The FBI and U.S. Secret Service are slow-walking on the investigation into the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said during an interview on Breitbart News Daily.
When asked about the investigation into the first assassination attempt on Trump, which occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, Johnson said lawmakers are “basically being slow-walked by the Secret Service and the FBI.”
“They’ve given us 12 Secret Service personnel to interview — 12. The FBI has interviewed over 1,000 people. I asked the Deputy Director Abbate in a hearing couple weeks after the assassination, ok, for all those interviews, you do transcriptions. … We need those. ‘So let me check into it. We’ll get those to you soon as possible,'” Johnson said, noting that they still have not received these from the FBI. Further, the documents they have received, he continued, are “heavily redacted.”
“Oddly enough, normally they do the blackout redactions, so you know they’re redacting something. In this case, they’re doing white-out. We don’t even, you know, we’ll get a page that’s just a blank page. We have no idea whether there’s a sentence, you know, blacked out, or the entire page,” the senator explained.
“So again, they are slow walking this,” he said, emphasizing that they are not providing sufficient information. Johnson said they have not even had the opportunity to interview the sniper who shot Crooks.
“That’s the number one person I want to talk to. I want to know when he had him in his sight, what he saw. We haven’t had that person available, made available us,” he said, noting that even the Democrats are getting impatient and talking about subpoenas.
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“They should have issued subpoenas quite some time ago,” he said, adding that federal agencies “thumb their nose” at congressional oversight and seem to hold themselves above the law.
While Johnson said the stonewalling could be due to “grotesque incompetence,” he said many people suspect that the Secret Service has been hyper-focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives.
“They’re not focusing on excellence. They’re not focusing on the mission of these agencies,” he added, noting that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), whose state is investigating the second assassination attempt, will likely run into the same problems members of Congress are experiencing when it comes to transparency.
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“Now we have reports that CBP was was made aware of this guy, but Homeland Security investigations declined to really investigate him. So I’m sure CIA must have a file on this guy. I think the FBI probably has a file on this guy. CBP probably has a file on this guy. You think DeSantis is going to get those files?” he asked. “Certainly not voluntarily.”
“They haven’t given them to us yet. It sounds like FBI is unable to get the CIA file on the guy. There’s going to be interagency equities here. They’re not going to turn things over,” he said, adding that the federal government is “completely out of control” and “secretive.”
“The people who head these agencies do not believe they’re accountable to the American public. They certainly don’t believe they have to be cooperative with Congress. That’s the state of government. That’s why government needs to shrink in size. Its influence over our lives needs to be dramatically reduced,” Johnson added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.