Just two days after Joe Biden announced he is dropping out of the presidential race, and Vice President Kamala Harris became the heir apparent to that nomination, former director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned Tuesday after a stunning performance on Monday in front of the House Oversight Committee in which she dodged virtually every question about the failures of her agency to protect former President Donald Trump from an assassination attempt.
She had no “specific” timeline, she said, and everything else was dumped in the categories of an ongoing 60-day investigation and the fact that it had only been nine days since the shooting. With Rep. Nancy Mace’s move to have an impeachment vote within 48 hours, Cheatle avoided that by resigning.
But the mystery surrounding the attempted assassination grows by the hour.
It’s got to either be incompetence and negligence, or else a plot to take out Trump after all else has failed to do so. Is there a third option? Make up your own mind. It’s still too early to know for sure what happened, but certain things have come into focus.
The Secret Service had plenty of warning and opportunity to take the shooter out, or at the very least, to tell Trump not to go on stage until they neutralized or thoroughly investigated the suspect, who they had been aware of for at least an hour.
By now you’ve certainly seen some of the videos and the issues raised. How was Thomas Crooks allowed to fire off a shot that came a millimeter or two away from blowing off the head of the former president and nominee of the GOP for the 2024 election? Reportedly the Secret Service, local police and the public were all aware of him at least an hour before the shooting and were aware that he was on the roof of a nearby building with a perfect, unobstructed line of fire toward Trump 10-20 minutes in advance.
Also troubling is the question raised in a letter sent by Sen. Josh Hawley to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas saying that “Whistleblowers tell me that MOST of Trump’s security detail working the event last Saturday were not even Secret Service. DHS assigned unprepared and inexperienced personnel.”
“According to Fox News, the Secret Service was aware of a threat about 10 minutes before Trump walked on stage and still let him proceed. Additionally, the shooter was identified over an hour before the shooting as suspicious because he was seen with a rangefinder and a backpack. This identification occurred more than an hour before the actual shooting.”
The New York Times reported that just two minutes before the attempted assassination, “the Secret Service team looks in the direction of the gunman through binoculars and a sniper scope. The rally attendee taking the video is heard saying, ‘Uh-oh, something’s going on.’”
There is also this strange video taken from behind the stage where Trump was speaking, and it appears to show someone who was part of the security team walking while bent over, urging people to move away, just seconds before the shots rang out, at which time he quickly drops to the ground, as if he was expecting something to happen at that moment.
Also, the parents of Crooks had called authorities that day concerned about their son’s whereabouts and what he was up to.
The Secret Service has changed its story on several key points, and their failures, both prior to this incident and certainly in this case, have been well documented. Why wasn’t someone on the roof where the potential presidential assassin lay in wait? Because of the “slope” on the roof he was on and they didn’t want any Secret Service people to fall off if they successfully got to the roof, as Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle suggested in her ABC interview? At Monday’s hearing, she attempted to clarify, saying she “should have been more clear” and that they “prefer to have a more sterile rooftop.” That same day, 70-year-old Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida, tweeted video of himself walking the rooftop where the shots were fired from demonstrating that the slope should never have been cited as a reason for failing to have security there at the time of the rally.
Another story that came from Secret Service and FBI officials that turned out to be false was the one about Crooks supposedly having posted a message on a gaming site, saying “July 13 will be my premiere,” which turned out to be false.
Also, Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.), the first former Green Beret to win a seat in Congress, said Thursday night on Jesse Waters’ show on Fox News that he had learned in a recent briefing that Thomas Crooks, the alleged assailant, had at least three foreign encrypted accounts. The three countries reportedly are Germany, Belgium and New Zealand.
We were told the night of the attack that it appeared the apparent shooter was acting alone, while at the same time saying they couldn’t get into his phone because it was password protected.
It is a shame to have to say it, but the investigation of the Secret Service failure to protect Trump should not be handled by the FBI, the Justice Department or the Department of Homeland Security, which the Secret Service is part of, since they have all been part of the Biden administration’s efforts to block Trump’s path back to the White House, one way or another.
They certainly should have had it together enough to not let Trump get up on the platform to make his speech until the issue of the suspect was resolved.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., is one of the most dogged and fearless senators when it comes to exposing lies and corruption within the Biden administration, such as on money laundering related to China. He has produced a 13-page document of preliminary findings on the attempted assassination which adds considerable weight to the investigation.
The major findings in his report were that the “Secret Service did not attend a security briefing provided to local special weapons and tactics (SWAT) and sniper teams the morning of July 13, 2024;” that “Local law enforcement notified command about Crooks prior to the shooting and received confirmation that Secret Service was aware of the notification;” and that “Secret Service was initially not going to send snipers to the rally, according to local law enforcement.”
Again, the only real question is whether this was negligence and incompetence, or something much more sinister: a plan to take out the former president. We know “they” unsuccessfully tried taking him out through impeachments, the RussiaGate hoax, a phony, unconstitutional January 6 committee, and no less than five cases of lawfare orchestrated by the White House, whether Joe Biden was cognizant of it or not. They also tried using the 14th Amendment, arguing that Trump was guilty of insurrection, but the Supreme Court overruled that in a rare unanimous decision.
In every case, there were clear connections to the Biden White House. Most of the cases have or are in the process of falling apart from prosecutorial misconduct, the use of inadmissible evidence (especially since the Supreme Court decision in the presidential immunity case), conflicts of interest, the mishandling of evidence, and the unconstitutional appointment of Jack Smith as special prosecutor in the classified documents case, which was thrown out last week by a courageous Judge Aileen Cannon in Florida.
The views expressed in CCNS member articles are not necessarily the views or positions of the entire CCNS. They are the views of the authors, who are members of the CCNS.
