On Thursday, the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump questioned local law enforcement personnel and members of the Pennsylvania State Police who were at the Butler rally July 13.  This hearing did not include the FBI, but their appearance there would’ve been a waste of time, anyway, as they would’ve used their go-to trick of refusing to speak about “an ongoing investigation.”  As with numerous other so-called FBI “investigations,” one gets the idea that the only reason they bothered to open an investigation is so they could say it was an investigation.

FOX NEWS’ Trey Gowdy noted on Sunday night that “the questions were far better than the answers.”  We don’t know if the FBI really doesn’t have the answers or “if they’re just not sharing what they do know.”  Due to this opaqueness on their part, we still lack answers to some basic questions about how the shooting went down.

For one thing, there’s no resolution to the conflicting accounts about who shot at the gunman first, the local sharpshooter or the Secret Service.  In his Friday podcast, former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino reviewed what was said by the locals on Thursday, such as Adam Lenz of the Adams Township Police Department testifying that the local officer involved had said he is “very confident that his round was on target,” and that the gunman didn’t “duck” but had actually been hit.  The local medical examiner, however, testified that there was evidence of just one bullet wound, the obviously fatal one.

Why is this important?  According to Tennessee Rep. Mark Green, who was questioning Lenz, the FBI’s briefing to Congress had included nothing about a shot from “the local guys.”  Why would they have said nothing in their briefing about this, when it was that sharpshooter’s round that actually STOPPED the would-be assassin from killing Trump, as it delayed him long enough for Trump to turn his head.

“This should not be hard to figure out,” Bongino said, as the autopsy would show how many times the deceased was hit.  The local sharpshooter “apparently hit the butt of the rifle,” which was enough to momentarily shock the gunman out of what he was doing.  That’s not to take away from the Secret Service counter-sniper, who killed the gunman in an amazing shot after being given “only, like, five minutes” to view the site before the event.  Both shooters are heroes.

Bongino thinks the reason we aren’t being told about this is political and speculates that “the Secret Service... [doesn’t] want to admit that they weren’t the ones who stopped [the gunman], that it was probably the local guy.”  This is a clue to us about how they work; they could clear up the discrepancy but “just don’t want to.”  The secrecy around this (among other things) is “not helping.”

According to Texas Rep. Pat Fallon in an interview with FOX NEWS’ Kayleigh McEnany, there were “nine different ways in which they could have mitigated the threat that the AGR building presented.”   But “none of those things were done,” he said.  With another attempt happening just weeks later, he called this “absolutely absurd --- we’re living in a world of the bizarre.”

With the myriad problems the Secret Service had that day in protecting Trump and his supporters --- especially given the known Iranian threat hanging over Trump’s head --- the question is no longer whether or not this massive screw-up was intentional.  There are so many layers of shortcomings and mistakes in judgment, Bongino can only conclude that “layered incompetence IS intent.”  The number of unexplainable decisions is, in itself, inexplainable any other way.  Intent is assumed.  He’s essentially saying the same thing we’ve said, about “malicious negligence.”

Bongino starts talking about all of this at about 10:00.  If you start at the beginning, though, he discusses the very real threat of a surface-to-air missile being lobbed at Trump’s plane from somewhere in the U.S.  He’s concerned, again, about the level of security (supposedly) now being given to Trump and also the Secret Service’s overall resistance to advances in technology.

He also calls out the Secret Service for using its so-called “manpower shortage” while the U.N. General Assembly is meeting this month in Manhattan as a reason why President Trump has to limit his campaign appearances, like the one in Wisconsin that was reportedly canceled.  Ironically, some of that “manpower” being denied the former President as he campaigns is being used right now to protect the president of Iran and his entourage, the very people who are working to sidestep the Secret Service and assassinate Trump.  It would be hard to make up something this crazy.

https://thefederalist.com/2024/09/26/biden-administration-denying-protection-assets-for-trump-forces-him-to-cancel-wisconsin-rally/

https://bongino.com/ep-2338-another-serious-threat-to-trumps-life

Trey Gowdy got additional perspective from former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker on his show Sunday night.  Historically, Swecker noted, the Secret Service is “just not” a transparent organization.  They’ve traditionally depended on their “mystique” in the past to deter assassinations, he said, but “that mystique is gone.”  Now they’re going to have to get serious about being the protective agency that they were intended to be.

They try to blame the locals, Swecker said, but this failure is on the leadership, 100 percent.  And with the serious Iran threat, we’ve got to make sure they’re bringing their “A team” to protect Trump and “not this apathetic, complacent agency that we’ve seen over the last two incidents.”  We also need to be treating Iran as “the adversary that they are,” he said.  After all, what other country in the world would let another country just get away with a state-sponsored assassination attempt?

Since there are SO many unanswered questions and suspicious circumstances surrounding both Trump assassination attempts, C. A. Skeet at PJ MEDIA envisions a new Oliver Stone “assassination” movie.  (Stone’s movie about the JFK assassination was far from a documentary; it had quite a lot of made-up stuff in it, but never mind.)  Someday there really should be a movie, but Stone isn’t the one to make it.  it’s hard to imagine such an avowed leftist making a movie that depicts Trump as the “good guy” and victim.  As Skeet says in his must-read piece, “maybe Oliver Stone doesn’t oppose the current shadow government as he did the one that allegedly seized power in 1963.”

https://pjmedia.com/caskeet/2024/09/27/so-when-is-oliver-stone-making-a-movie-about-the-assassination-attempts-on-trump-n4932880