Federal investigation into the death of Roy McGrath may be unavailable to the public for a year
BALTIMORE -- Although the FBI has concluded its fact-finding investigation into the death of the former top aide to Larry Hogan, that information may not be available to the public for about a year, according to WJZ's media partner the Baltimore Banner.
There is a process that investigators must adhere to in order to determine whether federal agents complied with federal policies the day that Roy McGrath was killed.
McGrath worked under Hogan when he was governor of Maryland. He had been on the run for weeks after skipping out on his federal fraud trial in Baltimore on March 13.
He was facing a maximum of 100 years in federal prison for charges that he illegally recorded Hogan and stole hundreds of thousands of dollars from the state government when he disappeared.
That included more than $233,000 from the Maryland Environmental Service, the state agency where he worked before his leading role in the Hogan administration.
Prosecutors said he falsified time sheets while on vacation and stole thousands in state funds to take classes at Harvard.
McGrath resigned from Hogan's administration in August 2020 after news of his unusual severance payment became public.
Federal agents finally caught up with him outside of Knoxville, Tennessee, in April.
McGrath was shot and later died from his injuries, but investigators have not yet revealed who fired the shot that killed him.
"We know that they have finished their fact-finding portion of the investigation and they have submitted that investigation file to both the local Knoxville district attorney's office and the U.S. attorney's office in Tennessee," the Baltimore Banner's Tim Prudente told WJZ's Denise Koch during an interview on Friday. "And their job now is to review the report and make a determination as to whether the agents were justified in the actions that they took."
Once prosecutors have determined whether those actions were justified, then the report goes back to the FBI, Prudente said.
"They (the FBI) have an administrative review board and they determine whether the agents violated any FBI policies," he said. "Only after that review is finished will the report be subject to any public records request."
To this day, the public still doesn't know if Roy McGrath died of suicide or if the agents shot and killed him during what the FBI has described as an "agent-involved shooting," Prudente said.