REVEALED: FBI used ‘false statements,’ ‘manipulated known facts’ during investigation into 2017 Congressional baseball game shooting

On June 14, 2017, James Hodgkinson opened fire at a Republican Congressional softball game practice in Alexandria, Virginia. Four people were shot, including two US Capitol Police officers as well as Congressman Steve Scalise. Hodgkinson, who had recently traveled to DC and had a history of writing letters and making phone calls critical of the Republican party, was fatally shot.

The Committee concluded after reviewing thousands of documents handed over by the FBI under Kash Patel’s leadership that "1) the FBI investigation failed to substantively interview eyewitnesses to the shooting; 2) the FBI investigation failed to develop a comprehensive timeline of events; and, 3) the FBI case file was improperly classified, which may have assisted the FBI in obfuscating its substandard investigative efforts and analysis."

The report stated that "the FBI investigation failed even to conduct substantive interviews of all the shooting victims and other eyewitnesses," and just seven days into its investigation, it released a report "arriving at a conclusion there was 'no nexus to terrorism' by utilizing false statements and manipulation of known facts." The FBI "doubled down on this hasty determination," saying that Hodgkinson’s motive had most aligned "with an act of 'suicide by cop.'"

"The FBI then spent the next four years privately guarding the basis for its determinations by impeding Congressional oversight," the report said, adding that it wasn’t until the FBI’s investigation into January 6 protestors that it "changed course" and said that the shooter’s conduct "is something that we would today characterize as a domestic terrorism event."

The report stated that Hodgkinson had taken actions in the lead up to the shooting "that may indicate he hoped to survive the firefight," including concealing himself behind a building while firing, and looking up directions from his location in Alexandria to his home in Illinois the night before. "Regardless of whether Hodgkinson intended to die that day, suicide is not mutually exclusive with domestic terrorism. Both can be true," the report added, noting the activities of terrorists.

The report said that the FBI had in its possession from Hodgkinson a list of names of Congress members with no additional context, with the FBI stating that it "does not appear to be a 'hit list.'"

"The FBI’s cherry-picking on what to disclose or not to disclose to substantiate a conclusion is concerning, and demonstrates politicization and lack of objectivity that the Committee has observed in other IC analytic products for high-profile cases. For example, the FBI does not state that the handwritten note of the six Republican congressmen included the names of two members of the baseball team, Jeff Duncan and Mo Brooks, both of whom were at the baseball practice that morning."

"Whatever its political purpose, the FBI’s starting position was that the shooter was suicidal, hoping to die by gunfire with police. It appears to the Committee that investigative efforts and intelligence analysis then attempted to reinforce the 'suicide by cop' argument despite the clear and contrary facts of the case. The FBI case file makes clear this case was a premeditated assassination attempt on Republican congressmen by a radical, left-wing political extremist, who was seeking to affect the conduct of our government."

Under the new administration and new leadership, the report stressed that "the FBI has an opportunity to relocate true north. The Committee calls on Director Patel to return the FBI to its core values and to ensure its investigators and intelligence analysts exercise the analytical integrity required by law."