The released pages do not say who fired which shot, and 14 more are withheld in full under an exemption for internal agency records.
By Michael Phillips | MDBayNews
The FBI has posted records from its investigation into the 2023 shooting death of Roy McGrath, former Gov. Larry Hogan’s chief of staff. The documents add detail on the evidence recovered, the witnesses, and the missing video, but they do not say what the Bureau’s own internal review concluded about its agents’ conduct.
The FBI Vault lists “Roy McGrath (Final)” among the records added Oct. 22. The posted PDF contains 37 pages. It includes the FBI’s opening paperwork, evidence logs, a property receipt, two cash counts, and summaries of interviews with bystanders, Knox County sheriff’s patrolmen and first responders. Its deleted-page sheet separately lists 14 pages the Bureau withheld in full, with page numbers running from 15 to 42.
How it got here
McGrath, 53, was indicted by a federal grand jury in October 2021 on wire fraud and embezzlement charges, and a superseding indictment in 2022 added falsification of records. Prosecutors alleged he defrauded the Maryland Environmental Service, a state-owned corporation, of a $233,647.23 severance package before he joined Hogan’s staff. He pleaded not guilty. Hogan denied approving the payout.
McGrath served only 11 weeks as chief of staff in 2020. He skipped his March 13, 2023, trial in Baltimore and spent about three weeks as a fugitive. On April 3, 2023, agents found him in Knoxville, Tennessee. He died of his wounds.
What prosecutors already found
The shooting sequence is not new. Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen’s office announced on July 28, 2023, that McGrath and an FBI agent fired at the same moment. According to that office, agents saw McGrath with a handgun raised to his right temple, and he answered their commands with “No” and a warning that his gun was loaded. He fired into his right temple while the agent fired one round that struck his left cheek. The medical examiner could not say which of the two wounds was fatal. The office concluded the agent acted in self-defense and filed no charges.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee cleared the agents of criminal wrongdoing on Aug. 23, 2023, the Baltimore Banner reported. The Banner’s reporting that day, based on Knox County’s files, also covered the bystander video and the simultaneous-shots finding.
None of that is overturned by the newly posted pages. What the pages add is a closer look at the scene and the evidence, and a clearer accounting of what the FBI withheld from public disclosure.
“None of that is overturned by the newly posted pages. What the pages add is a closer look at the scene and the evidence, and a clearer accounting of what the FBI withheld from public disclosure.”
The timeline in the file
The FBI’s opening communication, dated April 4, says FBI Baltimore told the Knoxville office at about 4:30 p.m. that McGrath was likely driving in the area. By about 5:55 p.m., Baltimore believed he was at a Costco in Farragut. An agent saw a vehicle and a man matching the descriptions, and agents began a traffic stop that ended in a parking area between Gold’s Gym, a Sonic Drive-In, and an Advance Auto Parts on Kingston Pike. The document puts the stop at about 6:25 p.m. and says an agent-involved shooting occurred during it.
The same document opened an “Assault on a Federal Officer” investigation, listing McGrath as the subject and a redacted special agent as the victim. It cites the FBI’s Shooting Incident Guide as the reason.
Emergency dispatch times in a separate summary put the first ambulance call at 6:27 p.m. A fire medic unit left for UT Medical Center at about 6:41 p.m.
What witnesses said
The accounts do not match on the number of shots.
One bystander at the Sonic drive-thru told agents he heard a single shot and could not tell who fired it. A second witness, who was inside a nearby building, said he heard approximately five or six gunshots as he walked out. A third, watching from a front window, said a white Escalade turned into the lot so sharply it looked as if it would tip onto two wheels, followed by two or three police cars with lights on and no sirens.
Prosecutors leaned on video for the shot count. The Banner reported that their write-up said a bystander’s cellphone video, even slowed to one-eighth speed, captures only one shot. The FBI’s file notes that it collected witness video too, but none of it is among the released pages.
Two sheriff’s patrolmen described the scene after the shooting. One said the FBI agents were calm with their weapons holstered, and that a man was on the ground by the driver’s door of a vehicle, still breathing, with a gunshot wound to the face. The other said the white SUV’s driver’s door was open, its front passenger window was shattered, blood was visible on the driver’s seat and the ground, and a cleared handgun sat on the rear bumper.
No summary of an interview with the agents involved in the shooting appears in the released pages.
The evidence log
“The released material does not identify what is on the flash drives or disclose the results of any forensic examination of them.”
FBI Evidence Response Team members began arriving about 8:10 p.m. and seized 23 items from the scene. The property receipt and evidence entries (Serial 3 and the FD-597 receipt) list:
- $6,120 in cash, made up of $2,120 from McGrath’s wallet and $4,000 in 40 $100 bills in a bag on the floor of the Escalade
- Seven cell phones, including two iPhones and one prepaid Straight Talk model
- A Microsoft laptop
- A 9mm handgun with a magazine on the rear bumper, a second magazine, and a box of pistol cartridges
- A model firearm with seven plug fire caps, packed in a suitcase
- Two folders holding identity documents, court documents, and a Maryland license
- Two spent shell casings, one on the ground near an agent’s vehicle and one on the Escalade’s dashboard
- 36 flash drives, each counted as a device, found in a black bag on the floor of the vehicle
A separate evidence entry logs a Glock handgun collected from a special agent at 7:27 p.m. that evening. The released pages include no ballistics and do not say which weapon fired which casing.
The released material does not identify what is on the flash drives or disclose the results of any forensic examination of them. That is not proof no one looked. Privacy rules and law-enforcement exemptions could limit what the FBI may publish about seized data, even if it examined them. MDBayNews did not find the flash-drive count in earlier coverage it reviewed.
State prosecutors had charged McGrath with secretly recording Hogan and other officials in 2020. Maryland generally requires all parties to consent to the recording of private communications, with statutory exceptions. Those prosecutors closed the wiretap case after his death. The Banner reported in August 2023 that Maryland’s wiretap law bars authorities from releasing the recordings, so their contents remain unknown. Nothing in the released pages links the drives to those recordings.
Cameras and video
The file records several gaps in video of the shooting. Agents canvassed nearby businesses and reported that exterior cameras at the Sonic, Gold’s Gym, and Walgreens worked but captured no video of the incident. The rear camera at Advance Auto Parts is described in a redacted line. Agents did seize a digital video recorder from a cleaning business at 10710 Kingston Pike. The file does not say what it showed.
One sheriff’s patrolman told the FBI his body camera detached from its magnetic mount when it touched his seatbelt, and that he put it back on upside down. According to the summary, it should have started recording about 10 minutes after he arrived. Another patrolman’s summary says his body camera audio was muted. A man at the scene also told one patrolman that his son had video of the shooting, but the patrolman did not get contact information, according to his account.
Fourteen pages withheld, contents unknown
“The sheet establishes that records were kept from public view. It does not establish what they contain, whether they concern the shooting review, or whether releasing them would change any conclusion already reached.”
The deleted-page sheet lists 14 pages withheld in full, numbered 15, 18, 19, 21, 23, 26, 30, 33, 34, 35, 39, 40, 41 and 42. Every one carries Exemption 5. That exemption covers certain internal agency records that would be privileged in litigation, a category that can include deliberative-process material, attorney-client communications, and attorney work product. Pages 35 and 39 cite Exemption 5 and nothing else. Most of the others also cite privacy exemptions, and a few cite exemptions for confidential sources or investigative techniques.
The sheet establishes that records were kept from public view. It does not establish what they contain, whether they concern the shooting review, or whether releasing them would change any conclusion already reached.
The question the file leaves open
“Both the state and federal prosecutorial decisions were finished in 2023, and the released pages do not identify the outcome of the Bureau’s separate administrative review.”
The prosecutors’ reviews addressed criminal liability. Allen’s office said it looked only at whether to bring charges, not at whether anyone violated FBI policy. That question belongs to the FBI’s Shooting Incident Review Board, which decides whether agents followed bureau policy. The FBI told FOX45 at one point that its internal review remained ongoing while it waited on prosecutors’ decisions. MDBayNews found no public announcement of the board’s conclusion. Both the state and federal prosecutorial decisions were finished in 2023, and the released pages do not identify the outcome of the Bureau’s separate administrative review.
Tennessee and federal prosecutors have cleared the agents of crimes. But the board that judges their compliance with Bureau policy sits inside the same Bureau that investigated the shooting. More than three years on, the public release identifies 14 pages withheld in full, no interview summaries from the agents who were there, and a video record with holes in it. That may all be routine. It is also a lot to ask taxpayers to accept on faith, and the same would be true no matter whose former aide was on the ground in that parking lot.
The e-book
A self-published e-book titled “Betrayed: The True Story of Roy McGrath” went on sale while he was missing, under the name Ryan Cooper. The Banner reported in September 2023, citing newly unsealed federal search warrants, that agents tied the Cooper email address to a Visa card belonging to McGrath. MDBayNews has not verified the book’s claims about Hogan, and they do not appear in the FBI pages.
The fraud case never reached a jury, so the allegations against McGrath were never tested in court.
What to Watch
- Whether the FBI announces what the Shooting Incident Review Board decided
- Whether the withheld pages are challenged through a FOIA appeal or a lawsuit
- Whether the recordings or the 36 flash drives are ever accounted for publicly
Sources: FBI Vault, “Roy McGrath (Final)”, listed Oct. 22, 2026, and the FBI’s explanation of FOIA exemptions; the 37-page release itself, including the FBI opening electronic communication dated April 4, 2023 (89B-KX-3742023, Serial 1), evidence entries (Serials 2, 3 and 4), FD-302 interview and canvass summaries dated April 5 and April 6, 2023 (Serials 5 through 13), the Evidence Response Team report (Serial 14), the FD-597 Receipt for Property, the FD-917b cash counts and the deleted-page information sheet (FOI/PA# 1592067-004); Knox County District Attorney General Charme Allen’s July 28, 2023, release, “No Charges for Agents Involved in Arrest of Roy McGrath,” and Maryland Matters’ report on it; The Baltimore Banner, Tim Prudente, Aug. 23, 2023, on the Knox County files and the U.S. Attorney’s decision, on the FBI’s referral and review board, on the recordings, and Prudente, Justin Fenton and Pamela Wood, Sept. 5, 2023, on the “Ryan Cooper” warrants; WJLA/FOX45 on the FBI’s review; CBS Baltimore on the simultaneous-shots finding and on Hogan’s denial; Maryland Matters on the Oct. 5, 2021, indictments and the March 12, 2023, trial; Fox News and NBC Washington on McGrath’s 11-week tenure and plea.
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