Former Politico editor Garrett Graff on Tuesday noted the degree to which the Department of Justice is avoiding questions about the Secret Service agent shot Saturday night during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner in Washington D.C. As Graff notes, none of the videos available appear to show the gunman firing at anyone.
Writing for his Substack "Dooms Day Scenario," Graff was clear to say that he's not trying to claim there is some sort of "false flag" operation. What he does have questions about is how many shots were fired and who fired them.
"If you read my quick analysis Sunday morning, you might have seen that I had immediate questions about the number of gunshots — six — we heard on the ballroom audio. It was way more gunshots than had been explained at that point," he wrote.
The Justice Department filed official charges against the gunman on Monday afternoon and hinted the may not have fired his weapon at all.
"In fact, it’s not clear from what we know that this was a 'shooting' at all," said Graff.
According to reports, the only person injured in the incident appeared to be a uniformed Secret Service officer, who was included in the criminal charges as a witness/participant. He is among those who pulled his weapon and fired.
The three charges that acting Attorney General Todd Blanche said the DOJ would charge the gunman with are: (1) attempt to assassinate the President of the United States, (2) transportation of a firearm and ammunition in interstate commerce with intent to commit a felony and (3) discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.
The third charge would require proof that the gunman fired one of the two guns he had on him at the time. Videos show him racing down the hallway, clutching a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun with both hands. He also had a Rock Island Armory 1911 .38-caliber pistol on him.
There's no supporting evidence that he fired the shotgun, however.
Graff noted the New York Times wrote on Monday, “Mr. Blanche said investigators believed the suspect fired his weapon because a spent shotgun shell was found inside its chamber, but he noted that more forensic examination would be done to determine exactly what happened.”
Graff finds it "very hard to believe" that after 24 hours, the FBI and Secret Service can't conclude anything about whether the gunman fired.
There's no real information about what kind of ammunition the shotgun had, but Graff said that he would have to have used "some strange custom shell" rather than the typical two-shells that a shotgun fires off. So, it would mean he'd have a "large solid shot primarily used for hunting big game, or buckshot, a shell loaded with somewhere between eight and twenty smaller rounds."
He explained that buckshot would be the. most common option.
"... One pull of the trigger is essentially the same as shooting eight or nine 9mm ball rounds all simultaneously. Buckshot produces some serious wound channels," he explained.
An audio analysis by the Wall Street Journal heard six shots while Blanche and the Secret Service claim they fired five. The Secret Service officer was shot in his bulletproof vest by a single shot.
"Authorities had previously used the word 'bullet' to describe what shot him, which is what one would call something fired by a handgun or rifle, not a shotgun," explained Graff.
Ultimately, if the gunman had used buckshot and that's what hit the officer, it also would have sprayed bullets in other places. It would have been very clear if the officer had one bullet in the vest from a handgun, compared to a shotgun burst. The vest would also make that clear.
Graff observed that Blanche made a "strange" comment, saying, “When you fire a bullet, the bullet ends up somewhere. Sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t.”
Graff was confounded by that remark.
"Solid slugs come with enormous stopping power and would be what you’d expect to use to try to take down a feral hog or a black bear; if it hit a human at close range, one would expect some serious blunt force injuries, perhaps even fatal blunt force trauma, even if the officer was hit in a bullet-resistant (they’re never really bullet-'proof'!) vest," wrote Graff.
He also noticed that in the retelling of the incident in the court documents, "it uses a strange passive voice to indicate the gunfire." The text says the officer "was shot once in the chest." It never says the gunman shot the officer in the chest.
Graff goes into considerably more detail, including videos, and ultimately conclude that the shot that hit the officer was likely a friendly fire accident.
What he believes happened, according to the audio and videos, is that the gunman raced through the area, an officer pulled his gun and fired, missing the man and hitting a fellow officer. That officer then had his weapon drawn and fired off five shots, missing the gunman with all of them.
The DOJ isn't making any of that information accessible to the public, though it is likely to come out in court.
