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Former Secret Service agents describe ‘apocalyptic security failure’ at Trump event

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6 months ago

7 minute read

Police vehicles near the site of the Butler, Pa., venue where President Donald Trump was speaking when he was struck in the ear by a bullet in an assassination attempt
Grace David | For The Center Square

From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

Former U.S. Secret Service agents and security experts argue the Secret Service’s failure to prevent an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on Saturday was “apocalyptic,” exhibiting a “massive security breach.”

U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, has called for a congressional investigation. Multiple members of Congress are asking how a shooter ever reached a rooftop of a building to fire a shot at Trump, including U.S. Rep. Cory Mills, R-Florida, an Army veteran and counter sniper for the State Department who coordinated protective details for then Vice President Joe Biden, Condoleezza Rice and First Lady Laura Bush.

The assassination attempt on Trump was “a massive security breach,” Mills told CNN. The distance between the shooter and Trump was roughly 400 to 500 feet, “which is nothing for a shot adjacent to the stage of the president,” he said. “There was no one on that building, … in the building, standing next to the building to ensure there’s no access to the building,” he said. If there were, they “could have prevented this shooting.”

In an interview with Fox News, Mills said that the shots fired were the kind that soldiers learn in basic training boot camp and are “requested to make within nine weeks. This is one of the easiest shots.”

He said his job at the State Department involved working with an advanced team to establish a perimeter and “identify areas of threat that you would be able to mitigate … whether it be a building, … a lone tree … a parking lot. … Bottom line is this is massive negligence.”

Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said agents responded quickly and the agency “added protective resources and technology and capabilities as part of [Trump’s] increased campaign travel.”

Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino questioned this claim, asking on Fox News, “Which ones? You’re telling me the best technology you have was deployed and you missed a shooter 130 yards away … and even worse, it’s broad daylight on a white roof.”

He asked if there was forward-looking infrared deployed and if there was aerial support like drones and helicopters.

Bongino also pointed out that Trump “knew to duck … and saved his own life. That’s just a fact. The evacuation did not go right. The rule with the Secret Service is ‘cover the protectee’ and evacuate. The other rule is ‘maximum to the protectee, minimum to the problem. … Because you don’t know that’s the only problem. It could be a distraction. There could be another person in the crowd … you could be looking at multiple shooters.”

“The failure here is absolutely catastrophic,” he said, calling on Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle to resign immediately. He said Secret Service “absolutely resolutely 100% failed. This was an apocalyptic security failure. … An uneventful failure is never a success. The fact that Donald Trump didn’t die … is no reason for anybody to take some kind of victory lap.”

Former Secret Service agent Jeff James agreed, telling WTAE ABC News the agents on the stage should have moved Trump off sooner because the first shots fired “may have been the precursor in the real attack. There may have been four more gunmen who were going to start opening fire. I would have rather seen him get him into the armored cars and get him out of there more quickly.”

Bill Pickle, a former deputy assistant Secret Service director, told the Wall Street Journal, “The reality is there’s just no excuse for the Secret Service to be unable to provide sufficient resources to cover an open rooftop 100 yards away from the site. And there’s no way he should’ve got those shots off.”

Retired Secret Service agent Donald Mihalek called the failed assassination attempt “historic, drawing parallels to the 1912 shooting of Theodore Roosevelt in Milwaukee,” the Journal reported. “Roosevelt, then a former president who was running for a third term in the White House, was shot while heading to a campaign event. He survived the attempt on his life.”

Erik Prince, who previously provided diplomatic security services, said, “unaccountable bloated bureaucracies continue to fail us as Americans. Donald J. Trump is alive today solely due to a bad wind estimate by an evil would be assassin.”

Prince analyzed the wind at the time of the shot, arguing it was enough to displace the bullet two inches from Trump’s “intended forehead to his ear. DJT [Trump] was not saved by USSS [U.S. Secret Service] brilliance. The fact that USSS allowed a rifle armed shooter within 150 yards to a preplanned event is either malice or massive incompetence.

“Clearly there was adequate uncontrolled dead space for a shooter to move into position and take multiple aimed shots,” he said, adding that one counter sniper “was clearly overwhelmed as his face came off his rifle instead of doing his job to kill the shooter.”

A counter sniper killed the alleged shooter after he shot several rounds, wounding Trump, killing one, and critically wounding two others.

“In my old business of providing Diplomatic Security in two active war zones we were expected to execute the basics, or we would be fired,” Prince said. “Clearly USSS failed at the basics of a secure perimeter and once shots were fired, their extraction was clumsy and left DJT highly exposed to follow on attacks.”

He also expressed no confidence in anyone being held accountable, saying, “That’s not the Washington way. Unserious and unworthy people in positions of authority got us to this near disaster.”

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The “Invisible Presidency” is an all-time criminal, and must not be allowed to flee

I saw His Majesty myself about half past twelve o’clock. His conversation was so hurried, and, though not unconnected or irrational, so unlike his ordinary manner that I certainly should not have thought it proper to have taken his signature or his pleasure to any Act.

— Spencer Perceval, Chancellor of the Exchequer, in an 1810 letter about King George III

King George III went mad as a March hare, talking until he foamed at the mouth, writing 400-word sentences, threatening to “befoul himself,” holding conversations with imaginary people, and insisting he had power to reanimate the dead. Contemporary notes often describe him “in restraint” and “lost in reverie.” His last, worst phase began in 1810, his 50th in power, a jubilee year requiring constant public appearances. The Last King of America by Andrew Roberts shows it can be done:

No fewer than 650 public events — parades, receptions, luncheons, bonfires, firework displays, illuminations and the like — took place in England alone; there were many more across the rest of the United Kingdom and in the empire beyond.

Joe Biden said goodbye to America Wednesday night. The most controversial part of an otherwise weirdly half-assed address (maybe his writers have stopped caring?) was a warning. “Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power and influence,” he said, a “tech industrial complex” that “literally threatens our entire democracy.”

Biden always loved the word “literally.” He’s been misusing it for decades, from “we literally can’t survive” four more years of Bush policy, to the 2008 election winner having an opportunity “literally to change the direction of the world,” to Barack Obama’s story being “literally incredible,” to saying he’s “literally rebuilding our entire nation,” and on and on. With Bidenterms like look, here’s the deal, let me tell you, I promise you, and C’mon, Biden says “literally” often enough to make “Word Crimes” singer Weird Al Yankovic want to “literally smack a crowbar upside your stupid head.” Here, it’s at least a sign that Biden might have added to the speech on his own.

Most all Biden speeches are acknowledged (Lincoln, Obama) or unacknowledged (Neil Kinnock, John Kennedy) homages to other politicians. This last one Biden attempt at an Eisenhower impersonation is backward. We’re warned about an “oligarchy,” which Webster’s defines as “a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes.” He tries to tag disobedient billionaires like Elon Musk, Marc Andreessen and Mark Zuckerberg (as opposed to Reid Hoffman, Bill and Melinda Gates, Steven Schwartzman, etc.) as this new oligarchy, but there’s one even closer to home, which Biden later in the speech referenced:

In the years ahead… it is going to be up to the president, the presidency, the congress, the courts, the free press and the American people… I still believe in the idea for which this nation stands… Now it’s your turn to stand guard.

Biden’s possibly ad-libbed distinction between “president” and “presidency” was the most inspired line of his political career. America just went through four years in which the public was conned into viewing two stories as one. The first was about Joe Biden the human being, a disintegrating flesh-and-blood patsy, conscripted to such a miserably slapstick public regimen that it was impossible not to feel sorry for him. The second was about the presidency, which for years now has been like the eponymous Claude Rains villain in The Invisible Man: an unseen monster.

For four years, while Buster Keatonesque videos of stumbling, tumbling Biden filled social media, just a handful of clues leaked about the ethereal “Presidency” running the American superpower. The latter existed separate from Biden and is scheduled to slither aside Monday. It exits on a bitter note, blaming an “avalanche of misinformation and disinformation” (not enough censorship) for its inability to be re-elected while strapped to a corpse. It hopes to get away unseen and probably will, as reporters prepare to chase the great baited hook that is Donald Trump. It’s too bad James Whale is dead, since this monster’s story will make a great horror movie someday.

Here are two sincere notes of farewell, to the hapless shrinking man Joe Biden, and to his more powerful partner, the “Presidency” :

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DAY ONE: Here’s what Trump could do on his first day in office

Published on January 18, 2025

By

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President-elect Donald Trump, who is set to take office Monday, has made a series of promises of major executive actions on “day one” in office.

One of the simplest and more controversial of those “day one” plans is to pardon some of the Jan. 6 protesters currently behind bars or facing prosecution. The president has broad power to pardon, shown most recently when President Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he committed or may have committed over more than a decade span.

But Trump’s “day one” executive orders are far from limited to pardons.

On energy policy, Trump has pledged to open up domestic oil drilling in a major way in an effort to lower costs for Americans and boost the energy industry. He has also promised to end a Biden-era rule that would require more than half of Americans to transition to electric vehicles over the next decade.

Trump has also consistently tapped into America’s frustration over the border crisis and broken immigration system.

Since President Joe Biden took office, more than 12 million illegal immigrants have entered the U.S., overwhelming some cities and raising national security concerns, since some migrants are on the federal terror watch list.

Trump has also promised to end transgender participation in women’s sports, something lawmakers in the House have already passed a bill to quench.

Trump has threatened “day one” tariffs as well, though it is unclear how wide-ranging those tariffs could be, since Trump likes to wield them as a negotiating tool against other nations.

On foreign policy, a ceasefire in the war between Hamas and Israel apparently has been reached, just days before Trump took office. In the Ukraine-Russia war, Trump promised on the campaign trail to put an end to that war “in 24 hours.”

In a series of campaign speeches and media interviews, Trump has promised some “day one” actions to address the border and immigration crises.

These actions include:

• Trump has plans to reinstate Title 42, a COVID-era policy that helps shut down the southern border.

• Trump has said he would also reinstate “Remain in Mexico,” a policy that Trump used during his first term that requires asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for their claim to be processed. Biden ended that policy and let migrants in and asked questions later.

• According to Politico, Trump is considering designating cartels south of the border as terrorist organizations, a policy once pushed by Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis when he was running for president that could open up a flood of new resources and executive powers at the border. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott designated the violent Venezuelan prison gang, Tren de Aragua, a foreign terrorist organization last year.

• Trump has threatened to end birthright citizenship for the children of illegal immigrants born in the U.S., but it remains unclear if he has the Constitutional authority to do so since birthright citizenship is enshrined in the 14th Amendment.

• Trump has made overtly clear that he plans to kickstart a massive, never-before-seen deportation program for the millions of illegal immigrants in the U.S. Trump’s appointee as border czar, Tom Homan, has been clear saying publicly that Trump named this as a top priority when choosing him for the job.

“On day one, we will SHUT DOWN THE BORDER and start deporting millions of Biden’s Illegal Criminals,” Trump said over the summer during the campaign. “We will once again put AMERICANS First and MAKE AMERICA SAFE AGAIN!”

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