ANALYSIS – PART ONE OF THREE – As soon as the multiple shots rang out from the would-be assassin’s rifle, and a bullet grazed former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, conspiracy theories exploded on the internet. Some claimed the entire assassination attempt was staged by Team Trump, citing the obvious failure of the Secret Service, and the defiant reaction from Trump. Others claimed it was an inside job, again citing the Secret Service incompetence.
Afterwards some claimed, based on an old photo from 2022, that Trump’s ear bandage at the Republican Convention was fake, since he wasn’t wearing at the golf course the day before.
Unlike folks like fellow conservative Tucker Carlson, I initially tend toward blaming incompetence and stupidity, before jumping to conspiracy theories. Two days after the assassination attempt on former Carlson said, “It’s not crazy to think that there was something there; it was an effort to kill Trump, it wasn’t just a lone gunman.”
But Carlson may be right this time. All the silly online nonsense clouds the reality that conspiracies do exist, and that hard questions need to be asked.
Some of the questions are about the Service, others surround the shooter himself – Thomas Matthew Crooks – the 20-year-old loner who missed Trump’s head by a fraction of an inch from 150 yards away using an AR-15 rifle. This, before he was taken out by a head shot purportedly fired by a Secret Service sniper.
Earlier, I wrote about some of the more obvious Secret Service failures at the rally, especially noting that the warehouse Crooks used to fire the deadly shots which killed an innocent bystander should have been secured and that the Service either failed to identify it in its advance survey, or failed to deploy agents or failed to coordinate properly with local law enforcement.
It turns out that the Service had identified the building as a vulnerability, and they claim, tasked local police to secure it. Pennsylvania State Police, it was later reported actually had two SWAT teams inside the warehouse, but nobody near or on top of it.
Later, the State Police said that its officers were in an adjacent building, not the one the shooter was firing from.
The apparently incompetent Director of the Service, Kimberly Cheatle later shockingly claimed that a Counter Sniper team was not located on top of the warehouse because it had a sloped roof. Of course, the sloped roof didn’t affect the shooter in any way. And a Counter Sniper team widely seen photos behind the president’s stage was perched on a – sloped – roof. (RELATED: Secret Service’s Justification For Sniper Positioning At Trump Rally Suggests Incompetence)
Meanwhile, why didn’t the Service simply use surveillance drones? That appears a s a glaring failure.
Cheatle is under fire for being a diversity hire whose primary focus has been to embrace a national policing mandate to push for 30% of the Secret Service’s work force to be female by 2030. Several female agents on the ex-president’s detail were seen immediately after the shooting either fumbling their weapons or unable to fully cover Trump because of their smaller stature.
Cheatle has since been issued a subpoena by the House Oversight Committee to testify on July 22.
Then, there was the fact that a local police officer finally climbed the ladder to the roof Crooks was lying on, only after frantic bystanders yelled and pointed to the roof, but the officer quickly ducked when the gunman pointed his rifle at him.
The cop has since been hailed as a hero, who likely frazzled the shooter enough to make him rush his shots and affect his aim. (RELATED: Investigations And Calls For Calm In Aftermath Of Trump Assassination Attempt)
Meanwhile, I have already asked some important question, such as how did Crooks get his weapon onto the roof? How did he plan the attack in a short time? How did he know that roof would be unsecured and that his access would escape observation?
What was his motivation? And most importantly, did he act alone?
Despite reports that Crooks was a registered Republican, and his family had Trump signs in their yard, two neighbors dismissed the attention drawn to his political affiliation, saying the family appeared to never have campaign signs of any stripe in their Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, yard. One local GOP official who routinely knocked on voter doors said she would have known if Crooks was a registered Republican.
TO BE CONTINUED…
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
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Additional important questions need to address human factors regarding the USSS personnel. What: training and experience did the individual USSS agents have? What other factors such as fatigue or other personal factors may have impacted their performance? These human factors factors are, for example, essential elements in aircraft, railroad and shipping mishaps and are definitely applicable in this instance.