Everybody knows that the “lone gunman” is dead, but the controversy surrounding the theory that Thomas Matthew Crooks was a “lone gunman” is not.

Many feel entirely justified to continue exploring whether others had to be involved in this operation for it to unfold in the way it did.

Monday morning, Secret Service Director Cheatle studiously avoided answering any questions members of Congress were asking to help bring forth truth and transparency to the public. In response to Cheatle’s non-responses, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna tweeted out the following: “After leaving the oversight briefing this morning, I’m more convinced than ever that Crooks wasn’t working alone.”

At this point, the American public should not naively accept that a 20-year-old was acting alone any more than we should hold to any belief in the veracity of the Warren Report, which has been questioned since its issuance sixty years ago.

AI image of the real investigators.

Today, the question is the same that haunts the Kennedy assassination: Was Crooks, like Oswald, a disposable patsy set up by others to take the fall and thereby cloak the evil conspiracy and identity of the real conspirators?

In considering that question, the public should be slow to form conclusions and remain relentless in their pursuit of the real truth. We need to question the tidbits being released—i.e. leaked—by a bureaucracy that, for the time being, seems to be supporting the notion that Crooks was a single shooter operating on his own.

But there is good news.

Things have changed since 1963. Today, forensic evidence abounds. Videos and audio recordings from every conceivable perspective are almost certain to have been recorded on a host of cell phones in the hands of a multitude of ordinary private citizens. Moreover, because most of this evidence is likely to be revealed in due time to the public at large on the internet, it is sure to be analyzed by thousands of people across America with inquiring minds and many varied investigative talents, but with no ties to the government.

For instance, consider just one of these independent analysts—Chris Martenson, Ph.D.—who examined audio recordings of the shots fired that day. If you are interested, listen here to the evidence he offers to support his finding that not one, but a least two shooters, and perhaps three, were involved that day in the attempted assassination of President Trump.

Whether you agree with Dr. Martenson’s conclusions or not, is not the point.

The important point is that, at minimum, independent analysis like his adds to the mix of information now available to all of us from independent sources for our further evaluation in real-time. We are no longer solely dependent on our government to arrive at the conclusion it wants the Americans to have.

We can now explore issues on our own. We can ask whether the F.B.I. has made the same type of audio analysis as Dr. Martenson. If it has, what are its conclusions (along with proof)? And if it hasn’t, why not? Indeed, if the F.B.I. isn’t following obvious forensic trails, that itself is food for thought and something a cadre of independent forensic experts and citizen journalists will likely be free to pursue with justified vigor.

In other words, in today’s age of free information flow, evidence sharing, independent research, and social media warriors—people such as Tucker Carlson, Karli Bonee, Garrett Ziegler, Lara Logan, Alex Jones, Sean Davis, Andy Ngo, and hundreds of others, all operating on the internet with virtually unlimited access—it’s unlikely that our government can get away with passing off anything but the truth to the American people. That’s true no matter how many media outlets bow before the state.

For both President Trump and the rest of us who would like to see America be given at least one more chance to become great again, that could very well be good news indeed.

But for some deep-state operatives within the Biden Administration, perhaps not so much.

Cliff Nichols is an attorney, the author of A Barrister’s Tales, the drafter of The Declaration of Liberty and the curator of The American Landscape.