US investigators insisted on Friday they will not bow to outside pressure as they search for bodies and the remaining black box after the fatal Washington air collision, as President Donald Trump doubled down on political point scoring.
Twenty six bodies remain lost in the icy Potomac river where a regional passenger jet and a military Black Hawk helicopter fell after colliding in a fireball on Wednesday night.
Rescuers have scoured the murky waters day and night, and have now recovered 41 bodies.
They were also looking for the helicopter's black box after retrieving the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier airliner operated by an American Airlines subsidiary.
The gruesome physical search is running parallel with a complex technical analysis of what went wrong.
The airliner was coming in to land at Reagan National Airport -- just a few miles from the White House -- when it collided with an Army helicopter on a training mission.
National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) member Todd Inman said a preliminary report should be compiled in 30 days but "the overall investigation will probably take a year."
"It has to be accurate," he told CNN. "We're not going to put something out quick just so we can end some speculation."
Inman's caution was in pointed contrast to Trump's loud and politicized commentary ever since the first moments after the plane -- on a routine flight from Wichita, Kansas, with 64 people aboard -- slammed into the Black Hawk, carrying three.
Trump was at it again Friday, posting on his Truth Social platform: "The Blackhawk helicopter was flying too high, by a lot. It was far above the 200 foot limit. That's not really too complicated to understand, is it???"
This followed a torrent of posts and a press conference on Thursday where the Republican pinned the blame for the crash on his Democratic predecessors Joe Biden and Barack Obama, claiming without evidence they had hired the wrong people due to anti-racism and other non-discrimination initiatives known as DEI.
"They actually came out with a directive: 'too white.' And we want the people that are competent," Trump said.
Online discussions buzzed with conspiracy theories fed by Trump's anti-DEI crusade.
Aviation experts, meanwhile, homed in on whether the helicopter crew were able to see through military night-vision goggles and whether the Reagan National control tower was understaffed.
According to a New York Times report, one controller, rather than the usual two, was handling both plane and helicopter traffic at the time.
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