An ex-FBI assistant director is venting his frustrations over the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July. Chris Swecker, a 24-year veteran of the bureau, said that the digital footprint that’s now being revealed about would-be assassin Thomas Crooks showed that this person would’ve been on the FBI’s radar long before he fired multiple shots at the president. Police killed Crooks during the incident. Swecker added that former FBI Director Chris Wray was desperate to pin this crime on a far-right individual (via NY Post):
The FBI had multiple “missed opportunities” to stop Thomas Crooks before he tried to assassinate President Trump, a former assistant director at the Bureau has told The Post.
Last week, The Post reported on multiple extremist social media posts believed to be tied to Crooks, including numerous threats of political violence and a dramatic shift against Trump, after previously expressing his admiration for the Republican.
If even “half” of Trump’s would-be assassin’s extremist digital footprint turns out to be true, he should have been on the FBI’s radar long before the 20-year-old opened fired on the then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, said Chris Swecker, a retired FBI assistant director.
“It’s clear that he was popping off on the social media sites and saying things that should have garnered attention,” Swecker, who served in the FBI for 24 years, said.
“That constitutes a miss on the part of the FBI,” he added, saying that the Bureau’s handling of the investigation earned a “a C- grade.”
[…]
Swecker — who retired from the Bureau in 2006 — also claimed that the FBI under then-director Christopher Wray was desperate to pin Trump’s would-be assassin as a far-right lone gunman.
He said it seemed clear to him that when agents found evidence to the contrary, the Bureau “had its thumb on the scales” of the investigation.
This led to a lack of transparency in the investigation, which allowed conspiracy theories to spread and multiply, he said.
“A little bit of transparency goes a long way in these types of investigations,” said Swecker, who served as assistant director of the FBI for the Criminal Investigative Division from 2004 to 2006.
“There was a bias in the FBI towards right-wing extremists. And if there was a right-wing extremist ideology, that got surfaced real quick in any of these shootings. But if there was a left-wing extremist ideology driving it, it was glossed over,” Swecker said
He said that view was “shared by a lot of my colleagues” in the FBI.
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Crooks seemed to hate everybody, as he also wrote nasty posts about killing Jews and members of the Squad on the Hill. The Squad is the most vocal, left-wing members of the Democratic House Caucus, including Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).
This kid was allowed to perch on an unsecured rooftop some 400 feet from the main stage at this rally, a glaring security breach for which the Secret Service has yet to provide an answer that isn’t laughable. The FBI also refused to disclose all information about this case to congressional investigators, prompting some to call for a new review.
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