More evidence of a major lapse in security at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania — where a deranged 20-year-old nearly assassinated former President Donald Trump, killed a husband and father, and wounded two others — has been uncovered.
CNN reported today that the Secret Service stopped would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks at a security gate, and carrying a range finder, three hours before he attempted to kill Trump.
That and other revelations in the CNN report again highlight the incredibly incompetent and short-sighted leadership of Director Kimberly Cheatle. Her focus at the once highly regarded agency is ensuring that 30 percent of positions are filled by women.
Meanwhile, NBC reported that local cops were not in the building from which Crooks fired, as Cheatle told ABC News.
Cheatle will explain herself soon to the U.S. House Oversight Committee, which issued a subpoena today for her to testify on Monday.
The Latest
Crooks fired at Trump from a rooftop some 150 yards away at the Butler Farm Show Grounds in Butler, Pennsylvania. And as The New American previously reported, citing Pittsburgh NBC affiliate WPXI, local cops saw the shooter almost 30 minutes before he opened fire.
Trump grabbed his ear, then Secret Service agents tackled him and rushed him off the stage. A Secret Service countersniper killed Crooks with a headshot. Pandemonium ensued at the 50,000-attendee rally. The family of firefighter Corey Comperatore went home without a husband and father.
At about 3:00 p.m., “Crooks was at a security gate to enter the rally,” CNN reported:
He first aroused suspicion when he passed through the magnetometers carrying a rangefinder, which looks similar to a small pair of binoculars and is used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances when setting up a long-range shot, according to a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
As well, the network reported, though the Secret Service lost track of him, countersnipers had him in their sights before he opened fire:
Around the same time witnesses alerted police that Crooks was crawling on the roof of the American Glass Research building, one of the four counter-sniper teams observed Crooks looking at their position through the rangefinder, according to the senior law enforcement official.
“They were looking at him while he was looking at them,” the official said.
Crooks gained access to the rooftop by climbing on top of the building’s air conditioning system and hoisting himself up, according to a senior federal law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.
CNN reported that Crooks’s father had reported him missing and told agents he had gone to a shooting range.
Law enforcement sources also told CNN that Crooks told his boss he needed the day off on Saturday because he had “something to do.”
Cheatle’s Excuse
The report should intensify the pressure for Cheatle to resign. Myriad news reports showed that the Secret Service and local cops had multiple chances to stop Crooks.
Local cops spotted him, again, about 30 minutes before he nearly killed Trump, did kill firefighter Corey Comperatore, and severely wounded two other men. Crooks still wasn’t stopped, despite taking a position from which to shoot Trump in the very building in which local cops supposedly staged snipers.
A Secret Service source says that cops were not in the building, as reported previously and Cheatle told ABC News.
“The unnamed Secret Service official told NBC News on Wednesday that … the local SWAT team was not in the building that Crooks climbed, and instead was in another building in the same business complex,” the network reported:
That official said the building was connected to the one that Crooks had used, but could not say which building it was.
In contrast, Cheatle told ABC News in an interview earlier this week, “There was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”
When she appears before the Oversight Committee on Monday, Cheatle will answer questions about that, as well as her bizarre claim that the roof from Crooks fired was too steep to station agents or police.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” Cheatle explained, “And so, you know, 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, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.”
Experts immediately called her explanation “BS.”
Aside from that, Cheatle will also likely find herself explaining why she wants to hire women, instead of recruiting highly trained, former combat-hardened special operators from the Army, Marines, Navy, or Air Force.
One of her priorities is pushing women into 30 percent of positions by 2030, her daffy 30×30 initiative.
That push has resulted in at least one mentally unstable agent, detailed to protect Vice President Kamala Harris, getting into a physical altercation with other agents and a supervisor. That agent was permitted to graduate training despite failing a major test.
During the assassination attempt on Trump, one woman agent, now known as “Secret Service Barbie,” repeatedly failed to re-holster her pistol, another fiddled with her sunglasses and coat with both hands, while a third hopped to and fro, wondering what to do.
A photo taken in the second after the attempted assassination showed a woman agent cowering behind another agent — this one a man — and Trump, who at 6-foot-3, 215 pounds, was much bigger than the women “protecting” him.
