According to a critical report from the House, the FBI mishandled its investigation of the 2017 congressional baseball shooting that injured six people by downplaying the gunman’s anti-GOP motives, even though there was handwritten evidence.
The House Judiciary Committee, along with the Intelligence Committee and the Intelligence Subcommittee on Oversight & Investigation, issued the unclassified report on Tuesday after reviewing approximately 3,000 case file documents provided to them last month.
“This is the same FBI that can’t tell us who planted the pipe bomb, who leaked the Dobbs opinion, and who left cocaine at the White House,” House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) criticized on Tuesday morning.
“We shouldn’t be surprised that they reached the wrong conclusion. They knew what the facts were.
“Shortly after gunman James Hodgkinson’s attack on a Republican practice session for the congressional baseball game in suburban Alexandria, Va., the FBI wrote up an executive intelligence briefing that concluded he wanted to commit “suicide by cop.”
Years later, in 2021, the FBI abruptly changed its determination — without new evidence, according to Tuesday’s report — to conclude that Hodgkinson’s attack was actually motivated by domestic violent extremism.
The change was made without new evidence.But congressional investigators have since found evidence that the bureau concealed information from the public that would have undermined its initial “suicide by cop” conclusion.
That suppressed evidence includes key details about a handwritten note found on Hodgkinson that listed several Republicans as targets.
At the time, the FBI said it found a sheet of paper that had names of six members of Congress, but did not elaborate.
“The guy had a hit list in his pocket,” Jordan said.
“[Former FBI director James] Comey, [former FBI deputy director Andrew] McCabe, [former FBI director Christopher] Wray, they all knew it was domestic terrorism, but that didn’t fit their narrative.
“The report identified three major failures by the FBI: neglecting to interview key shooting victims and witnesses, failing to establish “a comprehensive timeline of events,” and “improperly” classifying parts of its case files on the shooting rampage.
