Rep. Brad Wenstrup, hero of June 2017 shooting at House GOP baseball practice, recalls that day
As Rep. Brad Wenstrup prepares for his retirement in six weeks, he often recalls one day in particular. He was prone on the ground, face down in the grass, with a baseball helmet on his head.
The piercing sounds of screaming, gunfire and chaos surrounded him, persisting for several minutes. When it finally quieted, Wenstrup sprang to his feet and ran to his gravely injured colleague, GOP Rep. Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the House majority whip, a few hundred feet away.
With each stride that day in June 2017, Wenstrup said he was consumed by the memories of Iraq from 12 years earlier. And as Wenstrup, a decorated combat surgeon, made his run along the field to provide help to his colleague, Wenstrup pictured the patient he and his surgical team were not able to save 12 years earlier.
This time would be different, Wenstrup hoped.
He not only helped save the patient, but along with emergency responders, played a key role in heading off a political assassination.
Wenstrup, who was elected to Congress from suburban Cincinnati in 2012, helped treat Scalise, who had been shot by a gunman who opened fire at a House Republican baseball practice just before their 2017 annual congressional baseball game against Democrats.
"I saw the entry wound from the bullet, but I didn't see an exit wound, so I knew he was in trouble," Wenstrup said. "I had no doubt he was bleeding internally. I knew that if I couldn't stop the bleeding, I at least needed to get him to drink fluids." He began applying pressure to slow the bleeding and talking to Scalise to keep him alert and conscious.
Scalise had suffered a shot to his hip. His femur was shattered and his pelvis severely damaged.
Scalise recalled some of the immediate aftermath of the shooting and of Wenstrup's care. He told CBS News, "He was putting pressure on the spot where the bullet went in. He then ultimately put a tourniquet on. And you know, later, my trauma surgeon told me that tourniquet saved my life." Wenstrup had improvised a tourniquet with a belt and bandages to help slow the blood flow until Scalise was ushered away by emergency responders.
After he was airlifted to George Washington University hospital for emergency surgery, Scalise would spend several days unconscious. Grueling rehabilitation and reconstructive surgeries helped Scalise walk again.
With little fanfare last year, Wenstrup announced his retirement from Congress, which takes effect Jan. 3, 2025. Amid a wave of retirements of longtime members of Congress and a sea change in Washington after the 2024 elections, Wenstrup's departure has been overlooked by some.
But not by Scalise or by many of Wenstrup's House colleagues.
"He's such a man of high integrity," Scalise told CBS News. "He's respected by his colleagues. He's a chairman of a committee. He could have done even more things here in Congress, and his constituents would have elected him overwhelmingly. But he also knew it's time."
The man who opened fire on Scalise and his fellow Republicans was killed after an exchange of gunfire with a Capitol Police protective detail assigned to Scalise, who was given an additional protection as a member of House leadership. Gunman James Hodgkinson acted alone and was not connected to terrorism, federal investigators determined. He was carrying an SKS rifle and a 9 mm handgun when he opened fire.
Wenstrup is haunted by thoughts of the carnage that could have ensued if Scalise and the police unit had not been at the practice to protect the group.
"There were 136 rounds fired. I don't think most people know that," Wenstrup said. "If Steve Scalise wasn't there and didn't take a bullet for all of us, then there's no (security) detail there." Wenstrup said the gunman could have killed 20 to 30 members of Congress and staff."
As he performed the initial emergency medical triage on Scalise, Wenstrup recalled eerily similar images from 12 years earlier, when he was deployed as a military doctor at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. He served in the U.S. Army Reserves in Iraq in the months before the troop surge. One day, a soldier was grievously wounded nearby and was rushed to Wenstrup's post for surgery.
Wenstrup said the victim was a servicemember who had likely been hit by an improvised explosive device. "He was badly hit. There was no doubt about it, but he was still alive, and he was intubated and on the table," Wenstrup recalled, sitting back in his chair and lowering the volume of his voice as he shared the account.
"It was a blunt injury. There severed arteries internally and his blood pressure started dropping," Wenstrup said, "We opened him up, went in and there was blood everywhere. And we couldn't stop. We couldn't stop it."
"We were just really distraught after that one," Wenstrup said. "And that was going through my mind when I was with (Scalise) on that field."
He urged arriving medics to rush an IV to Scalise, to ensure he stayed hydrated. The flashbacks to Iraq and 2005 continued. But this was different from that patient 12 years earlier, Wenstrup told himself. Scalise had not suffered the same blunt force trauma.
In a 2018 interview with CBS' "60 Minutes," Scalise recalled, "In a weird way, your body kind of goes numb. You know, as bad as the wounds were, and obviously I know now how severe it was. At the time, I guess my body had been shutting down a lot of the real pain. And I was just thinking about what was going on at the moment."
The surgeons who saved Scalise at the hospital would credit Wenstrup with effective care at the shooting site, Scalise said.
Wenstrup's efforts to help save Scalise also had an untold impact on America, averting a would-be assassination and any cascading impact it would have inflicted upon the nation.
Wenstrup said he and Scalise were casual acquaintances before the shooting. They later became friends — and roommates at a house in Washington, D.C., sharing a living quarters on days when Congress is in session.
"We are just very, very tight in our friendship," Scalise told CBS News. "I've really gotten to know him and his wife. They're just wonderful people."
Wenstrup's congressional career is ending amid uniquely toxic politics in the House. His departure comes as members of Congress complain of a loss of civility and cross-party relationships. Some of his Democratic colleagues told CBS News that Wenstrup's departure will deprive the House of another of its more civil members.
"People will miss Brad up here, including me," Rep. Greg Landsman, an Ohio Democrat told CBS News. "He leads with his heart and cares about making things happen for the people he serves. I love the guy."
But Wenstrup has engaged in some heated political battles, including in the closing months of his career. In June, a House subcommittee chaired by Wenstrup, held a charged and animated hearing questioning Dr. Anthony Fauci, focusing on Fauci's response to the COVID pandemic.
Wenstrup accused Fauci of running an office that was "unaccountable to the American people." Wenstrup's panel pursued Fauci's personal emails and staged a two-day, 14-hour closed door deposition that Wenstrup characterized as "cordial" but pressing.
Democrats accused Wenstrup's subcommittee of spreading misinformation about Fauci. The subcommittee's ranking Democrat, Rep. Raul Ruiz of California, said in his opening statement, "After 15 months, the select subcommittee still does not possess a shred of evidence to substantiate these extreme allegations that Republicans have levied against Dr. Fauci for nearly four years."
Sitting at a small table in the lobby of his office suite in the Rayburn House Office Building, Wenstrup recalled his blistering testimony during hearings into the formation of the House Jan. 6 select committee, which investigated the Capitol siege.
Wenstrup criticized Democratic leaders for not including a review of the baseball field shooting in the Jan. 6 committee's work. "If the shooting killed 20 to 30 members of Congress, it would have changed the balance of power in the House of Representatives against the will of the people. That's an insurrection. You're throwing around that word? That's an insurrection, I said. So, if you're truly interested in protecting this beautiful Capitol and those who work in here, then we should make this part of this commission as well."
Many of the other congressional Republicans who were on the field at the 2017 baseball practice shooting have long since departed, including those who were defeated in elections or retired. Gov. Ron DeSantis, who represented Florida, and former Sen. Jeff Flake of Arizona are among those who have left.
Wenstrup's colleagues gave him a standing ovation on the House floor in September 2017, when Scalise returned to duties at the Capitol.
But Wenstrup's retirement contributes to an unexpected dynamic. Among the officeholders from the shooting spree who are still in the House is the man who was hit. Scalise is expected to serve another term in 2025 as the House majority leader.
