The Secret Service is facing mounting pressure to explain how a 20-year-old would-be assassin climbed on top of a roof and fired shots at former President Donald Trump without authorities noticing.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino is demanding answers from the agency, revealing troubling details about the breach of security that left Trump injured.
Bongino, who spent 12 years working in the Secret Service under President George W. Bush and President Obama, pointed out obvious mistakes that could have changed the trajectory of the country forever.
He pointed to three issues plaguing the Secret Service that resulted in a would-be assassination of one of the most high-profile public figures in the country.
One, Bongino wrote in an op-ed, is the lack of manpower and security equipment.
How is it that multiple layers of law enforcement missed a man scaling the roof of a building less than 500 feet from the president? And why didn’t the security personnel heed the warnings of rally-goers who were caught on video alerting agents to the shooter? If the shooter on the roof was clearly visible to attendees on the ground, then he should have been visible to the security team on the ground. Here’s what I can tell you. Security personnel close to former President Trump reached out to me long before the assassination attempt to tell me Trump’s security team had repeatedly requested a larger security footprint, but they were repeatedly rebuffed. Via the New York Post.
The second, according to Bongino, is failed leadership.
He blamed the agency's incompetent and corrupt management for what could have changed the course of American history for the worse. Bongino accused Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle of aiming for 30 percent of the agency to be women by 2030.
Bongino explained that DEI initiatives and hiring based on meeting quotas ultimately lower the agency's quality of personnel and standards. He then called on Cheatle to resign immediately.
The third issue is the “politicization of an agency that necessitates, arguably above all others, political neutrality.”
A would-be assassin nearly killed President Trump, did murder an innocent MAGA supporter, and critically injured two other rallygoers. This was no victory. Any spokesperson or talking head who overlooks the glaring mistakes made Saturday or who tries to paint the assassination attempt as a Secret Service success story is lying through their teeth and does not deserve your attention or respect. Via the Post.
A new HarrisX/Forbes survey found that more than half (55 percent) of respondents believe the Secret Service is at fault for the would-be assassin of Trump and should be investigated.
Only 45 percent said the agency did an “admirable job and reacted as fast as possible with bravery.”
Many question how the sniper got on the roof in the first place and why law enforcement was not guarding it despite it being only about 150 yards from the former president.
In response, Cheatle claimed that police snipers were not put on the roof due to a “safety factor” of putting someone on a “sloped roof.”
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