Why wasn’t the rooftop where Thomas Crooks shot at Donald Trump secured? The Secret Service knew it was a risky spot days before the rally. Investigators are now questioning how the gunman got up there despite this knowledge. The Secret Service also blames local police, saying the roof was their responsibility. However, Butler County’s District Attorney insists the Secret Service was in charge of all security. Adding to the chaos, Trump’s usual Secret Service detail was overworked and understaffed, leading to temporary replacements being brought in. This intense scrutiny has sparked debates about whether there was a deeper plot to assassinate Trump.
Days before the incident, the Secret Service recognized the rooftop where the gunman opened fire on former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally as a potential weak point, two people familiar with the agency’s work told NBC News.
The glass research firm owns the building, which is located next to Butler, Pennsylvania’s outdoor Butler Farm Show. The sources claimed that the Secret Service was aware of the dangers involved reports NBC News.
According to a former senior Secret Service agent who was aware of the plot, “someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof.”
Despite these worries, one of the main questions for authorities looking into how a lone attacker was able to shoot at Trump during Saturday’s campaign rally is how the gunman got onto the roof.
According to Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi, the agency collaborated with local law enforcement to ensure event security, with sniper teams stationed on rooftops to spot and neutralize threats. Although the structure the would-be assassin was using was outside the event’s security perimeter and just 148 yards from the stage, no officers were stationed there, putting them in range of a semiautomatic rifle similar to the one the gunman was carrying.
As is customary when securing outdoor gatherings, the Secret Service had declared that rooftop to be under local law enforcement’s control, according to Guglielmi. District Attorney Richard Goldinger of Butler County said that four sniper teams and four “quick response teams” from his office’s Emergency Services Unit were sent to the rally. However, he noted that security outside the site was under the jurisdiction of Secret Service personnel.
“They had meetings in the week prior. The program was run by the Secret Service. They were the ones who designated who did what,” Goldinger said. “In the command hierarchy, they were top, they were No. 1.”
According to Goldinger, the Emergency Services Unit commander informed him that the unit was not in charge of securing the area outside the event. “In my opinion, the Secret Service is in charge of the entire situation. And from there, they’ll draw boundaries,” he stated.
Even if local law enforcement “did drop the ball,” according to the former top Secret Service agent, the agency is still accountable for making sure “that they are following through either beforehand or in the moment.”
“Just because it is outside of the perimeter, it doesn’t take it out of play for a vulnerability, and you’ve got to mitigate it in some fashion,” the source added.
A barrage of gunfire erupted just after Trump began speaking. Reaching for his right ear, which he subsequently claimed had been shot, he collapsed to the ground as Secret Service operatives hurried to cover him. Trump came out with his face and ear covered in blood. Two attendees were hurt, and one attendee died. A few minutes before the shooting started, witnesses who were watching Trump speak from outside the event’s security perimeter remembered identifying the gunman to the authorities. The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot and killed by Secret Service agents shortly after the gunfire began.
The criticism of the Secret Service’s greatest blunder since President Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981 comes from security experts, retired agents, and members of both political parties.
“My question is: How did he get onto that roof undetected?” stated Anthony Cangelosi, a former agent of the Secret Service who served on protective detail for presidential contenders in 2004, among them John Kerry.
When working on campaign events such as this Saturday, the Secret Service first arranges things in advance, erecting a security perimeter and placing teams on the ground and roofs, frequently in collaboration with local law enforcement. Counter-sniper teams are among the rooftop personnel and a counterassault squad is part of the ground deployments.
According to Secret Service spokesman Guglielmi, the organization sent two of its counterassault agents to the scene and had at least six cops from Butler County tactical units make up the remainder of the platoon. Two counter-sniper squads were also dispatched by the Secret Service. Local law enforcement agencies staffed the two additional security units required for the event, according to Guglielmi. The Washington Post was the first to report those details. Cangelosi, the former agent of the Secret Service, stated that investigators would want to look into the Secret Service’s site security plan for the protest. He anticipates that they will find evidence of either one of two things: either the authorities did not create a workable strategy to deter possible shooters from entering the building where Crooks shot, or the officers on the ground did not carry it out.
“I don’t like making any assumptions, but it does look like some mistakes were made, that this was preventable,” said Cangelosi, who is now a lecturer at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.
Cangelosi stated that while it is customary to assign local law enforcement organizations the duty of monitoring beyond the security perimeter of an event, the Secret Service bears the final obligation to guarantee that all potential weaknesses are addressed.
Cangelosi stated that if an officer had been stationed in the building where the gunman fired, it’s likely that he “wouldn’t even attempt what he attempted.”
“You don’t surrender the discretion of what’s supposed to be done to the local police,” he said. “In other words, you guys have the outer perimeter, but you would want to say, ‘We need an officer on that roof.’ Not ‘that’s your responsibility; do what you see fit.’”
While the Secret Service did a good job neutralizing the gunman once gunfire started, Jim Cavanaugh, a retired special agent in charge with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who has worked on Secret Service details, told NBC News that the agency made “a tremendous lapse” in failing to post officers on the building the gunman scaled.
“The only way to stop that is you have a lot of people, you get there first, and you command the high ground,” Cavanaugh said. “This is basic, and the Secret Service has done it for years successfully, so I’m really surprised that they did not have that high ground covered.”
Congress was also asked questions, and its members asked the Secret Service and its parent organization, the Department of Homeland Security, for answers. In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., expressed severe concerns about how a gunman was able to get onto a rooftop within proximity to President Trump’s speech.
Green requested evidence from Mayorkas on the security plan for the event, the attendance screening process, and the resources allotted to Trump’s Secret Service detail. Republican lawmakers will brief Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Monday “to voice their concerns and ask pressing questions,” a committee spokesperson told NBC News.
Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat from Arizona, is another legislator who wrote to Cheatle to inquire about who approved the security plan, whether a proper danger assessment was carried out, whether attendance raised alarms, and whether any procedure violations occurred that would have allowed the attack to occur.
Gallego issued a letter to Cheatle saying, “I call on all those responsible for the planning, approving, and executing of this failed security plan to be held accountable and to testify before Congress immediately.”
Former Secret Service agent Robert McDonald, who oversaw Joe Biden’s protection during his vice presidential term, told NBC News he thinks the assassination attempt will force the agency to reflect and reevaluate its practices.
“The Secret Service is going to need to ask some hard questions of itself here and be prepared to stand up and represent why, what happened,” McDonald said.
Investigators are expected to question when agents saw Crooks as a possible threat, how they responded, and whether they could have stopped him before he shot Trump, according to retired Secret Service agent Cangelosi. He added that snipers for the Secret Service are trained to make snap judgments. However, it’s plausible that the agents held off from shooting Crooks if they had seen him on the roof and weren’t sure if he was carrying a firearm.
“If the sniper can’t tell whether he has a gun, he or she is not going to take the shot,” Cangelosi said. “Because God forbid it’s a child who’s just excited to see a political candidate, right? So you want to make sure that there’s actually a threat.”
Cangelosi speculated that if there had been any doubt, the sniper team might have sent out cops to look into and make sure. However, he pointed out that whereas a gunman with a semiautomatic weapon might fire many shots in a matter of seconds, analyzing a potential threat can take minutes.
Because of this, the best defense, according to Cangelosi, would have been to make plans in advance to keep the shooter off the roof in the first place.
“Who wants to be in that position?” he said of the snipers protecting Trump on Saturday. “You’ve got to make a split-second call. And imagine if you’re wrong.”
Explore exclusive GGI coverage of Donald Trump’s assassination attempt.
One Response
TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN
IT WAS A BADLY RUN FALSE FLAG EVENT DESIGNED TO GARNER THE SYMPATHY VOTE & ANTI IN THE COMING ELECTION
IMHO It was a classic jew ‘divide & conquer show’.
They dominate through lobbying, pressure & dirt and thus control both sides of the USA political spectrum and manipulate it to suit the masters of izrail, the central bankers, in their plan to control all the world’s commercial activity and mankind (THE GOYIM) generally.
The already divided plebs (MAGA REPUBLICANS VS COMMIE DEMOCRATS) will now be charged up with hate for each other and ready for someone to light the fuse for the planned Civil War, but in the meantime it’s over to the media to continue building up the emotion.
Sheldon Adelson (SANDS CASINO – Las Vegas) & now his widow have given DT $100M each of the last two elections & even more is pledged this time, ALL on behalf of izrail. Yes, it really is two sides of the same coin.
https://old.bitchute.com/video/AVkZbQMrZ5iK/