WASHINGTON — A report by the House Intelligence Committee released Tuesday criticizes the FBI investigation into the shooting that injured Louisiana Congressman Steve Scalise and others, saying that politics kept the agency from reaching the proper findings right away.

The FBI originally characterized the 2017 shooting of the Republican congressman and current House Majority Leader at a practice for a Congressional baseball game as “suicide by cop.” This conclusion was based on the gunman, James Hodgkinson, not being affiliated with any extremist organizations.

The FBI in 2021 changed their preliminary conclusion and called the shooting an act of domestic terrorism based on Hodgkinson's “personalized violent ideology.”

The report, written by the Republican-led intelligence committee, says that the attacker's political beliefs and motivations were intentionally downplayed. 

The FBI later changed its conclusion in 2021, acknowledging the attack was politically motivated.

“We found that the FBI prematurely declared the case to be suicide by cop, misconstruing information, misleading the public, and misrepresenting the facts. The FBI then spent four years guarding those determinations by obstructing congressional oversight,” Rep. Rick Crawford, R-AR, said.

Scalise praised FBI Director Kash Patel and Crawford, who chairs the intelligence committee, for "finally getting to the truth of the matter."

"I encourage Director Patel to adopt the recommendations of the Committee to ensure the intelligence community is rid of bias and to identify who was responsible for the misleading and incorrect conclusions and why, and ensure the FBI gets back to its mission of following the facts, wherever they may lead," Scalise said in a statement.