Throughout his legal journey, Baldwin has continued to deny any criminality, telling ABC News in 2021, “The trigger wasn’t pulled. I didn’t pull the trigger.”
However, an August 2023 forensic report commissioned by the prosecution, and viewed by The New York Times, determined Baldwin must have pulled the trigger in order for the weapon to go off.
“Although Alec Baldwin repeatedly denies pulling the trigger,” Forensics expert Lucien C. Haag wrote in the report, per the Times, “given the tests, findings and observations reported here, the trigger had to be pulled or depressed sufficiently to release the fully cocked or retracted hammer of the evidence revolver.”
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