The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released its interim report on the July 13 assassination attempt against President Donald Trump in Butler, PA. While it does contain some new information, the report is an obvious continuation of the “mistakes were made” narrative that they’re trying to weave about this.
They’re trying to blame the whole thing on Secret Service incompetence, while pointedly not looking too closely at the Biden White House or any of the intelligence agencies under its control.
One new thing we learned from the report was that the Secret Service was alerted to a “credible” assassination threat against President Trump on July 9th, four days before he was actually shot. The Secret Service did nothing in response to that threat.
The Secret Service Lead Advance Agent was made aware of the “credible intelligence” threat on that day. However, in the planning document that she prepared for the Butler rally, she wrote that there was “no adverse intelligence.” She did assign a Secret Service counter-sniper team to the rally, but none of the agents who were there that day were informed there was a threat.
A different woman assigned to protect President Trump said she was informed of the threat by a higher-ranking official. However, that unnamed official didn’t give her any specifics on it.
Out of all the Secret Service personnel that the committee interviewed, only two of them were aware that there was a credible threat against President Trump before July 13th. Only one of those agents knew any specifics of what was in the classified information underlying the threat.
And there it is again. “Classified information.”
If Thomas Crooks was a 20-year-old gunman who acted alone, what possible reason is there for anything related to this assassination attempt to be classified? The only reason that most people can imagine is that the trail of breadcrumbs is eventually going to lead straight back to the Biden White House.
So, what was the threat? The Senators say they were never able to find out. They couldn’t get an answer from anyone they interviewed. The Secret Service didn’t turn over any documents that described the threat, even though the Senate committee subpoenaed everything.
Local law enforcement in Pennsylvania is not off the hook when it comes to responsibility, either. They informed the Secret Service that the roof of the AGR building was wide open and undefended. The Secret Service didn’t station anyone on that roof, as we know. But neither did any of the local law enforcement.
How many cops were running around at the scene after Crooks shot President Trump in the ear? There were a lot. Someone with the State Troopers or Butler County SWAT could have spared an officer and said, “Get someone up on that roof.”
Nobody did that.
The Secret Service knew that Crooks was on the roof for at least two minutes before he started shooting. Despite being told this, they didn’t remove President Trump from the stage.
“Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, a local officer sent out a radio alert that the individual on the AGR roof was armed, but that was not relayed to key USSS personnel that the Committee spoke with,” the report states.
When a Secret Service counter-sniper saw dozens of local police running toward the AGR building—with their guns drawn—they still didn’t get Trump off the stage. The counter-sniper told the committee that it “did not cross my mind” to tell his fellow agents to get Trump to safety when he saw all those cops running in the same direction with their guns out.
The committee examined more than 2,800 pages of Secret Service documents and interviewed several dozen agents and local law enforcement officers. It took them two and a half months to do all this and put out an interim report. We still know next to nothing that we didn’t already know within the first week after President Trump was shot.
There is still some hope that we’ll get some answers, though. A federal grand jury wouldn’t have been empaneled in Pennsylvania if the US Attorney wasn’t looking to charge someone with a crime related to the shooting. The grand jury subpoenaed Thomas Crooks’s college records, so something is hopefully coming soon.
