The FBI used “false statements, manipulation of known facts, and biased and butchered analysis” to claim that the man who shot Republicans while they were practicing baseball in 2017 had no connection to domestic terrorism, according to a new report.
“This report definitively shows the FBI completely mishandled the investigation into the Congressional baseball shooting of 2017 — ignoring crucial and obvious facts in order to sell a false narrative that the shooting was not politically motivated,” said Republican House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was shot during the attack, in a press release.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released the report on May 6, explaining that the FBI “completely botched” its investigation into the 2017 shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice. The assailant, who shot and injured Scalise and four others, was Democrat activist and Bernie Sanders volunteer James Hodgkinson, as The Federalist reported at the time.
In its ensuing investigation, the FBI was quick to dismiss the shooter’s motives. As The Federalist’s Editor-in-Chief Mollie Hemingway wrote, agents admitted the attacker was a radical leftist who hated Republicans, but suggested he had no particular target, was acting alone, and could have “spontaneous[ly]” launched the attack. They even went so far as to claim there was “no nexus to terrorism.”
