Is it just me, or does the Alec Baldwin manslaughter case seem strange?

After a person was killed while working on a movie set, manslaughter charges were filed, then dropped, and then refiled.  The FBI was used to test the evidence, but then the evidence was taken away from the FBI and sent to a private lab.  What gives?

As a recap, in October of 2021, Alec Baldwin accidently shot and killed cinematographer Halyna Hutchins while filming his new movie Rust.  Baldwin claimed that the revolver he was holding for the western went off without pulling the trigger.  After a year of investigating the matter, New Mexico prosecutors charged Baldwin with involuntary manslaughter in January of 2023, but then mysteriously dropped the charges three months later.  Their explanation for dropping the charges was that “new evidence” had come to light.

On January 19, 2024, a New Mexico grand jury indicted Alec Baldwin again.  Now we are learning the nature of the “new evidence.”  It turns out that the FBI had broken the revolver while testing it.  It seems that components of the weapon were broken while analysts attempted to show that the gun could go off without pulling the trigger, as Baldwin had claimed it had.  To be specific, they hit the revolver with a mallet, attempting to make it go off.  I suspect that the prosecutors were a bit nervous about making their case using evidence that had been compromised by the forensic lab they had selected.

Revolvers of the 1800s lacked the safety interlocks of modern weapons.  They could discharge if dropped or otherwise physically abused.  Apparently, that is what the FBI analysts were attempting to simulate by striking the handgun with a mallet.

But Baldwin never claimed to have dropped the gun, beat on the furniture with it, or pounded on it with a hammer.  He claimed that the gun went off spontaneously, while he sat innocently pointing the gun at his cinematographer with his finger off the trigger.  It makes one wonder: why was the FBI hitting the gun with a hammer, when that in no way simulated the circumstances of the shooting?  Even if they were able to make the weapon misfire by pounding on it, such a test wouldn’t validate Baldwin’s version of events.  It would only “muddy the waters.”

Luckily, prosecutors were able to “fix” their evidentiary problem by sending the revolver to a different lab, Forensic Science Services of Arizona.  Experts reconstructed the weapon and conducted a battery of more appropriate tests proving that the gun wouldn’t have just “gone off” spontaneously in someone’s hand.  That provided prosecutors with the evidence they needed to proceed with the case.  With no thanks to the FBI, perhaps now the families of the victim will receive some measure of justice.

But the history of this case leaves me with a big question: was the FBI attempting to run interference for Alec Baldwin?  He is their kind of guy: a leftist darling and well known critic of public enemy number one, Donald Trump.  Were they so determined to validate Baldwin’s testimony that they kept using ever more extreme tests to make the gun “misfire” until they broke it?  Or is there an even darker explanation?  Did they intentionally break the evidence knowing that tainted evidence — which the defense team couldn’t test — would jeopardize the case?

Such questions would have been unthinkable just eight years ago.  But the FBI’s recent history with evidence makes one justifiably suspicious.  We now know that they have destroyed evidence (Hillary Clinton laptops), hidden evidence (Hunter Biden and Seth Rich laptops), and falsified evidence (Kevin Clinesmith).  That’s quite a history of evidence mismanagement by our premier law enforcement agency, no?  Given that the FBI did not disclose any of those incidents itself, we’ve learned that suspicion of the FBI is warranted.

These incidents have taught us that FBI employees are not impartial enforcers of the law.  They operate according to their own agenda.  Understanding the motives of its people is critical in assessing the veracity of work products from the agency of “Fidelity, Bravery, and Integrity.”  Asking, “Would they want to deceive us?” and “How could they be deceiving us?” has become necessary.

Credibility is essential to law enforcement.  Without it, testimony, affidavits, and even forensic analyses lack authority.  Now, even in “clear cut” cases, we must investigate the investigators to ensure that justice is served.  Isn’t it tragic that the FBI brought us to this state, to protect the most corrupt collection of grifters to ever profit from public office?

John Green is a political refugee from Minnesota, now residing in Idaho.  He is a staff writer for the American Free News Network and can be reached at greenjeg@gmail.com.

Image: Alec Baldwin.  Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.