How The Congressional Baseball Shooting Didn't Become The Deadliest Political Assassination In Amer

www.buzzfeed.com ^ | 5/14/2018 | kate nocera

[bitt]

You don't know the whole story of how close we came to one of the deadliest political shootings in US history last year.

Roger Williams cannot enjoy fireworks on the Fourth of July anymore. The 68-year-old Texan is a longtime NRA member, but these days, he can’t hunt. Once, during a congressional committee hearing, the chair banged a gavel — clap — on the desk, and Williams fell out of his seat.

It’s been almost a year since Williams and nearly two dozen of his Republican colleagues were shot at as they were wrapping up baseball practice in Alexandria, Virginia, on June 14, 2017. Williams started the congressional baseball caucus and began coaching the team a few years ago. He’s a standard conservative Republican with a toothy politician’s grin, which he can still flash on command.

He thinks about that morning almost every day. They were practicing for the Congressional Baseball Game, one of those cheerful bipartisan events that's becoming extinct in Washington. It's an annual game, held for charity, where Democrats play Republicans, staffers come out to cheer on their bosses, and everyone shakes hands at the end, reporters and lobbyists looking on.

[bitt]

"How The Congressional Baseball Shooting Didn't Become The Deadliest Political Assassination In American History"

[bitt]

p

[Balding_Eagle]

Bernie supporters did the shooting as I recall.

Let’s get the guns out of the hands of Democrats.

[FreedomPoster]

But many lawmakers are mad, or frustrated, or saddened, at how quickly the story disappeared from the headlines given that the shooter, James T. Hodgkinson, targeted Republicans. The FBI concluded the shooting wasn’t politically motivated — suicide by cop, they told members after an investigation.

But Hodgkinson carried a list of names of lawmakers in his pocket: Mo Brooks, Jim Jordan, Trent Franks, Scott DesJarlais, Jeff Duncan, and Morgan Griffith. The list included their office numbers and short physical descriptions. He’d recorded video of the field in April of that year — a sign, the prosecutor wrote in his official report, that Hodgkinson “had already selected Simpson field as a potential target as early as April 2017.” Rep. Gary Palmer says he had noticed Hodgkinson on the bleachers the day before the shooting; he’d even thought about walking over to him because he looked like he was having “a hard time.”

According to the prosecutor’s report, Hodgkinson had fallen on hard times. He had stopped working and traveled from Illinois to DC sometime in March 2017, telling his family he was leaving to “protest.” He was living in his van near the YMCA, a building adjacent to the field, that he used to shower. His social media posts show that he hated Trump, and supported Bernie Sanders, whose 2016 campaign he even volunteered for. (“I am sickened by this despicable act,” Sanders said the day of the shooting.) He once routinely wrote letters to the local paper, criticizing Republicans.

Duncan left practice early that morning to see Brigitte Gabriel, the prominent anti-Muslim activist, who was speaking at a breakfast and whom Duncan calls a friend. But he realized later he had spoken to the shooter, when Rep. Trent Kelly explained to him what happened that morning. “And a guy approaches me or is standing there, and he says, ‘Hey, can you tell me who’s practicing this morning, Republicans or Democrats?’ And I said, ‘This is the Republican team.’ He said, ‘OK, thanks.’”

The Alexandria prosecutor called the shooting terrorism, a distinction that Brad Wenstrup thinks applies to school shootings like Parkland and Sandy Hook, too. (“Those are acts of terrorism. I don’t know how else to describe it.”) A spokesperson for the FBI’s Washington Field Office said that Hodgkinson “espoused anti-Republican rhetoric,” but that because Hodgkinson is dead, “We may never know his motivations.”

The FBI briefed the players on their findings in the fall of last year. Several members were shocked they wouldn’t call the shooting politically motivated. Palmer ended up leaving after about a half hour.

“I think most people were really upset,” Palmer says. “I think I may have been the first one that really called them out, and then after I did everybody kind of piled on. I guess everybody was upset. Everybody knew that what they were saying was a crock. The guy had a list. He came there to shoot Republicans.”

He thinks they “misrepresented what happened because of concerns over the political fallout."

“I felt like they blew it off," he said.

“They said, ‘So, essentially this was suicide by cop.’ And we’re like, ‘Only?’ And I can tell you, I can buy that from what I saw at the end, where he walked out openly shooting,” Wenstrup says. “But let’s not kid ourselves here. You look at his website. He hates Republicans. He had the names of six Republicans in his pocket. He had — his social media is full of it. He camped out there for two months planning this, to kill Republicans. Did he hope to die at the end? Maybe.”

First responders worked hard to keep Hodgkinson alive, even as he was handcuffed on the ground. He died later at the hospital.

Once he was down, Joe Barton went to look at him. He took photos until the police yelled at him to stop. “I told the police to shoot the son of a bitch, which they didn’t do anymore.”

Another sign that the FBI needs a complete tear down and rebuild. This agency is in the tank for Democrats.

[frank ballenger]

Remember, the CNN and MSNBC propagandists influence the impressionable and emotionally unstable leftists at home watching.
They want to be the next Lee Harvey Oswald and we fear they will try to target Trump.

I will have no hesitation in declaring the Morning Joe types incited the fellow leftist to heinous action if that happens. God forbid.

[Vendome]

Great story...

[ripley]

“...impressionable and emotionally unstable leftist...”

...in other words, lying, murdering, adolescent,
scu&bag Democrats.

IMHO

[frank ballenger]

Great insight.

Just a suggestion: next time let us know your real feelings.

Bless you.

[richardtavor]

Interesting. How many democrats in congress were pulling for Scalise to die? The networks would never admit it was political because they had the same rage as the shooter.

[M1911A1]

The FBI may or may not have lots of good agents in many of the field offices, away from the cesspool of D.C.

Sworn to uphold the law, the premier law enforcement agency of the free world. Jimmy Stewart told their story on the big screen.

Out of all those patriotic, selfless, honorable men and women of the F.B.I, where are the whistleblowers? The resignations of protest? The retiree who knows a crook still on the job?

Anybody heard of this honest FBI agent?

It looks like the “I was only following orders” defense is going to get another run through the legal hopper.

[Lurker]

The Left hates us and wants us dead.

Prepare accordingly.

L

[null and void]

And this, boys and girls, is why the left doesn’t want us armed...

[E. Pluribus Unum]

[Nebr FAL owner]

Agreed they don’t want a two way shooting range

[Big Red Badger]

#metoo for the fibbies...

[Gator113]

As a free man in America, I will never be unarmed.

[Trump20162020]

[TBP]

Thank God.

[21twelve]

Yes - very well written. I had to look to make sure it wasn’t “The New Yorker” - nope - Buzzfeed!

[Crucial]

The FBI is owned by Soros. It must be to rule that this shooting wasn’t politically motivated. They are corrupt to the core.