There have been two attempted assassinations of former President Donald Trump, and both times, the suspects have known information only insiders would know about security. How could that be?
Since Sunday's attempted assassination of Trump, making it the second one in two months, several questions have still gone unanswered, such as how the latest suspect knew the former president would be playing golf— which was decided at the last minute.
According to Secret Service (USSS) director Ronald Rowe Jr., Trump's golf day at his West Palm Beach, Florida golf course was OTR, which stands for an off-the-record movement, or one that is not on the official schedule. This means that very few people have access to such information.
Another question that is still unanswered is how the gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, went undetected for 12 hours.
Routh was "lying in wait" for Trump to reach the golf course's fifth hole when a Secret Service agent saw a rifle barrel poking through a fence further along the course's boundary.
So, again, after the first assassination attempt on Trump, how did a second one occur just months apart? Despite the 45th president's Secret Service detail organizing a new security plan for such cases, how did something like this even come to fruition?
Well, two people close to Trump are speculating a reason.
Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) suggested there might be a "mole" within the Secret Service, noting that he and his Republican colleagues are suspicious there is something deeper going on within the agency and someone providing information about points of vulnerability.
Recommended
"I've not seen evidence of that, but I've got colleagues that are very, very smart at this who say they can't rule that out, given some of the anomalies and the fact pattern here," he said.
Gaetz agreed that the "aura of invincibility of the Secret Service" has declined, pointing to a "desire to diminish him within some of these agencies that are giving him less protection."
Meanwhile, former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino echoed similar remarks after several whistleblowers reached out to him speculating the same thing:
How did he know how to set up and where to set up and that Trump was going to be there? Folks, the mole may not be a foreign national themselves. I don't want you to think Jason Bourne stuff. Don't overcomplicate what doesn't need to be overcomplicated. Is there a honeypot trap going on in the Secret Service? Is there a guy or a woman in the Secret Service having a relationship with someone who is not who they say they are? The Iranians have been running these traps in Israel and elsewhere. The Iranians who want to kill President Trump and have a documented multi-year history of trying to get a long-range sniper threat against President Trump. Folks, how do we know that there's not some honeypot trap and that some agent or some DHS personnel, someone who has to be notified, is not in a relationship with someone? It is time to start asking serious questions. The hack propagandist media, which has already forgotten about Donald Trump being shot in the head just a couple of months ago, absolutely refuses to ask, but I'm going to ask it. There was an incident when I was there in training, and I'm telling you, the quality control here when it comes to spy stuff.
Bongino questioned whether someone in the agency was compromised. He explained that OTRs are dangerous because they mean the security plan is going to be different—it won't have as much security surrounding a high-profile official. However, he said the "logic behind an off-the-record movement is if we didn't know we were going there, then the jackal doesn't know either."
As a result, he called for the OTR Security Plan to be thrown out now that phones, social media, and technology have evolved, and it takes only seconds for someone to be spotted and the whole country to know.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member