39 thoughts on “The Latest On The USSS”

  1. Ace’s belief that the soft form of the conspiracy has merit.

    This is that while the Secret Service didn’t work with the assassin, that they viewed Trump as illegitimate and not deserving their protection. Cutting his protection was a form of deplatforming and lowering his prestige and that whatever happens happens and he deserves it.

    This mirrors what Democrat politicians were saying.

    1. It mirrors what Democrat politicians were doing. They had a bill in Congress to strip Trump of his protection. They cared not that Mayorkas denied RFK Jr. protection. RFK Jr., whose dad and uncle were the last two US politicians killed while under USSS protection.

      Imagine if Boeing brought Suni and Butch home on Starliner and we found out later that NASA knew of the potential of problems, but didn’t investigate the problems directly, didn’t have timelines or recordings of events related to Starliner, blamed Boeing as being responsible for the vehicle, and said they took full responsibility yet nobody was fired. We would be considering the criminal gross negligence of NASA officials. The USSS is not acting the least bit interested in a massive failure that resulted in a loss of life and nearly a failure of its primary protection duty.

  2. If they didn’t want to get him killed, what would they have done differently?

    I worry about you, Rand. This kind of thinking is on the same intellectual level as Rand Simberg must want all these mass shootings (including the Trump shooting) or why else would he consistently oppose strict gun control? Do the Democrats want RFK, Jr. killed? If not, why else are they opposing giving him Secret Service protection?

    1. With all respect, Jim, that’s a terrible analogy. The type of gun control that the Democrats claim to want would not prevent mass shootings. But acting like they wanted to prevent Trump from being assassinated most certainly would have prevented Trump from almost being assassinated.

        1. I guess I missed the part where I claimed or even implied that all consequences are intended. We were talking about this particular incident, and all of the ancillary history leading up to it.

    2. I don’t think you genuinely are concerned about Rand. Your assessment of the way he thinks is not honest, either. The administration repeatedly denied Secret Service protection to RFK, Jr., and while those decision makers are Democrats, it does not follow that the Democrat party is guiding those decisions.

      1. Your linked article says this:

        “shows a person running on top of the roof where Thomas Crooks shot from just moments before Trump was shot in the face”.

        That’s what I was reacting to. By the way that Crooks was squirming up the roof, he was clearly aware that snipers would see his head just as it created the top of the roof. The problem was that the snipers probably had ROEs that said that they couldn’t shoot until there was a clear threat (i.e. see a gun). They probably had a handful of seconds from when Crooks showed his gun to when Crooks took the shots.

        2. You can watch the video. It is from the POV of the stage, filmed by one of the victims. Someone with a higher vantage point would have seen the guy running with a gun.

          There were a lot of inexplicable failures prior to that and the heads of the Secret Service lied to congress and did a bunch of I don’t recall answers.

          1. Yes, from the higher vantage point they would have seen someone running on the roofs. But they would not have seen him running with a gun because he had his gun hidden in a backpack. We have photos of the shooter’s bag left at the base of the far side of his roof. He clearly knew that he had to squirm on his belly to remain out of site of the second sniper team. So, he likely laid down, removed his gun from his daypack, had it largely under his body while he squirmed up to the roofline. From the long distance, the elevated position of the second sniper team wouldn’t have let them see the far side of the shooter’s roof. So, the first time that the second sniper team could have seen the gun was seconds before the shooter started shooting. If the snipers wanted to have confirmation of a gun before shooting someone in the head, they were denied that confirmation until the last moment.

          2. He didn’t squirm up to the roofline. Watch the video. He runs across the roof, then goes prone. Going by your story, the backpack was a long way from where Crooks was shooting, meaning he ran with his gun. This tracks with all the people on the ground yelling he had a gun.

            Secret Service is saying they had to let him shoot. That a person they had been observing for over an hour and knew he had been observing them, was then spotted running on a rooftop with a gun but they couldn’t do anything until he shot the former President.

            These people do not merit getting the benefit of the doubt.

          3. wodun – You don’t understand what I am saying and it seems that you are not watching the latest analysis by the leading YouTubers on this topic. We know where the backpack was left by the shooter. It was on the roof of his final building just after the covered connector between the buildings. He didn’t pull the gun out of the bag and then run with the gun out in the open. He ran across several buildings with his bag on his back out of sight of all of the snipers. When he ran across the connector to his final building, he dropped the bag and went up towards the roof ridge to confirm the shooting location. Then he went back down the roof to his bag, laid down, and assembled his weapon there. Then he squirmed up the ridge with the gun largely below his body out of sight of the snipers. This scenario is consistent with all of the video evidence.

    2. My guess is that the Secret Service team was within seconds of getting word through the radio that local police had confirmed that there was a guy on the roof and that he did have a gun. With that confirmation, they would have pulled Trump from the stage. But the shooter shot just before that confirmation reached the Secret Service by the stage. They should have pulled Trump from the stage before then. My guess is that they didn’t want to embarrass and interrupt Trump in the middle of his speech
      and so were waiting for confirmation that would move the suspect from concern to threat. They are going to change their rules and we are going to see more removal of protesters before or during activist protests (e.g. display of banners).

        1. See my reply to wodun. From the photos and videos we have we can reasonably guess that the snipers didn’t have confirmation of a gun until seconds before the shooting or even only after the shooting. That’s not at all to take away from the Secret Service’s failure to remove Trump from the stage as the risk was increasing.

      2. They knew there was a threat more than 30 minutes before the speech started. They had been watching Crooks for over an hour.

        Other times people guns might have tried to assassinate Trump, the secret service acted sooner and would hustle Trump off stage or delay a speech starting.

        1. Yes, they were concerned about him and had him under surveillance. But they lost him and didn’t see him with a gun until he was shooting. I suspect that this comes down to issues involving levels of concern vs threat and the rules of engagement. Having a range finder isn’t technically illegal. Sitting on a cement wall isn’t a crime. Walking around looking out of place also isn’t a crime. And then there is our assumption that the SS should have figured that these were all the same person. So, just because they became concerned about him up to 90 minutes before he shot doesn’t mean that they should have arrested him or made him aware that he was a suspect by questioning him. They put him under surveillance hoping that would sufficiently mitigate the risk. With 20/20 hindsight, that was the wrong call.

          1. The crowd was pointing out the guy as being suspicious 6 minutes before he opened fire. That is plenty of time to inform Trump and remove him from the stage until the situation is resolved without firing weapons. You are providing two extremes, do nothing about suspicious activity because it could be peaceful or shoot to kill. Lots of room there to remove the protectee into safety until you have certainty of the situation.

            Also, a protected area controlled by the USSS limits rights of citizens. A laser range finder would be illegal, and in fact Crooks was turned away from the event for trying to enter with one. You can say, but he was now acting outside the protected zone, but then answer why that zone was left unprotected. And if it is was unprotected, why was a USSS team inside the building?

            Then there is the gun issue. Either Crooks was able to carry that gun onto the building and none of the security in the building noticed (which they seemed not to notice he was up there) or as is being reported now, Crooks left the gun at the building days in advance and nobody sweeping it caught it (or the building wasn’t swept). All of those are failures in normal security detail by the USSS.

          2. Leland. I do agree that the SS should have pulled Trump from the stage very shortly after local police got word from the public or themselves actually observed someone on the roof. Whether there was a problem with separate comms or rules of engagement, they should have pulled Trump down.

            I don’t know that having a range finder is illegal with the SS-protected zone nor do I know if they would have wished to do more than turn him away. At that point in time they wouldn’t have known that he was going to continue to act suspicious, that they would lose track of him, or that there was going to be an assassination attempt and it is possible that they may have felt it was sufficient to keep an eye on him.

            > but he was now acting outside the protected zone

            You may not like my answer but I think it possible that, if you had asked the SS before the shooting if the shooter’s building was being covered they may have said yes, between the four sniper teams including the hidden team in the building behind. The shooter chose a pathway to run along that was behind a tree for one or two of the sniper teams and far to the left of the hidden sniper team that would have had to stick their heads out of the window (i.e. expose themselves) in order to see the far left part of the roof that the shooter was on.

            The enemy has a vote. Given the path the shooter chose to traverse and the speed at which he did it, and the manner in which he hid his gun, he didn’t make it easy for the snipers to see that he had a gun until he started shooting.

            There was no USSS team inside the building that the shooter was on. That is an old, incorrect report. There was a state sniper team in the building behind the shooter’s building but they were too far back from their windows to be able to see the shooter.

            No, the shooter brought a large daypack up with him and so it seems logical that he had his gun disassembled within that bag. He didn’t have to hide it somewhere around the building beforehand.

          3. “There was no USSS team inside the building that the shooter was on. That is an old, incorrect report. There was a state sniper team in the building behind the shooter’s building but they were too far back from their windows to be able to see the shooter.”

            This turns out not to be the case. They had vantage over the roof Crooks was on. There are numerous pictures and videos that show this. New information on this is that the Secret Service lied to congress in providing pictures claiming there view didn’t show the roof when in fact it did.

            Windows were open. They had radios.

            Everyone agrees that there was mistake after mistake. The question is whether or not this was malign neglect or good faith error. Since the Secret Service and FBI have repeatedly lied about this, it looks less and less like a good faith mistake.

    4. There were plenty of non-lethal options you are failing to mention. If you are an agent near Trump and you see a suspicious activity happening in the crowd, do you stand there, out of the way of the activity and the protectee and wait for actions to unfold? Why not move to a better vantage point, such as the stage? Why not put yourself between the activity and the protected? Why not alert others of the suspicious activity so they act? None of those things happened.

  4. Given that there’s a major congressional investigation, I’m perplexed as to why, exactly, we don’t know the name of the Agent in Charge yet? (Or, do we, and I missed it?)

    The more the SS covers up and lies, the more people will be inclined to believe that this goes beyond absolutely magnificent levels of incompetence. (I’m old enough to recall, even though it was almost a month ago, the SS spokesperson claiming that Trump’s security had been increased before the shooting, a statement that even the SS now admits is untrue).

    And speaking of conspiracies… one I do find plausible (though I’m far from convinced, yet) is that the assassin may have been working with someone. And, IMHO, that someone is most likely a foreign entity (Foreign intel, or similar). Here’s why; the assassin had a bicycle on site, and had rigged his car with a remote bomb, and parked it near the local police. Looks to me like the car bomb was intended as a diversion, to allow him to escape on his bicycle. He was pretty careful in some ways, but this apparent plan reeks; the police would have discerned whose car that was within a couple of hours. Why not steal one, or plant the bomb some other way, and thus be able to escape in a car, name unknown, instead of on a bike and subject to a massive manhunt? The only thing that fits to me is he was expecting to be helped out of the country (And then further helped into an unmarked grave, if my wild guess is correct: they wouldn’t wish to leave him alive.).

    And we also know that NSA was reporting an Iranian plot against Trump. And the assassin is just the kind of deniable hireling that doesn’t fit the profile, so would be easy to deny.

    Thin? Yes. And probably not true… but IMHO it’s possible, and thus I hope the authorities won’t close it off as an avenue of investigation.

    1. I don’t know that we know for sure that was actually his bicycle. There was a bag next to it which doesn’t match the one that we had with him and I am not aware of reports of him riding a bicycle. Can you clarify if I am wrong about that?

    2. In addition to what you’ve said, I find it awfully convenient that the FBI found after investigating the shooter that he was non-partisan and wanted to kill Democrats as well. The same FBI that endorsed the Russia hoax, and the Hunter laptop.

      And it appears that all public facing evidence was destroyed as well, before the public was informed of the shooter’s identity.

      Someone outside of the government needs to look at this closely.

      1. Yes, they said he searched for Biden and implied it was to assassinate Biden but provided no proof of this. He might have searched, “why is Biden so cool.” or “how can I help Biden get re-elected”

        Secret Service and the FBI should have no reason to play games like this if there is an honest explanation

  5. Kinda scary. Is the Secret Service just a clownshow that they couldn’t catch the perp beforehand or so incompetent that they couldn’t organise a hit properly?

  7. Remember when Democrats were organizing protests outside the homes of SCOTUS judges they don’t like, refused to give them security, and then Kavanaugh was almost assassinated?

    Here is a clear cut example of driving violent Democrats at a target while also refusing them security in order to make them feel threatened and change their positions.

    He would be dead right now if the attempted assassin hadn’t been ratted out by his sister.

    Another in 2020, when Democrats campaigned on terrorizing the populace with riots if Trump stayed in office.

    1. “He would be dead right now if the attempted assassin hadn’t been ratted out by his sister.”

      Yes. And I recall how Merrick Garland testified in front of Congress that the reason why they didn’t break up the protestors (illegally; since the case verdict hadn’t been announced) protesting outside of Kavanaugh’s home is that they were so busily concerned with securing his safety that they didn’t have time for mere trifles like dispersing protestors.

  8. If they didn’t want to get him killed, what would they have done differently?

    Funny how I haven’t heard much about “stochastic terrorism” in the last month. Or all that talk about needing to stop the Orange Hitler “by any means necessary”.

  9. If they didn’t want to get him killed, what would they have done differently?

    This has been annoying me all week.

    If they didn’t want to get him killed, they might have done any number of things differently. If they did want to get him killed, not so much.

  10. “I think it is now established beyond doubt that the Secret Service is stonewalling the investigation into the Trump assassination attempt. ”

    Odd. What would they have to hide.

    Acting awfully guilty. Have they destroyed evidence yet?

    We don’t even need to know the details, if they start destroying evidence, it shows they are responsible for what happened.

  11. It seems interesting that this was the first Trump rally that drew the attention of CNN and the BBC enough that they decided to have camera crews there, live.

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