After two assassination attempts, it is clear that Donald Trump is not just a target for seemingly random actors, but also at risk due to wider threats.

Now that Ryan Routh has been formally charged with the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, hopefully we will get to find out if the “bounty” that Routh wrote about in his letter was just a figment of his imagination, or actually real. And if it is real, where did that money come from?

We are also now learning from a brand-new Senate report that the Secret Service lead advance agent WAS TOLD that there were “credible threats” to Trump BEFORE the Butler rally – something that she never apparently bothered to pass along.

The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released an interim report on the attack that detailed numerous “failures” by the Secret Service to secure the site and to respond to threats.

“The Committee finds that USSS failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the July 13, 2024 Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” the report said. “The Committee also finds that siloed communications and coordination problems between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials remain unaddressed and were a contributing factor to the failures at the July 13 Butler rally.”

The report said that the Secret Service Lead Advance Agent was made aware of a “credible intelligence” threat to Trump on July 9, but that she still reported that there was “no adverse intelligence” in a security planning document in preparation for the rally. In response to the threat, a Secret Service counter-sniper team was assigned to the rally, but almost no one was told of the threat.

The Lead Advance Agent told the Senators that she was told of the threat by a Secret Service official who said he couldn’t discuss specifics of the threat.

The committee said that only two Secret Service personnel interviewed by them “were made aware that there was a credible threat related to former President Trump prior to July 13, only one of whom was made aware of the classified information underlying the threat.”

This would be the same lead advance agent that Senator Josh Hawley identified (via whistleblower information) as having FAILED exams and was promoted anyway by former director Kimberly Cheatle. If all of the whistleblower information is proved correct, in addition to this Senate report detailing the failures of that same agent to take a threat to Donald Trump seriously, then that lead advance agent needs to be summarily fired. It doesn’t matter if the potential threat she was informed about ended not being the actual threat that day in Butler. Trump was shot and a man was killed because the Secret Service agent failed to take the threat seriously, and then the problems compounded on the ground once the shooter was present and identified, as the report details.

According to the report, the Secret Service also failed to secure the roof of the American Glass Research building, where Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to fire off eight rounds at Trump, striking the former president in the ear, killing one rallygoer, and injuring two others.

Crooks was also able to “fly a drone 200 yards from the site, use a rangefinder capable of gauging the distance to the former president less than an hour before he began speaking, and bring two explosive devices within proximity of the site of the rally,” the report found.

The report detailed that local law enforcement warned the Secret Service about the potential threat of the roof, but did not allocate resources to secure it.

Furthermore, the Secret Service was informed that Crooks was on the roof of the building at least two minutes before he started shooting, yet Trump was not moved from the stage. Prior to that, they had known that a suspicious person was hanging around the AGR building for at least 27 minutes before the shooting.

“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 found.

Just before shots were fired, a Secret Service counter-sniper saw local law enforcement running toward the building where Crooks was positioned, but “he did not alert former President Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage,” the report said.

The sniper reportedly told the committee that it “did not cross my mind” to notify someone to get Trump off the stage when he saw the local law enforcement running with their guns drawn.

With these kinds of admissions in the report, the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security should be having their lawyers prepare a HUGE wrongful death settlement for the family of Corey Comperatore. With these revelations, it’s little wonder that the bill to provide Donald Trump, and other presidential candidates, with Secret Service protection equivalent to a sitting president passed unanimously in both houses of Congress.

The Senate unanimously passed legislation Tuesday enhancing Secret Service protection for presidential and vice presidential nominees in the wake of two assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump.

The Enhanced Presidential Security Act boosts Secret Service protection for presidential and vice presidential nominees to the same level currently provided to a sitting US president and vice president.

The measure, which cleared the House of Representatives in a 405-0 vote last week, now heads to President Biden’s desk for his signature.

And Trump is going to need the additional security, given that he has now been briefed about the threat to him from (guess who?) Iran.

The Trump campaign says he was briefed today by US intelligence officials about “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him in an effort to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”

"Intelligence officials have identified that these continued and coordinated…

— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) September 25, 2024

As we have already learned, Iran has hacked the Trump campaign and attempted to (at the very least) pass that information to the Biden-Harris campaign. We know that Iran would much prefer their gravy train of cash and appeasement to keep going under a potential Harris administration, which apparently would not under a second Trump administration. I’s very clear which candidate Iran wants to win – which should tell us all something. Donald Trump released a statement last night about the potential Iranian threat to him.

Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before. Thank you…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2024

The full post reads:

Big threats on my life by Iran. The entire U.S. Military is watching and waiting. Moves were already made by Iran that didn’t work out, but they will try again. Not a good situation for anyone. I am surrounded by more men, guns, and weapons than I have ever seen before. Thank you to Congress for unanimously approving far more money to Secret Service – Zero “NO” Votes, strictly bipartisan. Nice to see Republicans and Democrats get together on something. An attack on a former President is a Death Wish for the attacker!

While we can all be grateful that Donald Trump is now protected with a necessary and appropriate level of security, the quality of that security provided by the Secret Service is now deeply in question. Individual agents – such as the one who spotted Ryan Routh before he could get a shot off from his little sniper’s nest on the other side of the fence – have shown their intuition and competence. And then we have this lead advance agent who was supposed to secure the Butler rally site, whose failure cost a man his life. Just because the life lost wasn’t the Secret Service’s protectee doesn’t make the failure any less a disaster.

There is an institutional rot at the Secret Service which has become apparent to everyone, which is why the department is seeing new lows in their approval ratings from the public. Can it be reversed? Not without a very large and very transparent housecleaning. The rare unanimity in anger over the Secret Service might actually spur Congress into taking some real action for a change. The acting director would likely prefer to fire a couple of people, use them as the scapegoats, and call it a day. However, changed might be coming to his job, whether he likes it or not. Senators Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV) have already introduced a bill in the Senate to make the Secret Service director’s job subject to Senate confirmation. In Congress’s current mood, this has a pretty good chance of passing. It’s clear that leaving it to the president’s discretion, without any oversight, had some dire consequences last time. The entire department needs sunlight, an overhaul, and a refocusing of its mission. The Secret Service’s job is not to be “inclusive” and “diverse” – the job is to find the best people possible to protect the president of the United States and anyone else under their protection, investigate and defend against all threats to those protectees, and take a bullet for those people if necessary. Nothing else. And if the current acting director can’t commit to that, then Congress had better make sure it has the power to put a new director in place who will.

Featured image: Gage Skidmore/flickr.com/cropped/Creative Commons