The Secret Service has some explaining to do.
How did an assassin with a rifle manage to get onto the roof of a building just over 100 metres from Donald Trump’s podium at Saturday’s rally? It’s supposed to be standard operating procedure for the Secret Service to clear rooftops and windows with a clear line of sight to someone they’re protecting.
However, it appears that Thomas Crooks, the alleged killer, was alone up there. No one secured the roof. And protesters who saw him moments before the attack told a BBC reporter that they were ignored when they tried to warn security officers.
We now know that Trump was inches from death. He was incredibly lucky to only be hit with a pin in the ear. If it weren’t for the wind, a slight tilt of the head, and the poor aim of the 20-year-old shooter, America would be facing a traumatic national tragedy of unthinkable proportions.
It is already a personal tragedy, as one rally-goer behind Trump was killed and two others were seriously injured.
Donald Trump was shot in the ear during an assassination attempt on Saturday at a rally in Pennsylvania
For the Trump family, Melania and Barron had to endure watching their husband and father, respectively, nearly die before their eyes.
Incompetence in this business kills people and ruins lives.
There may also be criticism later about why the officers around Trump’s podium didn’t move more quickly to block him and remove him from the stage. But those are split-second decisions. And overall, the bravery of those who rushed to protect the former president is truly admirable.
However, not preventing this in advance is inexcusable.
Questions abound:
Was Trump’s team understaffed to do its job? Has his safety been compromised? Can we trust that future rallies will be safe? What are the implications for next week’s Republican Party convention?
Pennsylvania Rep. Mike Waltz, who was at the rally, tweeted afterward that “very reliable sources” were “telling me there have been repeated requests for increased Secret Service protection for President Trump,” which he said were denied by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. But a Secret Service spokesperson quickly responded that it was “absolutely false” that “a member of the former President’s team” had made such a request.
It is now essential that the House investigates.
On Saturday, the Republican chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee demanded Secretary Mayorkas’ cooperation in a thorough Secret Service investigation.
Secret Service personnel escorted a defiant Trump to a vehicle after he was injured.
Republicans can expect little help from Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, who introduced legislation in April seeking to strip Trump of his protective gear.
One of Thompson’s aides, Jacqueline Marsaw, wrote a vituperative Facebook post Saturday night saying she wished the shooter hadn’t missed Trump.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service continues to deny protection to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father and uncle were assassinated. Shame on him!
The Secret Service is one of America’s most respected institutions, revered for its professionalism and the selfless bravery of its agents who literally put themselves in the line of fire.
But, as we have seen in recent years with so many other once-great institutions, their reputation has long outlived reality. We have just seen how easily the decay of the Secret Service could threaten the very fabric of our society.
In Washington, it’s an open secret. The service has endured years of bad press for a culture of drunken agents who frequent prostitutes, neglect digital security risks and act inappropriately. More recently, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has come under fire for emphasizing diversity in hiring, possibly diluting standards as a result.
That controversy came to light after an incident in April of this year, when Michelle Herczeg, an officer on Vice President Kamala Harris’s team, began acting erratically, had an apparent mental breakdown and ended up in a fight with other armed officers. Herczeg was a former Dallas police officer who left that job in 2016 after accusing a superior of sexual misconduct, a charge she filed with a lawsuit seeking damages that was later dismissed by a court in 2021.
There is still no clear answer as to why, after such an incident, she was included in Harris’s team.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot dead by the US Secret Service just seconds after the bullet severed the former president’s ear.
Incidents of reckless driving have also plagued the vice president’s team. In October 2022, Harris had to be transferred to another vehicle after her SUV hit a curb so hard that it briefly became airborne. The Secret Service mistakenly reported the incident as a “mechanical failure,” and the agent driving was granted an exemption from the usual requirement of having to take a defensive driving course.
The agency has not covered itself in glory in recent investigations either. It was in trouble for deleting messages requested by Congress in the January 6 investigation.
Somehow he failed to find out who brought cocaine into the Biden White House last summer.
The FBI vaguely denied reports that agents had visited the gun dealer who sold Hunter Biden a revolver in 2018 — the one that led to his recent conviction for lying on a federal firearms purchase form — and attempted to recover documents for the purchase. However, the dealer told the FBI that both the Secret Service and local Delaware police had visited his business the day after Hunter made the illegal purchase.
Not all of the agency’s recent humiliations have been its fault, from a drunk driver who crashed into a pickup truck parked in Joe Biden’s motorcade in December to repeated incidents of agents being bitten by Biden’s dog, Commander.
But stopping an assassin from setting up a platform with a clear line of sight to shoot a former president? That’s their job. They failed miserably.
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