, and our committee's objective of this report

00:24is to address the analytic integrity issues as we've laid out here before you today.

00:28So with that, we've got time for a question or two if anybody wants to ask one.

00:34Yes, sir.

00:36Would you look at other shootings as well, other mass shootings?

00:42Will you ask the FBI for their case file on those and also produce a report on other shootings?

00:50If it's indicated, certainly.

00:51I think what we've seen here by asking for this, this was eight years in the making,

00:56and obviously this was a very political in nature, as we've indicated here

01:03and as this report indicates as well, you know, this was not suicide by cop.

01:10There were some anomalies here that required that we be involved,

01:14and so we've got multiple courses of action we can pursue on any given number of topics,

01:21and, but this, we're here today to talk about this particular incident.

01:27Are there any conversations with Leader Scalise about your report and what's his reaction to this?

01:32Yeah, I'm not going to speak to Leader Scalise's personal response, but yes, we did.

01:38I spoke with him at length about this.

01:40He's very well aware, and as you can imagine, a very difficult topic for him to address,

01:45but I'll let him do that on his own terms, but he was advised of this well in advance.

01:53You touched on this at the top, but kind of go a little bit more into detail about how long you guys have been looking for answers,

01:59trying to get some assessment on what the FBI was looking at when it was doing its investigation.

02:03Eight years.

02:04We've been looking for eight years, and it wasn't until back in March when we had our global threats assessment

02:10that Director Patel decided that he would comply because, I mean, obviously he understood what it was we were asking for

02:18and how long we had waited.

02:21That wasn't the first time we had asked by any means.

02:24There were members that are no longer in Congress that were part of this committee.

02:28There were members that are no longer in Congress that were part of other committees

02:31that had been trying for literally years to get that report.

02:35And so this report that you have in your hands today is the culmination of eight years' worth of requests.

02:42And so hats off to Director Patel, but also to our staff here,

02:47who's done a fantastic job in a very short time to be able to illuminate what the problems were with that report,

02:53with that investigation.

02:55One more?

02:56Anybody?

02:57Nope?

02:59All right.

02:59Thank you all.

03:00We appreciate it.

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