An Ohio congressman is asking for a new investigation after he says the FBI determined a shooting at a congressional baseball practice was “suicide by cop.”
U.S. Rep. Brad Wenstrup, a Cincinnati Republican, was on the field that day in 2017 when a gunman opened fire while a group of Republican lawmakers was practicing for a charity baseball game.
Wenstrup said he was later told by FBI agents that the shooting was classified as “a case of the attacker seeking suicide by cop” – a designation the lawmaker says “defies logic.”
“Director, you want suicide by cop, you just pull a gun on a cop,” Wenstrup said to FBI Director Christopher Wray during a recent hearing. “It doesn’t take 136 rounds. It takes one bullet.”
The baseball practice was almost over on June 14, 2017, when the shooter, James Hodgkinson, 66, from Belleville, Illinois, opened fire. Hodgkinson was killed in the ensuing shootout with Capitol Police. Five others, including Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise, were injured.
Wenstrup, a podiatrist who served as a surgeon in the U.S. Army, used scissors to cut through Scalise’s pant leg to get to his wound to assess the damage and try to stop the bleeding.
“I felt like I was back in Iraq,” Wenstrup said at the time.
During the hearing with Director Wray, Wenstrup detailed the shooter’s actions, saying he had been living in his van near the baseball field and that social media posts showed he hated Republicans and hated then-President Donald Trump.
“We know he carried in his pocket that day, a targeted list with names of Republican Congressmen… that included their physical descriptions,” Wenstrup said. “Before carrying out his attack, we know that the attacker asked Congressman Jeff Duncan, who was leaving practice early, if those present on the field were Republicans or Democrats. He was told they were Republicans.”
Wenstrup said that if Capitol Police had not been there that day, it would have been a “massacre.”
He said he and others on the field were later briefed by FBI agents who – “much to our shock” – told them the shooting was a suicide by cop.
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Wray didn’t respond to Wenstrup’s comments during the hearing other than to say he was not the director of the FBI at the time.
Wenstrup requested a new investigation into the shooting as an act of domestic terrorism, as well as an investigation into how the FBI determined it was a suicide by cop.
In a letter to Wray sent the same day as the hearing, April 15, Wenstrup reiterated his stance.
“This conclusion defies logic and contradicts the publicly known facts about the perpetrator and the attack,” Wenstrup wrote.
“I am extremely frustrated that the FBI failed to conduct thorough interviews during the initial investigation. After canvassing multiple Members of Congress present during the attack, I am not aware that any of my colleagues present that day were interviewed as witnesses, including me.”
Wenstrup, who lives in Cincinnati's Columbia Tusculum neighborhood, represents Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, which stretches across southern Ohio from Cincinnati to Scioto County.
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