GAME CHANGER: I don't know why I didn't recognize this before, but the iron sights mounted on the rifle used by Crooks were, indeed, mounted 90-degree off axis so that the rifle could be laid on its left side and fired comfortably from a prone position, without the rifle magazine getting in the way. I should have seen this, as I have a set of 45-degree iron sights that achieve a similar thing, but for the record, it is highly unusual to see anyone mounting a rear iron sight in a 90-degree configuration. I'm not even sure what hardware would be necessary to achieve that, and my first concern would be that such hardware might interfere with brass ejection. If only the FBI would show us photos of the rifle, we would know more...
Credit goes to the MrGunsGear channel on YT for pointing this out, and to Raven Geostrategic for including this in their most recently analysis report. Now that this has been pointed out, I completely agree with this assessment, and I'm showing here an AI-enhanced high resolution image of the rifle (rotated 180' from the body cam freeze frame) which now clearly makes perfect sense.
As Dr. Chris Martenson pointed out in a recent video, this might also explain the differences in the audio signatures between rounds 1-3 and rounds 4-8. Perhaps Crooks fired rounds 1-3 with his rifle rotated onto its left side (using the right-side mounted iron sights), then when those didn't hit his intended targeted, he oriented the rifle into a normal zero-degree orientation and fired a 5-round burst. This would both explain the 2.6 second delay between the two bursts of fire as well as the differences in audio signatures which caused many of us to believe there must have been two shooters.
Personally, I did not consider the possibility that one shooter could have rotated his rifle 90 degrees between shot bursts. But that would, indeed, strongly alter the audio signature. So now I'm updating my analysis to reflect this realization. The multiple shooters scenario now seems a whole lot less likely to be the accurate story here.
Back to the lone shooter theory?
This changes everything. It means that Crooks had a red dot sight mounted on the normal axis (top of the receiver), and iron sights mounted 90-degrees on the right side, meaning HE KNEW he was going to be firing from a prone position on the roof, and he prepared his sights in that configuration in advance (and, presumably, sighted them in while in that configuration).
In my view, this strongly leans us toward the scenario where Crooks was an active shooter (there is still the possibility of more than one) and very likely fired off at least the very first 3 rounds, if not the subsequent 5-round burst. It also likely means he wasn't merely told to show up for a "training day" exercise with a rifle. Instead, he showed up with a very specific rifle configuration that is highly unusual and points to his foreknowledge of needing to fire that rifle from a prone, rooftop position where the rifle needed to be on its side because of the protruding magazine.
It's worth noting that even if you have a ballistic reticle in a red dot sight, that ballistic reticle assumed your rifle is held in a zero-degree orientation. If you lay your rifle on its left side, any ballistics (bullet drop) details etched into the red dot glass become obsolete and cannot be used, because they are now indicating holds to the right instead of down.
All of this speaks to the intent of the shooter. Clearly he had intent to fire rounds at Trump, and he configured his rifle for that intent.
Is the Crooks rifle location mystery solved?
I'm also being told that there is footage of LEOs removing the rifle from Crooks when they first made it onto the roof, and although I haven't seen that footage myself, if that's genuine, then it solves the mystery of why the rifle was located so far from Crooks' body.
Once again, this strongly leans toward the scenario where Crooks may have been the only shooter, and where he was ALLOWED to thread the needle of security (which was systematically organized to stand down), to climb the roof, and to take potentially 8 shots at President Trump, while Secret Service counter-snipers were given the order to hold off for 16 seconds before returning fire, giving Crooks every opportunity to unload a full magazine in the direction of Trump.
First-floor windows of the AGR building:
Meanwhile, most analysts are dismissing the idea of a suppressed round fired from the first floor of the AGR building on which Crooks was located, pointing out that the 2 frames witnessed in the realDJstew724 video appear to be reflections of some kind, and pointing out that the windows all looked closed.
I continue to wonder about those frames, given that the sound signature of something very closely resembling a suppressed rifle shot accompanies those frames, and I think it is a very odd coincidence that the sound of a rifle shot would just happen to coincidence with two frames that also show what some analysts think is a "reflection," but such coincidences are certainly within the realm of possibility. Add that to the stack of "strange coincidences" concerning this shooting event.
Injuries line up with lines of fire from Crooks' rooftop position
One more piece of compelling evidence now supporting the "single shooter" theory comes from Raven Geostrategic, which published this diagram in a PDF report distributed to myself and others. This diagram shows that the known injuries from rifle fire are all within the arc of lines of fire originating from Crooks, but the locations of those injuries is inconsistent with shooters from other suspected locations to the west of Crooks, such as the second floor window of the building to the NW. Note that for the following map, it is not oriented with North on top. North is mostly toward the left side:
There are still many outstanding questions, of course, such as the bullet that apparently pierced the hydraulics of a tractor front loader. Also, the injuries are within the line of fire of a first floor shooter located directly underneath Crooks, so there remains the possibility of a first floor active shooter, but there is no strong evidence supporting that possibility that I'm aware of.
My conclusion? Although this is a rapidly changing environment of new videos, new audio, emerging facts, FBI testimony, etc., my current conclusion leans strongly toward the single shooter scenario, where Crooks was "allowed" into that position (or guided into it) by the HSI team which deliberately intended to create conditions during which a shooter could potentially achieve "success" in murdering Donald J. Trump. I absolutely believe this was a deliberate setup, and even if Crooks is the only shooter, other deep state operators are almost certainly complicit in the larger operation that resulted in this scenario coming to reality.
More updates as warranted. Special thanks to Raven Geostrategic, Dr. Chris Martenson and MrGunsGear on YT for their outstanding work.
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