Getting to Ground Zero In the Assassination Attempt Investigation

For Congress to get to the bottom of the assassination attempt against Trump, it must ask the right person the right question. (Hint: Kimberly Cheatle is not the right person.)

The good news is that Congress wants to get to the bottom of the security failure at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally last week. James Comer (R-Ky), chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, noted that “there are questions about how a rooftop within proximity to President Trump was left unsecure.” He has announced that his committee will convene a hearing on July 22 to investigate.

The bad news is that Rep. Comer plans to begin his inquiry into the debacle by examining the Secret Service’s director, Kimberly Cheatle. However, all knowledge about the debacle lies with the agents on the ground. She’s a desk jockey.

The typical command structure of a federal agency, from bottom to top, is something along the lines of Agent to Manager to Deputy Assistant Director to Assistant Director to Director. The agency director and all the intermediate supervisors know nothing about the debacle except what the agents on the ground tell them.

Director Cheatle’s job is to take the information that wafts up from the ground through her subordinates, package it neatly with political acceptability, and deliver the package to Congress. Director Cheatle will no doubt discharge her function with aplomb, and Congress will only hear what Director Cheatle wants Congress to hear.

Therefore, we will very soon witness the customary congressional committee hearings. If nature is allowed to take its natural course, these hearings will drone on and on, focusing only on the agency heads and subheads. But the true center of factual gravity of the entire episode is the Secret Service (SS) sniper who killed Crooks. If light is to be shone on what actually happened, that SS sniper is the one who must be deposed.

We do know that on Saturday, July 13, one Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate Trump. Crooks fired seven rounds (some reports say eight), striking Trump in the ear, killing one bystander and wounding two others. We do not know whether the seven rounds were from seven trigger pulls or were a burst of automatic fire.

But from the very git-go, questions began to arise.

Politico commented,

Moments after Saturday’s attempted assassination, when live images of Trump clutching a bloody ear and raising his fist in defiance appeared on cable news and social media, critics almost immediately began to question why Secret Service snipers didn’t fire sooner amid reports that onlookers were pointing to Crooks, who was positioned and crawling on a nearby roof, before he managed to fire seven shots at Trump and the crowd.

Three days after the event, Ron Paul wrote,

Video has emerged showing that for at least two minutes law enforcement knew someone with a gun was on a roof aiming at the former President and no one communicated the need to pull Trump from the stage. You can clearly hear the crowd warning law enforcement that someone was on the roof. Yet he was unhindered until the first shots rang out.

MSNBC reported that a U.S. Secret Service sniper killed Crooks “within seconds” after Crooks shot Trump.

How many seconds? Ten? Two?

Was the USSS sniper aware of Crooks’ presence before Crooks fired? Did the SS sniper have Crooks in his telescopic sights when Crooks fired? If so, why did not the sniper fire first?

No wonder that, only one day after the shooting, Rep. Cory Mills told FOX News host Jesse Watters, “This is massive negligence to the point of me speculating on what was intentional and what wasn’t.”

Elon Musk said that the almost-successful assassination attempt was “Extreme incompetence, or it was deliberate?”

Ground Zero of the information food chain regarding this event is the USSS sniper who killed Crooks. It is with this USSS sniper that Comer should commence his examination.

The relevant details about the event will fall somewhere between these bookends:

(a) Either the USSS sniper is enjoying the rally, innocently humming a hymn, patiently surveying the crowd and the horizon for trouble, when suddenly he hears the telltale “pop! Pop! Pop!” of nearby rifle fire. The sniper quickly locates the rooftop rifleman and quickly neutralizes him.

(b) Or, through his telescopic sight, the USSS sniper has been intently watching the rooftop rifleman for some time, planning to neutralize the rifleman the instant he hears the “pop” of the rifle. His telescopic sight is focused on the rifleman’s head; he hears the “pop” and observes the barrel of the rifle jump, and he then fires.

The key question that Comer and his committee should propound to the USSS sniper that will tell us just where between those two bookends the facts of the scenario actually fell is this: “Mr. USSS sniper, exactly where were you and exactly what were you doing when you heard the ‘pop’ of the rifle?”

The answer to that question and its logical follow-up will illuminate the entire scenario.