Now that the dust has settled a little on the attempt to murder Donald Trump, it is time to look into whether the shooting, which left one dead and two seriously injured as well as a piece of Trump’s ear on the ground, was part of something bigger. A conspiracy perhaps?
There is currently a large, vociferous body of opinion that there was a conspiracy. On the Left it’s a fake attempt, a staged shooting designed to create sympathy for Trump, who, just like that, snipped off the top of his ear and covered himself in ketchup with a sleight of hand that would have been the envy of even a great magician like Tommy Cooper.
Common sense and a degree of native intelligence suggests that this theory should be dismissed. I mean, Trump might not be an intellectual giant, but he is no suicidal fool. And surely, only a suicidal fool would trust an untrained 20-year-old to shoot a bit of your ear off with a relatively inaccurate AR15 semi-automatic with lousy scopes? Even a highly trained special forces sniper would hesitate to take that shot.
I suppose that, before dismissing this theory we need to agree that the shooting has, predictably, gained sympathy for Trump. There is no denying that the Trump camp stood to gain from the appearance of an assassination attempt on the former president. But apart from that there is precisely nothing to support this foolish theory.
There are a number of facts about the shooting that are hard to explain, and which may be used to give credence to a conspiracy. The inevitable speculation and whirlwind of rumour and counter rumour is made worse by the relative silence and evasiveness of the US Government and its Secret Service, the organisation responsible for guarding Trump.
The US Secret Service (USSS) has a US$3.2 billion budget and is usually regarded as being the best of its kind. Its modus operandi is usually overkill, erring far on the side of caution. Clearly, there was an almost catastrophic security failure at the rally at Butler, Pennsylvania on 13 July that, at the moment, can only plausibly be explained by gross negligence or by collusion in a conspiracy.
And yet so far there has not been a genuine apology let alone a sacking. The USSS is run by Kimberly Cheatle, formerly a senior director of global security at PepsiCo, where she was responsible for directing and implementing security protocols for the company's facilities in North America, a role involving developing risk management assessment and risk mitigation.
She was appointed, by President Joe Biden, Director of the USSS in 2022. On taking office she stated that one of her priorities was to "attract diverse candidates and give opportunities to everybody in the workforce, particularly women” and indicated her aim to have 30% women in the agency by 2030. On learning of the shooting, Cheatle acknowledged the USSS’s failure as "unacceptable" but said that she would not resign from her position.
The USSS’s role is to protect the life of the person it is guarding. While it also uses local police forces, it has primary responsibility and overall control. The USSS’s attempts to lay the blame onto the Butler County police are, therefore, shameful and unpersuasive. The local police have countered saying that these allegations are untrue, pointing out that at all times they were under the USSS’s control.
Standard practice – and the USSS has plenty of practice – is for USSS agents to do a preliminary inspection and risk assessment of the site they are to guard. You do not need to be a security expert to understand that a building roof about 150 yards away from the platform from where Trump was about to speak, and with a clear line of sight to the platform, posed a primary risk and should, therefore, have been manned by USSS snipers, or at the very least closely watched by strategically located USSS snipers and also guarded on the ground. It should, obviously, have been impossible for anybody to get onto that roof, let alone an armed man.
There are reports that it was intended to place an USSS team on the roof, but they didn’t show up. Kimberly Cheatle has sought to explain away the fact that there were no USS people on the roof by suggesting that, as it had a slight slope, it might have been too dangerous! The roofs the other sniper teams were on, had as great or greater slopes.
And all this after Trump’s security had been ‘ramped up’ because of a reported threat to him by Iran!
Separate reports indicate that while there were no USSS snipers on the roof used by the gunman, there were three government snipers in the building whose roof he used. They had seen him through the windows, half an hour before the shooting, when he peered up at the roof. Fair enough, he could have been a roof fancier, but they sat, watched and did nothing when he returned with a laser rangefinder to calculate the distance between the building and Trump's head. And then they watched him return a third time with a bulky backpack and climb the roof. And each time they did nothing, allegedly because that is what they had been told to do, and then they let him go ahead and shoot the Republican presidential candidate.
Trump’s speaking venue was entered through airport-style security, complete with X-ray machines. There are seemingly reliable reports of the shooter being allowed to pass security about three hours before the shooting with a rifle range finder. The USSS is said to have issued a warning to keep an eye on him. The details are confused but it seems that later, local police saw him with the rangefinder and gave chase but lost him in the crowd. They then circulated a description of the man. It is likely, therefore, that the USSS was aware of a potential threat for some time before the shooting.
They obviously wasted this time. Nothing was done to secure potential shooting positions and Trump was, inexplicably, allowed to take the stage. And it gets even worse. Rally goers saw an armed man climbing onto the roof from a mere 150 yards or so from Trump. There are video recordings of people shouting for the police to do something and urging them to “shoot him.”
A local policeman was hoisted up to the roof and saw the shooter, who turned his weapon on him. Naturally he dropped out of site, but it beggars belief that this was not reported to central command – who still allowed Trump to stay on stage.
There has been talk of a communications failure. If that is what happened it does not get the USSS off the hook, as communications and line of command should have been tested exhaustively before the event. And where were the drones, the helicopters, the satellites and spotters? Given the ferocity of the MSM’s hate campaign against Trump, which in my view amounts to incitement, together with the febrile atmosphere across the United States, there should have been no complacency about a potential threat. This was not some worthy but dull mayor speaking at a parish fund raising event.
It is almost certain that USSS snipers on other roofs saw the would-be assassin, as he had a clear line of sight to Trump. There has been talk of the chain of command in such circumstances, and whether or not the snipers had authority to open fire on their own initiative. Certainly, there would have been standing orders, but most commentators think that an USSS sniper, if he is reasonably sure that there is a threat, has the authority to shoot without higher authority. Given the circumstances, it is hard to see how a sniper could think that there was no reasonable threat. And how did they allow the shooter to loose off eight rounds before shooting him dead?
It is being speculated that on this occasion the snipers’ discretion to open fire without prior permission was withdrawn and that permission was delayed. We have no way of knowing if this is true yet, but if it is, oil will be poured on an already smouldering fire. There are rumours that a sniper had the shooter in his sights for three minutes but was told to stand down. However, this is likely to be just wild rumour, as the likelihood of such information being leaked from the SS is slim indeed.
There has been criticism of the USSS team guarding Trump near the podium, especially of the women involved. In my view though, the team close to Trump acted with impressive speed and courage in getting him off the stage. I would not, therefore, level any criticism at the USSS officers, male or female, who huddled around Trump to protect him, risking their own lives as far as they knew. It does seem odd, however, that five-foot two female bodyguards were used to protect the six-foot two former president.
The USSS is not an intelligence agency. It relies on information about the level of risk likely to be encountered from the FBI, which has a record of anti-Trump actions. It will be of great interest to see which Federal Agency conducts the inquiry into the subject events. I guess many eyebrows will be raised if it is the FBI, as it seems. The Bureau has said almost nothing except that they have no evidence of motive. They did, however, find a remote detonator on the shooter and explosives in his car and home. It is being said that the FBI is unable to crack his mobile phone password, and almost nothing has been released about the shooter’s social media, thus raising yet more speculation about motives, the FBI’s and the shooters.
So, was the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, part of a conspiracy to shoot Trump dead or was he just a lone nutter wanting to make a name for himself by ridding America of what the Left and MSM have been saying for years is a monster, worse than Hitler and Stalin and an agent of the Russians, intent on destroying the US and ending its democracy?
I have no doubt that the murky and sinister individuals behind the Biden and Obama gangs, and many more on the Left, would love to see Trump dead. They must be terrified at him getting into the White House and exposing the evidence of their corruption and complicity in the war in Ukraine, and of him ending the gravy train by bringing that hideous war to an end, as he says he will.
All that said however, despite all the open questions and justifiable suspicions, I just can’t get around the feeling that nobody with even a semblance of a functioning brain would hire a gormless-looking spotty 20-year-old, with no training as a sniper and who was rejected by his school shooting team as he was too bad a shot, to shoot their arch-enemy Trump.
Unless, perhaps, they want to start a civil war in the United States so as to declare a state of emergency and cancel the elections in November?
There is also speculation that Crooks was just an expendable decoy, and that there was a second, professional sniper located on a water tower, but there is no evidence of anyone seeing this second sniper, and so far as I understand it, the trajectory of the shots does not fit this theory.
So no, while keeping an open mind on the matter, at present it looks like this was a case of gross incompetence. Maybe the upper echelons of the USSS might have tried to make things more difficult for Trump, possibly introducing restrictions on opening fire or other measures designed to make an assassination attempt more likely to succeed, but I doubt it, and even if they have, we are most unlikely to ever be told about it.
Maybe I have missed something, or maybe I am irredeemably naive, but the only conspiracy I can identify is that of the Left and the MSM’s relentless campaign to demonise Trump, to the extent that some Americans think it justified to have him murdered and to express regret that the attempt on his life failed.
In summary, unless further facts emerge, my preliminary conclusion is that the proximate cause of a lone gunman being able to get himself into a position to shoot Donald Trump was monumental incompetence on the part of the USSS, possibly exacerbated by the fact that the it has a very high staff turnover rate and that replacement by ‘diversity hires’ appointed on the basis of their sex, race or sexual orientation rather than ability has resulted in a dilution of competence, as it almost always does.
Addendum by Richard Scott
Amid frenzied speculation that the current Director of the United States Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, is looking to retire with a large pension and spend more time with her family, the following document concerning the recruitment of her successor has been leaked by an impeccably placed source:
Vacancy – Director US Secret Service
FSB recruitment is delighted to invite applications for the expected vacancy of Director of the US Secret Service. As an initial filter, please complete the following quiz to determine suitability:
Q1. Scenario: You live in a country where accurate long-range firearms are routinely held by members of the public. The best position to engage a target is normally one at height, particularly one where you can lie in the prone position to provide stability when firing. You have been asked to provide security for a prominent politician addressing a large crowd in which there are tall buildings in the vicinity. Which measures would you consider to be appropriate?
a. Position Secret Service agents on the high building
b. Keep the high building under constant surveillance (consider the use of drones or elevated platforms)
c. Decide that it is far too risky to put people on roofs – it has never been done before and heck, what’s the problem, he will miss from there anyway.
Q2. The person you are protecting is six foot two. What is the average height requirement for Secret Service agents who are assigned to close protection of the individual. Should it be:
a. 6 feet 2 inches
b. More than 6 feet 2 inches
c. 5 feet 2 inches
(Diversity may be considered a major factor)
Q3. Your agents may need to holster their weapons in case of an emergency so as to be able to protect the subject. Would you:
a. Encourage agents to practise holstering their weapons during training
b. Let your agents attempt to master it in the middle of an emergency while humming along to the theme tune of the Benny Hill show.
Q4. Your agents spot a sniper on one of those roof buildings clearly pointing at the subject you are supposed to be protecting. Do you:
a. Give the order to immediately engage the shooter and nullify the threat to the protected person
b. Wait until the sniper has released a minimum of five shots before deciding it is suitable to engage.
Q5. Are you a paid-up member of
a. the Republican party or
b. the Democrat party.
Q6. If your Secret Service agents fail and a prominent politician, who may be the next President of the United States, is almost killed, should you:
a. Accept full responsibility and resign
b. Attempt to claim that the risk assessment for police officers being on top of the roof was far too great to countenance and that the health and safety of the Secret Service agents was paramount in this situation.
Q7. Do you have a personal relationship with the current First Lady?
a. Yes
b. No.
Q8. Your team identified a suspect person who is later seen in the target area with a range finder, a rucksack and a ladder. Does this make you suspect:
a. A sighting of a particularly rare bird
b. Assume it is a press photographer merely trying to get the best photograph
c. Consider it may be a sniper aiming to try to assassinate the former President.
Q9. If it were a sniper on a high roof and who successfully fired off some rounds before being engaged by your team, how would your agents manage to be safe on the roof afterwards given it was so dangerous and how would the body be recovered?
Please submit your answers to FSB Recruitment at Whydidtrumpmovehishead.com