By Mike Huckabee
August 1, 2024
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Ronald Rowe looks straight out of Central Casting for the character one might envision as head of the Secret Service --- brawny, tough, serious. And he’s a 24-year veteran of the agency, a member of George W. Bush’s protective detail from 2004 to 2008. But this new replacement for Director Kimberly Cheatle, previously her second-in-command, isn’t a good fit for an agency in need of reform.
Dan Bongino warns that Rowe might be just as bad as Cheatle, or even worse. After all, Rowe was reportedly the one who sent the memo advising agents not to wear red ties when on duty for Trump, lest they look too much like Trump supporters. And during his time as deputy director, he’d likely had even more executive involvement in enforcing agency policy than Cheatle had. So his just-like-that promotion to the top spot --- by Homeland Security Director Alejandro Mayorkas, who has huge credibility issues of his own --- especially at this time of scrutiny, is questionable at best.
Tuesday morning, in his testimony before a joint Senate committee hearing about the shooting in Pennsylvania on July 13 of Trump and three rally attendees, one of whom died, Rowe proved this.
As Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul said, “The person who made these decisions can’t be in a position of authority again.” But Rowe repeatedly failed to name the individuals, such as the site commander, who would’ve been making decisions that day. (The site commander is the one who would’ve determined the security perimeter, which on that day curiously did NOT include the building that provided the shooter with the perfect vantage point.)
In talking about what happened, Rowe used a lot of passive verbs --- “mistakes were made” --- without ever offering the subjects of those verbs. Example: when the subject was communications about the suspicious guy on the roof, he said, “None of that information ever made it over our net.” As if particular human beings aren’t responsible for retrieving the information and it’s just supposed to come to them on its own. It’s the information that’s at fault, for not making its way to them!
As Sen. Josh Hawley posted Tuesday on X: “The Secret Service director to me today: a lot of people made a lot of mistakes but we won’t tell you who and we won’t fire anybody.”
https://instapundit.com/664105/
Rowe said the Office of Professional Responsibility (Ha!) is reviewing the actions before, during and after the rally and refused during the hearing to answer questions ahead of their findings. He seemed monumentally unprepared to provide even the most basic information that anyone would anticipate being asked. For example, when Utah Sen. Mike Lee asked him why President Trump was allowed to take the stage “exactly 17 minutes after multiple suspicious person reports were provided, complete with photos and information suggesting the assailant had a range finder, something that ordinary people don’t use…?” Rowe was particularly obtuse:
“Senator, it was ‘suspicion,’ not ‘weapon,’ or there was never any communication that there was an individual with a gun or threat or other bad intentions.”
Isn’t suspicion enough? Something to at least check out? Florida Sen. Rick Scott, in an interview with FOX NEWS’ Trace Gallagher, could only shake his head at this willingness to take any risk with a President’s life and also at his overall lack of transparency. When Scott, as governor, had shootings in his state, they held multiple press briefings with all law enforcement agencies, providing all the information they had. These joint conferences should be happening every day, he said. But in 17 days, they hadn’t had even one.
Former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker echoed what Bongino has been saying about it being the responsibility of the Secret Service, not local law enforcement, “to set the conditions, communications, and all their expectations. If they’re gonna leverage local officers and work in interagency operations, they’ve gotta let them in the tent. And in this case, it was clear, they want to wear the dark suits and the sunglasses and be all around the President and the podium, [but] they’re not out there in the trenches, actually patrolling and getting on rooftops. If they’re not gonna do that, then they need to make sure the local officers know exactly what to do and how they communicate things of that nature.”
We know now that the Secret Service did not show up for the 9 AM security briefing that day and had no face-to-face meetings at all with local law enforcement --- until AFTER the shooting. We also know there was essentially no advance team, as the counter-snipers hadn’t even been green-lighted until the day before the rally. Critically, agents and locals never figured out how they were going to talk to each other, as different teams were on separate radio communications.
Swecker also noted that “they’re spending too many resources on...things other than protection.” Congress should explore this in another hearing, he said, because “they have the resources.” Fine, but we have to wonder if “resources” aren’t a red herring --- that agency officials might just feel inclined to skimp on Trump’s protection because it’s, well, Trump.
Susan Crabtree, who’s been doing some fine reporting on this story, cites an email from an anonymous Secret Service counter-sniper who is furious over the failures on that day. He warns the Secret Service that “we all SHOULD expect another assassination attempt to happen before November” because “We’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership,” adding that the counter-snipers that day “DID THEIR JOB with their hands tied.” A must-read…
FOX NEWS’ Jeff Paul reported Tuesday night that the two big questions are: 1) HOW did the shooter get on the roof and manage to get off eight shots, and, 2) WHY did he do it? The answer to the first question is coming together, as we know the shooter’s timeline for that day, starting in the morning when he legally purchased 50 rounds of ammo from a local gun store. At 11AM, he went to the site of the rally and spent an hour there --- WHERE WAS SECURITY? --- before returning home. At 1:30, he told his parents he was going to a shooting range and left the house. At about 3:45, he was back at the scene and began flying his drone. (Again, WHERE WAS SECURITY?)
One local law enforcement officer texted about this strange person at 5:38 PM, saying, “I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.”
One big question that remains is why it seems no one was monitoring that particular roof. Beaver County Emergency Services Commander Patrick Young told FOX NEWS that his local snipers “were never told to monitor a specific roof.” He denies the story that they’d been assigned to be on that roof but hadn’t done it because of the heat. “That’s ridiculous,” he said. “...Our snipers are prepared to operate in Western Pennsylvania, from anywhere from 10 degrees below zero to 90 degrees. They were prepared to be wherever they were told by Secret Service that day.”
He also told FOX NEWS that he personally has yet to hear from the Secret Service about what happened that day.
As for the WHY, that’s where we’re really not getting transparency from the government, except perhaps to further a particular political narrative. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate made a point of saying in this hearing that there’s a social media account “believed to be associated with the shooter” that would appear to reflect “anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes (here we go), to espouse political violence, and are described as extreme in nature.”
Sen. Scott said that if investigators have uncovered an account like that, they should make it public. “Let us all look at it; don’t just give us little tidbits of it.”
Transparency may happen in spite of the FBI’s preference for an anti-Trump narrative. According to Victoria Taft of PJ MEDIA, the joint Senate committee hearing Tuesday “wittingly or unwittingly uncovered that the feds have been hiding the murderer’s radical, pro-Democrat connections. [Yes, he was a registered Republican, but that can certainly be true of a Democrat switching sides to vote in a closed primary.] The question that wasn’t asked during the joint committee hearing was, ‘Why have you been hiding this?’”
This gunman allegedly had a Gab account, and Taft reports that Andrew Torba, the CEO of Gab, “has been sounding the alarm on the feds’ duplicitous framing of the shooter’s mindset.” He says he was served with a request for information about the account “epic microwave,” which is believed to have been associated with the shooter and, he insists, was not right-wing but “UNEQUIVOCALLY” (emphasis his) a pro-Biden account. The shooter didn’t post himself but commented on other posts 17 times.
The discrepancy between what Rowe said in the hearing about the shooter’s mindset and what we can see for ourselves is so obvious that even Elon Musk suggested he might have perjured himself. Taft’s article is a must-read.
The CIA is denying an obscure conspiracy theory called “MKUltra,” about a brainwashing program, allegedly dating from the ‘50s and ‘60s, to create mind-controlled assets as in THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE. Some social media users are claiming the Trump shooter had been trained and controlled in this way.
Not that we trust any denial coming from the current FBI or CIA, but here’s an idea: How about looking at what we actually know and can find out and putting together a scenario based on real evidence and actual human behavior?
https://www.westernjournal.com/cia-addresses-mkultra-claims-regarding-trump-shooting/
Finally, you know Dan Bongino is wary of this new director, saying he’s heard Rowe is “as bad or worse” than his predecessor. Accordingly, several sources also tell REALCLEAR POLITICS that Rowe “was directly involved in denying additional security resources and personnel, including counter-snipers, to former President Trump’s rallies and events --- despite repeated requests by the agents assigned to Trump’s detail in the two years leading up to his July 13 attempted assassination.”
Bongino’s podcast from Tuesday provides stunning new video and also running commentary on the hearing, which goes on at the same time. Don’t miss this. You can feel his deep frustration at the lack of specific questions the senators don’t know to ask, mixed with disgust at some of the answers they got. Our thought is that Bongino needs to be working with the legislators to help them pin these officials down, and also help Trump assemble a solid personal security team of his own, right away.
https://bongino.com/ep-2297-new-video-surfaces-in-the-secret-service-scandal
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