Federal authorities have identified the gunman who attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Seconds after he shot Trump, Secret Service snipers killed Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20.
Yet with Crooks dead from a bullet to the head, the more pressing question is how he took a position atop a building some 150 yards from and with a clear view of the stage on which Trump was speaking.
Calls have begun for Secret Service chief Kimberly Cheatle to be fired. And GOP Representative James Comer of Kentucky, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, requested that Cheatle testify on July 22 about the bungled protection of Trump.
One of Cheatle’s top priorities has been, as one would expect, diversity, equity, and inclusion. And that might explain why Trump’s team included three women who clearly panicked.
Shooter ID’d
Dan Grzybek, a county councilman for the area where Crooks lives, told The New York Times that the young man grew up in a well-to-do family, and that he met the parents just last year.
“The gunman was a registered Republican, his mother was a Democrat and his father a Libertarian, a fairly typical mix for the area,” he told the newspaper.
But the Times also reported that he donated to at least one far-left cause:
The gunman did not have a criminal history reflected in Pennsylvania’s public court records, and officials said they had not identified a motive. A voter-registration record showed Mr. Crooks’s Republican registration, though federal campaign-finance records show he donated $15 to the Progressive Turnout Project, a liberal voter turnout group, through the Democratic donation platform ActBlue in January 2021.
The Associated Press reported that Crooks fired from less than two football fields’ distance, and that the Secret Service is investigating how Crooks did it.
“The roof was less than 150 meters (yards) from where Trump was speaking, a distance from which a decent marksman could reasonably hit a human-sized target,” AP reported. “For reference, 150 meters is a distance at which U.S. Army recruits must hit a human-sized silhouette to qualify with the M16 assault rifle in basic training.”
CBS News created the followed map using Google Earth:
Cheatle in Trouble
X users are accusing Cheatle and/or her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, a Cuban immigrant, of denying a request from team Trump for more protection.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino accused Cheatle of denying Trump added protection.
“Failed Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle MUST be asked in front of Congress, and under oath, ‘Have you denied any security requests from supervisors on the Donald Trump protective detail?’ he wrote on X. “If she answers “No,” she’s absolutely NOT telling the truth.”
Agency spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied the claim.
Florida GOP Representative Mike Waltz blamed Mayorkas, the unindicted visa fraudster who helped Biden orchestrate the “migrant” invasion of the United States that has endangered millions of Americans.
Whatever the case with Trump’s protection detail, video clearly shows that three women agents in Trump’s protection unit panicked. They didn’t know what to do.
One woman couldn’t holster her gun. Another danced about, seemingly clueless, while a third fiddled with her sunglasses and adjusted her coat.
As The New American reported early this year, a woman agent attacked fellow agents at Joint Base Andrews.
A petition at Change.org says the woman was not only nuts but also incompetent:
Most shocking is a report that this agent failed the situational judgement course, known as “Hogan’s Alley”, where agents are placed in a series of simulated ambush exercises and then evaluated on their ability to correctly discern between the “bad guys vs innocent civilians” in their decisions to shoot or not shoot pop up targets during various training scenarios. At the time, the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of the Rowley Training Center was Kimberly Cheatle, before becoming Director of Secret Service. Director Cheatle reportedly decided to not heed the warnings by the tactical range instructors and instead authorized this agent’s graduation from training in support of filling the quota to support the 30×30 pledge.
The 30X30 pledge is Cheatle’s vow to ensure that 30 percent of agents are women by 2030.
Last year, CBS reported that the disgraced director permitted a woman YouTube influencer to train with agents.
Said Cheatle, “I’m very conscious as I sit in this chair now of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our Workforce and particularly women.”
That, and the agency’s failure to stop the gunman from getting to a roof with a clear shot at Trump, explain Comer’s letter to Cheatle.
