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Right-wing lawmakers and petitioners have debunked the suggestion that the shooting was orchestrated by Democrats or government actors targeting former President Donald J. Trump.
By Annie Karni
Reporting from Washington
Rep. Eli Crane, an Arizona Republican and former Navy SEAL, says he is not a conspiracy theorist. But in the weeks after the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump, he baselessly warned that the shootings were part of a coordinated crusade by Democrats or shadow government actors to try to save the former president and retake the White House.
“Not only did they try to ruin him, but they also tried to put him in jail,” Mr. Skull told Jeff Oravits, a right-wing radio personality in Arizona. “When that didn’t work, they tried to jail him. ” he has been a criminal for 750 years. And many of us have said that the next step in this escalation is for them to try to kill him because they can’t, they know they can’t beat him in a fair and equitable way.
During an appearance on Glenn Beck’s show, Crane, who went to the collection site in Pennsylvania where Trump shot and killed to conduct his own investigation, said, “I don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist, but at the same time I don’t need to rule anything out because I’m not stopping some members of our government from doing whatever is mandatory to retain power.
No evidence has been established that anyone other than a lone gunman, Thomas Crooks, attempted to kill the president in July. Crooks, 20, a registered Republican who killed on the spot and left few clues about his ideals or what motivated him to open fire at a Trump rally on July 13.
But according to Crane and several of his right-wing Republican colleagues in Congress, as well as Republican candidates running in this fall’s election, the story is much more complex. Damaging conspiracy theories are circulating suggesting that Democrats and government forces played a role in the attempt to defeat Mr. Trump.
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