Sen. Ron Johnson, previewing an upcoming Senate report on the attempted assassination of GOP nominee Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, this summer, said Sunday that the Secret Service is continuing to drag its feet on its failures that day and that is spurring conspiracy theories.
"Are they simply protecting their own agencies, their people, or is there something more nefarious going on?" the Wisconsin Republican told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures" host Maria Bartiromo.
"If you were asked to design an investigation that would drive conspiracy theories, that would heighten suspicion, this is exactly how you do it," he added. "They need to be transparent. They're not."
The report, due out Wednesday, will reveal the "spectacular security failure" that happened this summer when it came to protecting Trump, Johnson said.
He added that Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe has given testimony to Congress, but "he really doesn't tell us anything other than everybody was responsible, which means nobody was responsible, which means nobody can be held accountable."
Members of Congress still have not been provided with transcripts from the more than 1,000 interviews from the FBI, as well as the autopsy or toxicology reports from the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, said Johnson.
Crooks was shot and killed after he opened fire while Trump spoke in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. The former president's ear was grazed, while a rallygoer was killed.
"We don't have the ballistics information in terms of exactly when the shots were fired," said Johnson. "Did they recover the bullets? What about crime scene photos? I mean, there's so much that we don't know, Crooks' background. What about the encrypted accounts? What did we find out about Crooks?"
There is also not enough information about the second suspected assassination attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida, earlier this month, said Johnson.
"They're not being transparent," he told Bartiromo. "They are the law. They hold themselves above the law. They don't believe they're accountable to Congress and the American people."
He also called into question the decision to allow Crooks to be cremated soon after the Butler incident.
"This isn't a normal situation," he said. "This was an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States, our candidate for the presidency. You need to make sure that you preserve evidence, or at least release the toxicology and autopsy reports before you cremate the body.
The public hasn't seen them. That was one of the many, many questions we have. Why did you do it?"
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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