It has been four days since the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. So far, we haven’t gotten many, if any, concrete answers about either the shooter’s motives, or the security failures involved.

And yes, this was a security failure. There is no way that this could be classed as a security success. The former president of the United States and current candidate for office was nearly murdered on stage in front of cameras, one man protecting his family WAS brutally murdered, and two more people were seriously injured. The problem is, those who were tasked with securing the general area, the perimeter, and the president, are all pointing fingers at each other as to WHO was ackshually responsible for these things:
1) Responding to reports of the shooter’s suspicious behavior,
2) Responding to reports of the shooter being armed,
3) Securing the rooftop that the shooter used, and
4) Confronting the shooter once he was on the roof.

Let’s break down what we currently know about each issue. First, we now have reports that A FULL HOUR before the shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks was noticed and photographed by local police.

The image, taken around 5:30 p.m. Saturday by a local police counter-sniper officer who reported that Crooks was a suspicious person on the grounds outside Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, news station WXPI reported.

Crooks can be seen in the photo sporting long brown hair and glasses while wearing a gray T-shirt representing the popular YouTube gun channel Demolition Ranch. It was unclear in the picture if Crooks had a gun on him then.

Law enforcement sources told the station that the sniper, a member of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, searched the grounds for Crooks after sending the picture, but he had moved from the location where the picture was taken.

Reports say that Crooks was seen using a rangefinder, and was acting weird around the magnetometers. How did he get anything past those without being closely scrutinized – especially the rifle?

Second, once it was known that Crooks was on the roof, whose responsibility was it to get him off that roof? And once it was obvious TO ONLOOKERS that he was armed, who was supposed to neutralize him?

Around 5:45 p.m. — 26 minutes before the shooting — the same Beaver County cop spotted Crooks a second time, now on the roof, and took a second picture and called it into the command center.

Then at 6:11 p.m., Crooks fired the first shot at Trump from about 130 yards away, grazing his ear and killing one rally attendee. Two other people were seriously injured in the attack.

When Trump took the stage Crooks was still on the ground and had not yet climbed onto the roof of the building, according to the local TV report.

He was later spotted on the roof about seven minutes before the shooting, WXPI reported.

Additional reports say a local police officer was hoisted up to the roof to see what was going on, was confronted by the shooter, and made a split-second decision – one that might have thrown off his aim just enough to save Donald Trump from being killed.

The local cop, hoisted up by a fellow officer, was hanging off the edge of the roof when he was spotted by Crooks, who pointed his AR-style semi-automatic assault rifle at him.

“Right now, (the shooter is) training on the president. These guys breach the roof,” the sheriff said of the two cops. “So he turns around and potentially eliminates that threat.

“The officer is like ‘I’m dead or I drop. I drop.’ He turns back around,” he said of the shooter.

The cop ducked his head, lost his grip and fell eight feet to the ground, Butler Township Manager Tom Knights told NBC News Tuesday.

“When someone points a gun at you and you can’t get to your weapon, you tell them a–holes online that they are Superman,” (Butler County Sheriff Michael) Slupe said. “Like ‘I’ll just pull a gun out and they can shoot at me. I don’t give a s–t.’ Yeah. Mm-hm. Right, right.”

If the officer was using his hands and arms to hold himself on the roof after being hoisted up, then it’s true, he’s got no chance to draw on the shooter. At that point, someone was going to end up dying. But how did it get to THAT point?

That leads us to the Secret Service. According to them, that building was under the purview of local police, and was outside of their perimeter. Then the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle (reportedly a JILL BIDEN hire), claimed that the “roof was sloped” so they didn’t want to put anyone up there.

In the days since the attack, Cheatle and the Secret Service have faced heightening scrutiny for failing to prevent the incident from happening, and even calls from some to resign.

Cheatle said she would not resign from her role.

She is expected to testify before the GOP-led House Oversight Committee next Monday, July 22.

Cheatle also said there were not any snipers on the roof that were used by the shooter because it was sloped.

“So there’s a number of factors that come into play on how we secure buildings, both in our perimeter and out of our perimeter,” she said.

“At that site itself, there were actually a number of buildings in the outer perimeter. I know that we’re all focused on this one particular building because of what took place there. But there are a number of buildings in that outlying area,” Cheatle explained.

“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. And so, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” she said.

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, is saying that, according to his sources, there was a local police counter-sniper unit that never showed up – and that Cheatle is clamming up in order to save her job.

EXCLUSIVE: @DBongino provides shocking new revelations about USSS failures in attempted assassination of Former President Trump – including that WH told Cheatle she needs to 'shut her mouth or she's out' pic.twitter.com/g2iwKDPNhM

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 17, 2024

One is getting the distinct impression that the Biden White House is pressuring the Secret Service to pass the buck – with the promise of protecting Cheatle if she stays quiet – because Trump survived. But Corey Comperatore is dead. Someone must be held accountable for the failures that got him killed. The murderer is dead, Trump only survived by the grace of God, and we have more questions than answers right now.
https://twitter.com/kristina_wong/status/1813328697610629480
We have had little updates about the shooter himself, except to hear that his parents had no idea what was going on, but this attempted assassination was clearly something the shooter had been working on for quite a while.

Around 11 p.m., Crooks’ father reported him missing, law enforcement officials told CNN. His father told agents that he believed his son had taken the rifle Saturday to go to the shooting range and thought he would be back by around 1:00 p.m., the sources said.

After the shooting, multiple law enforcement sources said investigators found a bulletproof vest, three fully-loaded magazines, and two remote-controlled explosive devices in Crooks’ car.

Investigators are uncertain as to whether Crooks had a plan to use the body armor, nearly 100 rounds of additional ammunition from those loaded magazines, and two remote-controlled bombs, had he escaped after the shooting.

Additionally, after a search of his residence, investigators discovered another bulletproof vest, another remote-controlled explosive device, and a 3D printer, according to multiple law enforcement sources.

In the last several months, Crooks received multiple packages, including some marked as possibly containing hazardous materials, according to a joint FBI and Department of Homeland Security bulletin obtained by CNN.

We are owed a law enforcement update from both local authorities and the Secret Service about the shooter, and the procedural failures that occurred last Saturday. Somehow, I don’t think we’re going to get much until Director Cheatle is on the hot seat in front on Congress next Monday. What is becoming apparent is that the Secret Service needs a serious house cleaning – and while it makes logical sense to have the agency under the umbrella of the Department of Homeland Security, it seems indisuptable at this point that the Secret Service was a much tighter ship under the Department of the Treasury. There needs to be a organizational change there, and trying to dodge or deflect the seriousness of what happened on Saturday will not inspire confidence in the Secret Service going forward.

The longer the Secret Service goes without laying out what they know on the table, the easier it is for conspiracy theories to flourish. The American people are entitled to answers, and we want them NOW.

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