By Mike Huckabee
August 1, 2024
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James Copenhaver, one of the shooting victims at Trump’s July 13 rally, was hit twice, critically injured and has only recently been discharged from the hospital. Before the bullets struck him, though, he happened to record some amazing video that catches glimpses of the rooftop gunman from a new vantage point. Copenhaver’s attorney passed the video to FOX NEWS, where it aired Wednesday night.
It clearly shows the gunman moving around on the roof of “Building 6,” which, unbelievably, had not been included by the Secret Service inside their perimeter of security. This video was taken only about three minutes before he opened fire on the stage.
Copenhaver was recording this while sitting behind Trump and to his left, right in the path of the bullets that would whiz past past Trump. From that angle, Building 6 looks absurdly close to the stage. How could the Secret Service possibly have failed to secure it before Trump stepped out to speak --- that is, unless such failure were deliberate on someone’s part?
One would think that even Trump’s personal detail, those near enough to pounce on him and shield him in the event of a shooting, might have seen somebody up there. But perhaps their focus is supposed to be on the immediate environment: the protectee (Trump), the stage and the crowd.
Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino brought up something in his Wednesday podcast that had occurred to him after seeing new acting Director Ron Rowe testify on Tuesday. When Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley asked Rowe for the name of the site supervisor --- the agent who would have made the decision about what buildings to include within the security perimeter and also was the one to decline the offer of a drone (!) --- Rowe answered, “Senator, I cannot give you that name. This person is operational. They’re still doing investigations. They’re still doing protective business.” What??
A stunned Sen. Hawley then asked next logical question, “Why have they not been relieved of duty?”
Rowe answered, “They are still cooperating now and being interviewed by the FBI, but also by our Office of Professional Responsibility…” (We’ll wait a moment while you recover from laughing hysterically at the name “Office of Professional Responsibility.”)
So, let’s get this straight. While his or her extremely ill-advised decisions are being investigated after a deadly shooting that almost took out a President of the United States, this person is still on assignment, doing protective work? Bongino was floored by that.
Next we’ll hear that this person is on assignment for Trump. It’s just beyond belief.
On Wednesday, FOX NEWS’ Jesse Watters interviewed Florida Rep. Michael Walz, a former Green Beret who’s on the new congressional task force investigating the shooting. Of the shooter moving around on the roof, “You could see that from the ground,” he said. “Half the crowd could see it.” This entire administration, he said, “from the Defense Department through to the Secret Service,” has a big problem with “accountability, or the lack thereof.” People have got to be fired --- “at least suspended,” he said, though we would say he was right the first time: FIRED.
“The fact that that lead agent is still approving advances, is still approving rallies, is still approving events, when they did something so asinine and stupid as leaving that building outside the perimeter, it’s mind-blowing. But the other lie...in the Senate hearing, was the deputy director of the FBI [Paul Abbate] saying, ‘Well, there was a social media account in 2019, but we’re not sure if it was tied to the shooter,’ and then the social media site Gab says, ‘Wait a minute. I have an emergency request right here, tying it to the shooter.” That account “trashed Trump, was all about the progressives, and had a lot of anti-Semitic remarks on it.”
The American people don’t know what to believe at this point, he said, commending Speaker Mike Johnson for putting the task force together and adding that “Lord knows, we’ve got a lot of work to do.” He wants to subpoena “the entire chain that approved the security plan for this rally, every one of ‘em.” And their investigators should be right there in the Secret Service buildings, at the FBI and Homeland Security headquarters.
Mayorkas’ spokesperson lied to us the very day after the shooting, Walz said, when he told us Trump was never denied any security resources. There’s now plenty of evidence to the contrary.
https://www.foxnews.com/video/6359714344112
Apparently, the FBI is still having difficulty getting into encrypted apps on the shooter’s smartphone. “Reports that [the shooter] used encrypted apps and had data stored overseas have raised questions about who he was talking to --- and about what,” FOX NEWS said Wednesday. This is especially true now that authorities have acknowledged a pre-existing Iranian threat on Trump’s life.
For what the word of any FBI official is worth, deputy FBI Director Abbate says there’s no evidence the shooter had any co-conspirators but that the encrypted information on his phone “remains a wild card.” And, in breaking news, they’ve contracted with the Israeli tech firm Cellebrite to get into those encrypted apps.
John Solomon and Steven Richards of JUST THE NEWS reported Wednesday that three months before this rally, Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari warned the Secret Service that it was not properly communicating with other law enforcement agencies “prior to and during large events.” Solomon appeared on Wednesday’s HANNITY show with details about this report, which flagged them for “not training your agents properly to detect security threats when you sweep an event before or during [it]. This is directly as a result of the fact that in 2021, they brought Kamala Harris within ten yards of a bomb; they didn’t detect the bomb sitting ten yards in open view underneath a bench at the Democratic National Committee.” (Of course, there was much more to the January 6 pipe bomber story; we don’t know for sure that the bomb was even there when VP-elect Harris was ushered into DNC headquarters.)
IG Cuffari issued the Secret Service a second flag (which also can be applied to J6), this one for lack of adequate communication “in coordination with the law enforcement agencies locally.” Congress was briefed just this week on the April report, Solomon writes, and it might be released sometime Thursday, but the Secret Service and Mayorkas want it to be heavily redacted first. We’ll just bet they do. Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight and an all-round hero for his persistence in getting the real story of J6, is working on having as few redactions as possible. He’ll issue a subpoena if necessary.
According to Solomon, even the parts that remain unredacted will be “explosive.”
In an update to the story about a Secret Service counter-sniper’s email saying to expect another attempt on Trump’s life before November, the Secret Service quickly deleted it. This email had strongly called for the firing of all five top-level officers and had been sent not to the agents but to every member of the Uniformed Division.
Acting Director Rowe told two Senate committees earlier this week, “To prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, I directed our personnel to ensure every event site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented.” But Dan Bongino is not impressed; in fact, he’s not reassured in the slightest.
For when you have time, here’s his podcast from Wednesday. You’ll see, he hasn’t calmed down for one second about the risk to President Trump.
https://bongino.com/ep-2298-trump-is-in-real-danger-with-this-secret-service-leadership
RELATED: The House committee members who will investigate the tragic Secret Service debacle have been named. Speaking of dodging a bullet, the Democrats did NOT appoint former J6 Kangaroo Kommittee chair Bennie Thompson, who led a push to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection entirely. I guess they decided that would draw unwanted attention to the terrible consequences of their bad decisions, and that’s something Democrats always try to hide in election years.
RELATED, BREAKING NEWS: Speaking of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, he might be a tad preoccupied right now with a federal election integrity case that’s been filed against him and some other individuals in Florida. And guess who’s been assigned to it? U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon. This is a developing story; more soon.
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