Tag: secret service

Discovery of Drone Surveillance by Trump’s Shooter Reveals Additional Security Lapses

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the shooter who tried to kill Donald Trump at the rally in Pennsylvania, managed to fly a drone for aerial footage of the site, a few hours before the assassination attempt, the WSJ reports, citing law-enforcement officials familiar with the matter.

Crooks had flown the drone on a programmed flight path several times earlier in the day on July 13, to scour the Butler Farm Show grounds ahead of the event, the officials said. The discovery has raised more serious concerns over the reliability of the security services, the outlet notes.

What else has been revealed?

The use of the drone was just one way in which authorities said Crooks had planned his attack.

The perpetrator came to Trump’s rally with a pair of homemade bombs designed for detonation with remote control.

The authorities also found primitive explosives and a vest with three 30-round magazines in Crooks’ car. This suggests that he probably “wanted to cause greater carnage”, according to the article.

Crooks had also ordered several packages labeled “hazardous materials” to be shipped to his home in the past month. He also conducted online searches for Trump rally dates, and information on Biden and the Democratic National Convention.

On Saturday, a 20-year-old man tried to assassinate Trump at a campaign rally in the state of Pennsylvania, but the bullet from the gunman’s AR assault rifle grazed Trump’s right ear. US Secret Service agents killed the gunman moments after he was able to fire several rounds toward the stage, killing one spectator and critically injuring two others.

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Whistleblowers Reveal What Secret Service Said During Briefings Before Trump Assassination Attempt

The United States Secret Service acknowledged it had “limited resources” during briefings held before the July 13 Trump rally in Pennsylvania at which an attempted assassination occurred, according to whistleblower disclosures to the House Judiciary Committee. 

The admitted lack of necessary resources, according to the whistleblowers, was due to the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., that took place before the rally from July 9 through July 11.

“Whistleblowers have disclosed to the Committee that the USSS led two briefings regarding the July 13 campaign rally on July 8, 2024, with the Western Pennsylvania Fusion Center (WPFC) and other stakeholders, to discuss the upcoming, unrelated visits by President Trump and First Lady Dr. Jill Biden,” a July 18 Judiciary Committee letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray revealed. 

“The USSS Special Agent in Charge Tim Burke reportedly told law enforcement partners that the USSS had limited resources that week because the agency was covering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington, D.C.,” the letter continued. “FBI personnel were present at those briefings.”

“While the Committee recognizes that the FBI is one of many agencies represented in the WPFC, it is the lead federal investigative arm and a key source of intelligence on potential threats for special events in its area of responsibility,” the Judiciary Committee emphasized.

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Nobody Can Be This Dumb. Not Even DEI Hires are This Dumb. Something Smells Rotten at The Secret Service

I’ve always known many government employees are dumb as a box of rocks. They couldn’t last a week in the private sector. That’s why they look for the safety of government jobs- where you can be completely 100% incompetent for 20+ years and keep your job.

Exhibit A is Kamala Harris. She is even dumber than her boss Joe Biden. But he has dementia. What’s her excuse? She is just plain dumb as a doorknob.

Kamala has gotten a government paycheck her entire life based on being a woman, and black, and having affairs with powerful men. And it worked- she rose to Vice President of the United States despite being completely incompetent. Now she’s literally a heartbeat away from the Presidency.

Kamala is the “Great Replacement Theory” for Joe Biden.

But she is far from alone. In this administration we find many DEI hires who are completely incompetent, mixed with arrogance and entitlement. See Mayor Pete, Rachel Levine and Sam Britton. I’m sure there are thousands more hidden in government offices and cubicles.

But now we get to a special case: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

Is she just another incompetent government DEI hire? Well in a word…YES. But it’s more than that. Because no one is this dumb. Not even Kamala is as dumb and clueless as Cheatle appears to be.

When it’s this obvious, it’s a scam.

Look at the storyline of the Trump almost-assassination. It’s just impossible anyone, or even any government employee, or even any government agency, could be this stupid, careless, reckless and incompetent.

The assassin walked around for over an hour as a “person of interest.” And no one did anything.

He had a golf range finder in his hand. And no one did anything.

He was spotted with a rifle and a backpack. But still, no one did anything.

He was carrying a ladder and climbing onto a roof. And no one did anything.

The roof he used to try to murder President Trump had a perfect, clear sightline to the target. The Secret Service never thought to secure that roof.

Trump rally attendees were screaming at police and pointing to the assassin on the roof- and still, no one did anything.

While the assassin was climbing onto the roof and sitting on the roof for 30 minutes, a sniper team was inside the building, right under the assassin.

A Secret Service sniper on a roof next to President Trump was looking right at “the threat” in his gun scope, but waited until the assassin fired at President Trump’s head to fire upon the assassin. Wouldn’t you say that’s a little too late?

The Secret Service now admits they were aware of an assassination threat for 10 minutes before Trump took the stage. So why did they allow him to take the stage?

The Secret Service Director Cheatle actually gave the worst excuse for not securing that roof since “the dog ate my homework”- she actually said out loud that the roof was sloped, so she didn’t want to put Secret Service agents in danger.

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Thomas Matthew Crooks hid rifle in advance of Trump rally sniper attack, Secret Service source says

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old would-be assassin who opened fire on former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign rally Saturday, hid the weapon in advance, according to a Secret Service source.

It was not immediately clear where he hid it, however.

By the time agents spotted him on the roof, he was already holding it.

“We went from golf range finder to AR-15, and now we have to fill in the gap,” the source told Fox News.

When authorities first observed Crooks carrying a golf range finder Saturday, he was perceived as a “person of interest” but not a “threat,” authorities said Thursday.

Range finders were not banned from rally events at the time, but authorities are expected to review the list of items that are not allowed.

He did not become an official threat until he was seen with a weapon.

There were four counter-sniper teams stationed around the rally, according to the Secret Service – two from the agency and two provided by local law enforcement.

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Secret Service spotted Thomas Crooks at Trump rally THREE HOURS before shooting

Donald Trump‘s would-be assassin Thomas Matthews Crook was at the former president’s rally three hours before shooting him and sparked the suspicions of the Secret Service because he was carrying a rangefinder used by hunters to take long shots.

The 20-year-old gunman told his boss that he needed the day off from work on Saturday and gave his colleagues a final chilling message: That he would be back on Sunday.

At around 3pm on Saturday, Crooks was spotted at the security screening area and tried to pass through the magnetometers with the rangefinder that’s used by shooters to measure distance, CNN reported.

The device which looks like a small pair of binoculars would not have prevented him getting into the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but did put him on law enforcement’s radar. 

Secret service officers watched him but lost track of Crooks when he left the secure area.

He tis then believed to have collected his rifle from his car, which also contained a bulletproof vest and two explosive devices.

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Trump Assassination: Security Left the Gates Wide Open, Anyone & Anything Could have Gotten In

Jim Hulings is the Butler County GOP Chair. He had only recently been elected to the volunteer position when, on Saturday, he found himself in the VIP section of the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, as shots rang out during the nation’s most recent presidential assassination.

“It was the worst moment of my life, to think that President Trump had come here, to Butler, and was being killed in front of us. I just couldn’t believe it.

And that was then matched by the greatest moment possible when Trump emerged, bloody but triumphant, and told us to fight! It was the greatest feeling to see that in person, and thank God they didn’t kill our President,” Hulings said.

“We did not run, they had to tell us to leave,” he added.

“When they opened up (security) at 1:00PM, they let the General Admission people go. We had to go through the checkpoint, we had to go through the magnetometers, and we had to turn over things that weren’t on the list. Umbrellas, chairs. The General Admission… I don’t think there was any security there… We were going through one at a time, they went down 30-40 at a time… I’m thinking… that doesn’t seem very secure to me because they didn’t check those people.”

Hulings said he felt the security at the event was “bizarre” because it closely searched and inspected some in the crowd, but let others in with no security whatsoever.

Hulings said he could not see the normal detachments of snipers throughout the rally.

“The security at the event, however, was letting people into the event without any screening and I knew that that was a major security lapse. Someone could have gotten a gun into the event very easily.”

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Biden’s Team Deliberately Kneecapped Trump’s Security To Allow An Assassination Attempt

Nobody wants to hear this because of the implications, but oh well, because it needs to be said: Joe Biden’s security regime deliberately and with malice and forethought created the conditions that led to an attempted assassin shooting Donald Trump in the head. It is by the grace of God that he lived and our nation is not currently in the midst of a violent civil war.

They deliberately starved Trump’s security team of the resources it needed. And they did it repeatedly, over many weeks and months.

With Trump’s security detail understaffed, under-resourced, and stretched to its limits, Biden’s security regime reportedly diverted even more resources to a hastily planned Jill Biden event that just happened to be in the area.

Biden’s security regime then ordered the most obvious assassination perch in the entire area to remain outside the main security perimeter.

Furthermore, Biden’s Secret Service director ordered law enforcement and counter-snipers OFF the roof the assassin used.

If that weren’t enough, Biden’s security regime also refused to block the line of sight from the assassin’s perch to Trump’s location. When law enforcement radioed in a suspicious person using a laser range finder at the building and even took photos of him, nothing was done to detain the assassin.

The assassin was so obviously a threat that bystanders at the event begged law enforcement to stop him, but nothing happened. And even as snipers on the roof near Trump saw a gunman on the other roof, Biden’s security regime refused to have agents immediately surround Trump or remove him from the stage to protect him from being shot.

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Bongino: There Was Supposed to be Someone on the Roof But They “Didn’t Show Up”

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino says an “unimpeachable source” told him there was supposed to be someone on the roof from where gunman Thomas Crooks shot at Trump but that they “didn’t show up.”

Bongino made the comments during an appearance on a podcast with Tucker Carlson at the RNC.

“So I was just showing Tucker some material from an unimpeachable source let’s just say on the matter,” said Bongino.

“That post, according to my source, that roof was supposed to be a police post, there was supposed to be someone there,” he added.

“They’re now making up excuses saying the pitch or the roof, my source says to me no one knows why the source didn’t show up, so that’s a nonsense story they’re putting out in the media,” Bongino asserted.

The former NYPD officer also claimed that Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle has been told to “keep your mouth shut” by the Biden administration and the DHS if she wants to keep her job.

Bongino said if site post logs and police instructions were made public, it would unravel what really happened.

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CNN Report Claims Secret Service Ramped Up Security Based on Intel of Iran Plot Against Trump

CNN claimed on Tuesday that the US Secret Service ramped up security around Donald Trump in recent weeks based on intelligence from a single “human source” that Iran was plotting to assassinate the former president, accusations Tehran rejected as “unsubstantiated and malicious.”

The report offered no evidence for the claim and only cited unnamed people “briefed on the matter.” They said there was no indication that Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old who tried to assassinate Trump over the weekend, had any connection to the alleged plot.

The idea that the Secret Service increased security around Trump has been contested since Crooks was able to get off multiple shots from a nearby rooftop that wasn’t secured.

The report connected the alleged Iranian plot to Trump ordering the assassination of Gen. Qasem Soleimani, who headed Iran’s Quds Force, a branch of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

In response to the report, Iran’s mission to the UN said, “These accusations are unsubstantiated and malicious. From the perspective of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Trump is a criminal who must be prosecuted and punished in a court of law for ordering the assassination of General Soleimani. Iran has chosen the legal path to bring him to justice.”

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Secret Service Director: We Didn’t Put Snipers On The Roof Because It Was Kind Of Sloped

The Secret Service director said the security agency did not station snipers on top of the Pennsylvania roof from which a gunman shot former President Donald Trump last weekend because it was “sloped.”

Kimberly Cheatle, the Secret Service chief refusing calls to step down after Trump was shot in the head, told ABC News that federal officials opted to forgo snipers on the rooftop that was identified as a security threat days before the event.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she said. “And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”

Three counter-snipers were positioned in the building underneath the roof from which Saturday’s gunman fired multiple shots killing one rallygoer and injuring three others, including Trump. The event’s security “command center” was even notified of the shooter moments before the would-be assassin began firing into the crowd.

“The shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion,” Cheatle told ABC. “Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.”

Cheatle told the network, “The buck stops with me,” but she continued to resist calls to resign her post as head of the federal security agency.

Republican Colorado Congresswoman Lauren Boebert introduced legislation Monday to strip the Secret Service director of her salary and expense reimbursements after last weekend’s failed assassination attempt of the GOP presidential nominee.

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