Butler Update (Trump Assassination Attempt)

Three very critical reports of great interest:

(1) (The Hill)

Details of Trump shooting security breakdown start to emerge 

By Ellen Mitchell - 07/17/24 6:00 AM

Amid swirling questions about how the Secret Service allowed a gunman with an AR-style rifle to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Trump at a rally Saturday, some answers are starting to emerge. 

The security gap appears to stem from how and what the agency communicated with local law enforcement before and during the event, and the apparent decision not to place security personnel on the building the gunman climbed up and shot from.

The gunman — Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa. — was killed by Secret Service agents, but not before he fired multiple shots toward the stage from a rooftop just outside the rally venue, about 152 yards from the GOP presidential nominee. The shooter grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet, killed one attendee and injured two others. 

Members of the Secret Service’s countersniper team and counterassault team were at the rally and placed on rooftops immediately in the vicinity of the stage, but Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News that no agent had been placed on the building the shooter climbed because ithad a “sloped roof.” 

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point, and so there’s a safety factor that would be considered there, that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,” she said in an interview aired Tuesday. “So, you know, the decision was made to secure the building from inside.”

Secret Service faces fresh scrutiny over Trump assassination attempt

That reasoning has gotten heavy blowback given that Secret Service snipers — a heavily armed counterassault team with the code name “Hawkeye” — were positioned on a roof that was also sloped. The team is responsible for taking out threats so agents on the ground can physically shield and remove the person they are protecting. Another Secret Service countersniper team, code name Hercules, was also at the rally to eliminate any long-range threats. 

Local law enforcement agencies were tasked with securing areas around the venue that didn’t require attendees to go through magnetometers for screening, but officers told BeaverCountian.com a lack of manpower and “extremely poor planning” were to blame for endangering Trump.

While three snipers were stationed inside the building the shooter climbed, with an operations plan having them look out windows toward the Trump rally, no one was placed on the roof, local law enforcement officers said. 

In her ABC interview, Cheatle confirmed “there was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”

Part of the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service is theprimary agency in charge of protecting current and former presidents, as well as presidential candidates and sometimes foreign dignitaries, a job that includes thousands of trips requiring event security.

That massive undertaking requires the agency to have assistance from local law enforcement, with the two teams typically working together on a rally for a major presidential candidate like Saturday’s. 

Phil Andrew, a former FBI agent and head of the Pax Group security consulting firm, said protection at such events are made up of “three rings of security,” with the first being the Secret Service agents who can physically shield an individual, a second team working the perimeters of an event, and a third focused on the exterior areas.

While the first two rings are pretty much entirely Secret Service responsibility, local law enforcement can be used for the third, as it was with the building the shooter climbed.  

“What seems to be the issue now is [whether] that part of the venue should never have been given to local law enforcement, or if it was ever reviewed as a vulnerability,” Andrew told The Hill. “And then if it was assigned to local law enforcement, how it was briefed, how it was understood to control it and maintain its security?”

In a Tuesday statement, the Secret Service said it was not putting any blame on local law enforcement.

“Our agency relies on the support of courageous police officers and local partners. We are deeply grateful for their unwavering commitment and bravery. Any suggestion otherwise is simply not true,” according to thestatement posted to social media.

A lack of manpower also meant the local officers did not have spotters assigned to them, usually a standard operating procedure, according toBeaverCountian.com.

Once shots began to be fired, Secret Service members rushed the stage to shield Trump but were heard on the microphone asking each other, “What are we doing?!” and “Where are we going from here?”

The gap in coverage and confusion in the midst of the chaos has roiled many Trump supporters, some of whom allege gross incompetence at best and outright conspiracy at the worst.

Multiple investigations have since been opened into the incident, including by the Biden administration and several congressional committees.

Andrew McCabe, former deputy director of the FBI, noted that “one of the most basic elements” for securing a site like the rally is to remove sight lines to the place where a protectee will be speaking. 

The buildings just outside the perimeter of the rally, including the one the shooter climbed, should have been found to be within shooting range and had some law enforcement on top of them, or placed obstacles between them and Trump, McCabe told CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

“I think preliminarily, there are going to be a lot of questions about why those steps weren’t taken here,” McCabe said, adding that there are “many questions to be answered in light of what we now know.”

And several former top Secret Service agents told The Associated Press that the agency must find out how Crooks even gained access to the roof, suggesting there may have been a flaw in the event’s security plan.

Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R-Texas), a former Navy SEAL, cautioned against jumping to assumptions. 

“I’ve spoken with law enforcement, I’ve spoken with the Secret Service, [I’ve] gotten a better understanding of what actually happened,” he said in a video posted to social media. “Now, no excuses being made here, this is a security failure. Anytime a president gets shot, it is a security failure. But then we have to assess whose fault it was.”

Reports indicate Crooks was spotted observing the building by local law enforcement, who alerted others that he was walking toward the back of the building with a backpack. One officer was even reportedly hoisted up to the top of the building, but Crooks pointed his gun at them, and they dropped back down. State police also started rushing to the scene. 

Crenshaw said their failure to actually confront the shooter was a problem, but it was important to keep in mind that the officers were not Secret Service agents or trained military specialists, and it was “likely the first time they’ve ever had to do security of this manner for such a large event.”

And Andrew said as Secret Service agents travel through the country and interact with any number of roughly 18,000 police departments, there can be differences in how individual departments respond to or understand what is communicated to them.

“There was a communication problem before, during and after, and there’s no question,” he said. “Whether Secret Service didn’t communicate that [local police] had responsibility, or did or asked somebody to, and they didn’t understand it and didn’t do it, there is some sort of pre-event communication issue.” 

Many have also pointed to the fact that attendees in the crowd noticed the gunman on the roof nearly two minutes before the shots were fired, according to witness videos from the event.

Due to the time lapse, a popular conspiracy alleges the countersnipers purposefully didn’t take the shot when the shooter was spotted, but Crenshaw said agents are meant to exert control in an evolving situation where things aren’t clear. 

“You’re a countersniper at a Trump rally, there’s people everywhere. It’s loud. Supporters are very excited. They will climb on top of whatever they can climb on top of to get to see Trump,” he said. 

What’s more, if Secret Service agents believed the building had been secured by the local law enforcement team, they may have thought the shooter was a SWAT officer, “because those are the guys who were supposed to be at that building in the first place.” 

“You don’t exactly know what you’re looking at, and the consequences of you making a mistake by shooting a civilian are enormous. They’re absolutely enormous,” he said. “Now, of course, the consequences of Trump getting shot are even more enormous. But you should at least have some context in your head before you start pointing fingers.”

(2)

And this from Dennis Speed of the Schiller Institute:

Butler Farm was a security catastrophe

A very senior security specialist characterized the failures of the security service in the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump as a “security catastrophe“. This source, well known to EIR for decades has been in charge of security arrangements for visiting heads of state for his government, high profile personalities as was as regularly organizing the security for the Davos conferences. He has often liasoned with the Secret Service. He made the following points:

1. While he understands that the Secret Service claimed the Police was responsible for perimeter security, this cannot be true. Where ever the Secret Service deploys they take over and manage the entire security operation, there is no independent action by other services.
    

2. The fact that the roof where the shooter stationed himself was unguarded is absolutely unbelievable and unprecedented. The fact that when there was the altercation between a police officer and the shooter on the roof and the counter snipers did not respond is also unbelievable since the Secret Service would have been informed even before the policeman tried to mount the roof. Furthermore it is standard procedure for counter-snipers to work as a two man team. One handles the weapon while the other observes with binoculars to indicate the target and its location. If one sees the plan of where the rally took place there was buildings on both flanks of the rally field which would have had clear shots to the President. So the place was the equivalent of a shooting gallery.
    

3. He said he is afraid to think about what would have happed if Trump had not move his head. The political situation would have been explosive. He compared the hit attempt to the assassination of Former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin where prior to the hit posters were plastered throughout Israel depicting Rabin as a nazi, that triggered a rightwing extremist to say, now is the time. Given the level of attacks on Trump he was surprised such a hit did not occur sooner. He emphasized the killing of Rabin destroyed the peace process and has led directly to what we are seeing in Gaza. If Trump was killed it could have been civil war in the US the source said.
    

4. While he said he is not for conspiracies he would like to consider this gross incompetence from a service known for its arrogance. Nonetheless he said the failure of the Secret Service even puts the life of President Joe Biden in danger. [dea]  (Note: The source is a very satisfied subscriber to the daily alert)

(3) Paul Craig Roberts

July 17, 2024 | Categories: Articles & Columns | Tags: |

The Assassination Attempt

Paul Craig Roberts

Some say that it is too early to know what explains Trump’s near assassination. However, a good case can be made that we already know all we will ever know. The passage of time simply allows official narratives to be constructed, and they are used to muddy the waters.

I support the calls for an official investigation, but government investigations are always coverups. Think the Warren Commission Report, the 9/11 Commission Report, the NISH Report. If there is an investigation, nothing will come of it, and if by chance it does the presstitutes won’t report it.

We have all the information we need to form an opinion. Earlier I wrote that we have three choices of explanation for which there is evidence. But two of the explanations merge into one. The withholding by the foreign-born director of the Department of Homeland Security of adequate Secret Service resources from the Trump campaign can be merged into the incompetence explanation. So we have two choices, both supported by evidence or circumstantial evidence: Secret Service incompetence and a pose of incompetence to coverup an organized assassination.

The most certain fact we have is that despite the protective presence of the Secret Service and local police, Donald Trump was nearly killed, one person was killed, and two were seriously injured.

None of the shooting was prevented by the Secret Service and local police, who went into action only after Trump was down and presumably dead.

So what we have is the total failure of the Secret Service. What can explain such total failure? Some say the sacrifice of professional competence to diversity and inclusion. And there is evidence for this. The Biden regime is yet to make a single appointment based on merit and ability. All appointments have been made on a race, gender, and sexual preference basis. Secret Service professionals have complained of these non-professional appointments and pointed out that the competence of the agency has been compromised by “diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

The reason aside, whether incompetence or complicity, clearly the Secret Service director failed. She failed to protect Trump, and if it was an official assassination, she failed to eliminate the target. So, will she resign? Of course not. She will be promoted to some higher office exactly as all were who failed to prevent the 9/11 attack on the US.

Let’s look at some of the indications that incompetence is a cover for a plot to assassinate Trump. The first thing that struck me was the unprotected roof tops of the buildings. As a former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury from the days when the Secret Service reported to Treasury Assistant Secretaries, this struck me as inconceivable.

I also found it inconceivable that a person carrying a rifle could appear in a protected area and climb upon a building with a clear shot at an allegedly protected person and not be accosted.

Initially, we were told that the buildings had, somehow, escaped the protected zone. But later we learned, for what it is worth, that the building with the assassin on top was occupied by police or Secret Service forces. How is it possible that the assassin was not seen and apprehended?

We do know that the Secret Service was complicit in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy, thus depriving America of an educated and aware leadership. https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/07/17/the-cias-assassination-plots/

We do know from the civil case the Martin Luther King family won that the official account of Martin Luther King’s assassination is a cover up of what seems to have been a FBI operation.

So many books have been written by insiders documenting the CIA’s assassination of foreign leaders who took a different line from the line that Washington insisted on imposing that we have hard evidence that Washington uses brute force to enforce Washington’s agenda.

With the Disunited States–the blue and the red–more divided than the division caused by the North’s determination to impose a tariff regime at the expense of the South, Trump’s notion that he can achieve unity is a fantasy.

There is no possibility of unity. Good and evil cannot be unified.

Trump’s responsibility, assuming a second and a third assassination attempt does not succeed, is to root out the evil in Democrat hands, in liberal-left hands, in intellectual hands, that has turned the United States of America into a Sodom and Gomorrah Tower of Babel.

Trump cannot raise his fist and say “fight, fight, fight,” and then compromise with his and our enemies to unite Americans with evil.

The one thing that keeps me from being convinced that the attempted assassination was a deep state plot to rid themselves of Trump is the absence of a pre-prepared narrative to be repeated endlessly by the presstitutes. However, the official narrative might have been prepared to cover a successful assassination, not a failed one. Therefore, there is no ready narrative. It will be interesting to see what narrative the ruling elites construct.