By Mike Huckabee
July 26, 2024
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One of the first questions we had after the assassination attempt on Trump almost two weeks ago was, “Why wasn’t Trump’s security detail using drones to get an overhead view of the location?”
If agents hadn’t thought to bring them (!), they probably could’ve run by Costco or Home Depot and bought one for a couple hundred dollars. This is 2024; anybody can buy a drone with a video camera. Sure enough, it was revealed that the shooter himself had brought along his own drone and flown it just two hours before the rally started. It’s mind-blowing that someone on the grounds --- either Secret Service or local law enforcement --- didn’t see this, walk up to him, and ever-so-politely ask him, “What the (bleep) do you think you’re doing here with that drone?”
And now, it’s even worse. In breaking news Thursday, Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley’s office has heard from a whistleblower that the night before the rally, a local law enforcement partner OFFERED the Secret Service the use of their drone technology to secure the area. According to this whistleblower, their drones were capable not only of providing air surveillance but also helping “neutralize” active shooters. The Secret Service turned down their offer.
The mind reels. (We can’t help being reminded of Trump’s authorization of 10,000 National Guard for January 6th, also turned down.)
Oh, but AFTER the shooting, THEN the Secret Service asked this same local partner to use its drones after all, to surveil the area in the aftermath of the deadly event. In fact, FOX NEWS’ Trace Gallagher showed some of the post-shooting video on his show Thursday night. You can see exactly where the gunman had been and his clear view of the stage. There’s also the reverse view, the look back at the gunman’s roof from where the counter-snipers were posted, on two other roofs.
As President Trump said on “FOX and Friends,” “The Secret Service --- they’re such great people...It’s a blight on their reputation. There should have been somebody on the roof. When you look at it now, it’s a clear shot.”
Hawley wrote a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding that he testify next week and also provide “no later than seven days from now all records and communications concerning the availability or use of drones at the July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, P
“It is hard to understand,” Hawley wrote, “why [the Secret Service] would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact that [they] permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before the event.”
“Hard to understand” is the understatement of the year. Try “impossible.”
Hawley is set to introduce proposed legislation, the “Trump Assassination Attempt Transparency Act,” which compels the federal government --- the Director of National Intelligence, FBI and Secretary of Homeland Security --- to declassify details concerning the incident and the shooter’s motives.
As reported by TRENDING POLITICS, “The bill calls for intelligence agencies to compile and present a detailed report to Congress on their findings, following Trump’s repeated pleas for additional resources. If passed, this legislation could peel back layers of secrecy surrounding national security incidents and potentially reform how intelligence is handled and shared at the highest levels.”
Hawley told FOX NEWS’ Laura Ingraham Thursday that “the Secret Service clearly had no idea what they were doing on the day.” He said there’s something else he’s heard from whistleblowers: that law enforcement officers were “supposed to be patrolling the perimeter of the building” but didn’t because of the heat. They had avoided being on the roof as well, reportedly for the same reason.
“This is a shambles from top to bottom, beginning to end,” he said. He’s glad Kim Cheatle is gone, but “that needs to be just the beginning.” A lot of people need to lose their jobs, he said, and the Secret Service “needs to be totally overhauled.”
President Trump has his own way of dealing with the risk to his personal safety posed by Iran, now that a plan to assassinate him has been uncovered. He posted this: “If they [Iran] do assassinate President Trump, which is always a possibility, I hope that America obliterates Iran, wipes it off the face of the Earth --- if that does not happen, American Leaders will be considered ‘gutless’ cowards!”
We suggested this week that former 12-year Secret Service agent Dan Bongino lead an investigation, or at least help choose the one to lead it. Lo! and behold, on Thursday, out of serious concern for Trump’s safety in the months to come, especially with their new choice of acting director, he volunteered to help reform the agency in a new Trump administration, as a consultant or in any role they’d like. (“This is turning into 1968 all over again,” he said in his podcast.) Let’s hope Trump takes him up on the offer.
During his testimony Wednesday, FBI Director Chris Wray suggested that Trump’s ear might not have been grazed by a bullet, but hit by shrapnel. Online chats are full of this claim, with leftists needing desperately to make light of Trump’s injury, when the reality is that he came very close to being killed. (They’re disappointed he wasn’t, in fact.) It’s sad if Wray is choosing to indulge this thinking.
In an exchange with Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Wray said, “With respect to President Trump, there’s some question about whether or not it’s a bullet or shrapnel that hit his ear.” However, this remark came after Dr. (and Texas Congressman) Ronny Jackson, Trump’s physician, had made it clear that “Trump sustained a gunshot wound to the right ear,” a quarter inch away from entering Trump’s head. “The bullet track produced a 2 cm wide wound that extended down to the cartilaginous surface of the ear,” he wrote. “There was initially significant bleeding, followed by marked swelling of the entire upper ear.”
As we reported Thursday, Trump called for Wray’s resignation over saying he hadn’t noticed Biden’s cognitive decline, saying that Wray must have been lying to Congress. (It’s true: Wray is either lying, or else mighty clueless for someone who’s supposed to be leading an investigative agency!) Trump’s spokesperson, Steven Cheung, said, “Anyone who believes this conspiracy bulls—t is either mentally deficient or peddling falsehoods for political reasons. We have seen there is no depth low enough for the Biden-Harris administration. So it’s not surprising they are doing this now.”
RELATED: Congress is dependent on whistleblowers to get the full, behind-the-scenes story of the assassination attempt and the ensuing investigation, but they know there’s a high probability of retribution if they come forward. For example, FBI Staff Operations Specialist Marcus Allen lost his security clearance for sending colleagues public articles that questioned the FBI’s handling of the violence at the Capitol. Ridiculously, they had said they had “security concerns” about his “loyalty to the United States.”
Allen was suspended from the FBI for “conspiratorial views in regard to the events of January 6.” While he was suspended --- without pay --- he was not allowed to seek other employment or even accept charitable donations, as he was “technically still subject to gift rules.” Perhaps you recall this case; apparently, they were trying to starve him into quitting and losing his pension. This went on for 27 months.
But on May 31, whistleblower attorney Tristan Leavitt of Empower Oversight reached a settlement for his client in which all back pay would be reimbursed and his security clearance reinstated. House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan called it “total vindication for this great patriot,” adding that “Marcus bravely stood up to expose misconduct at the FBI, despite attacks from FBI bureaucrats and congressional Democrats.”
Two other FBI whistleblowers are still waiting for their security clearances to be restored, Garret O’Boyle and Stephen Friend.
Leavitt also went after Director Wray for what appears to have been political retaliation at the FBI, stating this in a letter to the congressional oversight committees: “The FBI is not a private club for FBI executives to make in their own image. Empower Oversight respectfully requests that you work swiftly to independently corroborate the information in the attached disclosure with other witnesses, publicly document your findings, hold Director Wray and any responsible FBI officials accountable, and pass legislation to fix the abusive security clearance process and successfully protect future whistleblowers.”
For this to happen, of course, heads are going to have to roll at several agencies. Here’s another great whistleblower story, this one from the IRS. Remember IRS agent Gary Shapley, who testified before the House Ways and Means Committee about the mishandling of the Hunter Biden tax investigation? That case is going on in California now, and Hunter attorneys Chris Clark and Abbe Lowell have gone on the offensive against the agents, even accusing them of trying to “evade their own misconduct [alleged leaking].”
Attorneys for Shapley will not let that stand and have hit back hard. Details here…
(FYI, speaking of Hunter’s tax case, the judge just blasted his attorneys for their dishonesty in trying to get the case dismissed, citing the same grounds that led Judge Cannon to find that Trump prosecutor Jack Smith is not a legally-appointed special counsel. Their problem: Hunter’s prosecutor was.)
Finally, this must-read from Miranda Devine at the NEW YORK POST: A new whistleblower report draws on testimony from more than 30 “independent, highly credible law enforcement sources and sub-sources” across the country who “do not trust the FBI because they believe the FBI in recent years has been operating as a partisan agency motivated by a political agenda.” Coincidentally (or not), their scathing report about a “crisis of confidence” at the FBI dropped just as Director Wray was testifying before Congress.
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