(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Talk about a coincidence: The July 13 rally where Donald Trump was nearly assassinated may have been the first time Secret Service snipers were ever deployed to guard a former President.
As Headline USA reported earlier this month, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe said the July 13 deadly campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was the first time his agency had snipers assigned to a 2024 campaign event for Donald Trump.
“It was the first time Secret Service counter snipers were deployed to support the former President’s detail,” Rowe said at a press conference, which only admitted mainstream media reporters.
It turns out that not only was July 13 the first time Secret Service snipers protected Trump this campaign; it was likely the first time they EVER were assigned to a former president, according to Rep. Clay Higgins https://t.co/f8ihMGxrk8 pic.twitter.com/ZdPrEmduxn
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) August 16, 2024
According to Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La, not only was July 13 the first time Secret Service snipers protected Trump this campaign; it was likely the first time they ever were assigned to a former president.
“USSS had never, prior to J13, assigned a counter-sniper team to a former POTUS, including Trump,” Higgins, who’s on the House Task Force to investigate the shooting, said in his preliminary findings released Thursday.
“I will not be 100% certain of this assertion without further investigation into documented records, but USSS counter-sniper teams stated clearly to ESU Command that they had never been deployed to a former POTUS event, nor had they heard of a prior deployment by other USSS counter-sniper teams.”
Those Secret Service snipers didn’t seem to do much to protect Trump. In fact, their inaction nearly got the presidential frontrunner killed.
As has been widely documented, the Secret Service knew that a suspicious person—alleged shooter Thomas Crooks—was roaming the event sight with a range finder by at least 5:45 p.m., if not earlier. Despite that, the agency allowed Trump to take the stage at 6:03 p.m.
The shooting occurred at 6:11 p.m., and the Secret Service still insists that agents never knew there was a gunman on the nearby roof.
Perhaps just as egregiously, the Secret Service counter sniper waited 15 seconds after Crooks began shooting before returning fire. It was a local cop—not the Secret Service—who shot Crooks first, stopping his mass shooting spree.
Higgins’s report also detailed how the local cop, a Butler SWAT operator, stopped Crooks.
“On his own, this ESU SWAT operator took a very hard shot, one shot. He stopped Crooks and importantly, I believe the shot damaged the buffer tube on Crooks’ AR … This means that if his AR buffer tube was damaged, Crooks’ rifle wouldn’t fire after his 8th shot,” he said.
“Crooks ‘went down’ from his firing position when shot 9 was fired, and the SWAT officer was certain of his hit … The 10th (and, I believe, final) shot was fired from the [Secret Service] southern counter-sniper team.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
