Two things are becoming abundantly clear regarding the “investigation” into the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.  First, nobody trusts the FBI.  Secondly, everybody is complaining that the FBI is stonewalling and withholding information about the alleged shooter, and therefore, the entire sordid event is quickly turning into a Kennedy assassination–like conspiracy.  In other words, nobody trusts the FBI.

Oddly enough, the biggest complainers are sitting on the singular investigative body that has the greatest ability to get information but hasn’t utilized its power.  The House Bipartisan Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump has the ability to obtain crucial physical evidence, without the FBI’s permission, and remarkably has failed to act.  If the FBI doesn’t want to play fair, there are other useful tools.

According to constitutional attorney Jonathan Emord, “until a court in Pennsylvania rejects the next of kin rule, I suspect that will remain a barrier to accessing the Medical Examiner’s autopsy report and related evidence.”  “However,” stressed Emord, “the congressional committees investigating the assassination attempt should subpoena the coroner’s and Medical Examiner’s reports and related evidence and then release it to the public so it may be scrutinized.”

Is Emord the smartest guy in the room?  Maybe.  But c’mon — is there no one on the congressional committee who is aware of its subpoena power?  Is the public really supposed to believe that the lawyers in Congress were unaware of their power to subpoena this information?  Is it possible that members of Congress tasked with this investigation have forgotten about Steve Bannon, who is currently sitting in a jail cell because of a failure to comply with a congressional subpoena?

Congressional investigators are absolutely free to paper Bethel Park, Pennsylvania with subpoenas, including the parents of the alleged shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks.  After all, it was the father who reportedly made a call to police in the early afternoon hours prior to the assassination attempt.  The alleged call to police was made by Crooks’s father because he “was concerned about his son and his whereabouts.”  Fox News explained the call this way: “Thomas Matthew Crooks’s parents were looking for him on Saturday in the hours leading up to the Trump rally shooting and eventually called law enforcement to indicate that he was missing, and they were worried.”

Perhaps Congress may want to hear from the father about why the call was made to police that early afternoon. Perhaps Congress would like to know whether the father actually had a conversation with the son.  Perhaps the “mental health expert” father did speak with the son, and it was what was said during the conversation that prompted the call to police.  Maybe that’s why the FBI still is investigating the family and why the family has lawyered up.

The point, of course, is that Congress has the ability to subpoena the father...to question the mother and father about that very questionable call and numerous other issues.  If the FBI isn’t willing to share information, Congress doesn’t need its help.  Congress certainly didn’t need permission from the FBI to throw Steve Bannon into a jail cell for failure to comply with a subpoena.  Either Congress will utilize all its powers to provide information to the public, or it may end up the way of the FBI, where Americans no longer trust it.

Image: J via Flickr, CC BY 2.0.