'A fundamental security failure': How did a gunman open fire on a Trump rally?

NBC News ^ | July 14, 2024 | Jon Schuppe, Janelle Griffith, Rich Schapiro and Dasha Burns

[T.B. Yoits]

I think most Americans would be shocked at how mediocre the people in these government agencies have become.

Just to be clear, they were mediocre when they were hired - they didn't become mediocre while working there.

Here's a just a few of their more notable screwups.

November 2009: A Washington couple, Tareq and Michaele Salahi, crash Obama’s first state dinner. The Secret Service later acknowledges that officers never checked whether they were on the guest list.

November 2011: A man with a semiautomatic rifle parks in front of the White House and fires at the building, with Sasha Obama inside and Malia Obama on her way home. The Secret Service does not figure out that shots hit the building until contractors detect the bullets in the outside woodwork some time later.

April 2012: Eight Secret Service in Colombia lose their jobs after they took prostitutes from a strip club back to their hotel rooms. A Justice Department investigation finds that two Drug Enforcement Administration agents arranged one encounter between a prostitute and a Secret Service officer.

May 2013: A Secret Service supervisor leaves a bullet in a woman’s room at the Hay-Adams hotel, which overlooks the White House, and allegedly tries to force his way into the room to retrieve it.

December 2013: A man who stood close to President Barack Obama and other heads of state while providing sign language interpretation at Nelson Mandela’s memorial was a fake who was making up his own gestures, sign language experts say, raising questions about the security at the event.

March 2014: Three Secret Service agents responsible for protecting Obama in Amsterdam are placed on leave after a night of drinking, in violation of Secret Service rules. One of the agents passed out drunk in a hallway.

September 2014: A security contractor with a gun and an assault record got on an elevator with the president during a trip to Atlanta. The contractor used his cellphone to take video of Obama and did not stop when Secret Service agents told him to. The Secret Service only learned that the man has a gun after he was fired on the spot and turns it over.

September 2014: An man with a knife jumps the White House fence, dashes through the North Portico doors and makes it deep inside the building, into the East Room, before he is tackled, and only then by an off-duty Secret Service agent. A security alarm was disabled because staff nearby found it too noisy.

March 2015: Two senior agents hit a security barrier near the White House in a government vehicle. The men had been out drinking, celebrating the retirement of the agency's spokesman. When they reached the White House, their car barreled through temporary barriers blocking an active bomb investigation and they may have even driven over the suspicious package.

June 2015: A Secret Service officer in the Uniformed Division had his gun stolen from his personal car after parking it outside his girlfriend’s condo in Adams Morgan.

2022: Two men impersonated Federal agents while living in a penthouse apartment in Washington, D.C.'s Navy Yard paid for by DHS, and compromised U.S. Secret Service personnel involved in protective details. Arian Taherzadeh and Haider Ali had been offering free apartments and other gifts to U.S. Secret Service agents and officers. FBI agents also found a machine to create and program personal identification verification cards which can be used to access sensitive law enforcement computers. Taherzadeh and Ali had falsely claimed to work for the Department of Homeland Security on a special task force investigating gangs and violence connected to the Jan. 6 "insurrection" at the U.S. Capitol. They provided Secret Service officers and agents with rent-free apartments, including a penthouse worth over $40,000 a year, along with iPhones, surveillance systems, a drone, a television, a generator, a gun case and other policing tools. The investigation into these two only began when they were witnesses to an assault involving a letter carrier and Postal Inspection Agents interviewed them. The USPIS Inspector provided this information to the DHS Office of Inspector General, which then referred the information to the FBI for further investigation.

April 2023: An intruder entered the home of national security adviser Jake Sullivan undetected.

[1FreeAmerican]

That means the shooter would have to have fired the second shot - if it was the second shot and there were 4 shots fired - in ~.217 seconds. That would be very fast trigger work with the recoil from an AR (Assumed - I don’t know details on the weapon).

I’ve expanded my theory to include possible crowd shouting but when you watch the vid you can see several people behind PDJT turn their heads towards the shooter’s direction. They heard something.

And if you add Divine Intervention into the equation then...🙂

[MNJohnnie]

Why was a obvious sniper postion, 150 years from one of the world top 10 high value targets, with ladder access left uncovered and unguarded?

At a bare minimum the Secret Service would have a uniform watching standing in front of it if this had been a Democrat speaker.

So all the postruing and blame shift is designed to ofuscate this point. Secret Service ownes the site. What every resources, state, local, federal they use does not matter. They are wholly responsible for security here.

[Carl Vehse]

Yolanda #217: "Did Joe Biden signal that now is the time to assassinate Donald Trump?"

In 2010, the enemedia and Demonicrats claimed that a map, release by Sarah Palin showing twenty Congressional districts with crosshairs on them because of the liberal votes by the respective incumbents, was responsible for initiating the attack on Gabby Giffords, leaving her severely injured from a head wound, and numerous other people dead or wounded.

In being consistent, the enemedia and Demonicrats should view Traitorjoe's "It’s time to put Trump in a bullseye" in the same light.

[Alberta's Child]

Right. I meant “have become” in the context of today’s government workers vs. the ones from several decades ago.

[neverevergiveup]

I was listening to the radio on my way to the hardware store and heard that Trump had done an interview with someone on Fox and said just before he was shot he turned to look at a screen that he was using as a visual aid. He was going to start talking about something involving statistics and had a graph to demonstrate what he was speaking about. Apparently he was a little ahead of where he would use that in the speech but wanted to look at it.

Thank God!!!

[midwest_hiker]

So it appears 20 year old moron bested the greatest security and protection force of the greatest nation on the planet.

[Paul R.]

I just saw a vid from close to the building the assassin was on. Updated “take”:

The closer sniper appears to raise his head to spot the shooter. (The chances of the shooter appearing over the ridgeline of the building already in the sniper’s ‘scope are nil.) Spotting the shooter the closer sniper adjusts and goes back to the ‘scope, but BOTH snipers flinch at the 1st 3 shots. The camera pans left so we don’t see the snipers return fire, but we hear other shots begin with a somewhat different sound and a faster rate.

In a different vid taken near the AG building one can hear the shooter’s 3 shots again, then 5 rapid, more powerful shots, a slight delay and a not-as-loud shot, another longer delay, and yet another not-as-loud shot.

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/13/politics/video/shooting-video-gunman-trump-digvid

There is also this vid describing sniper target acquisition:

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/14/politics/video/trump-shooting-security-failure-mills-ldn-digvid

It’s not “instant”.

So... I’m going to take back what I posted earlier — based on the video near the building, and especially the acoustics from that vid, I don’t think those 5 rapid shots came from the snipers near Trump, and those shots were not the shooter’s. I would guess a different “asset” nearer the building spotted the shooter popping up, got sights on him, and fired those 5 shots, taking the would be assassin down. The last two shots came from yet another LEO or SS (maybe the shooter twitched?)

In this scenario the snipers on the roof near Trump did not fire the grouping of 5 shots because the shooter had already been hit by the time they recovered and got dialed in / crosshairs on the target.

If more video / audio evidence comes in, the above is subject to revision!!!

[Mark17]

Interesting, thank you.

[yldstrk]

So it appears 20 year old moron bested the greatest security and protection force of the greatest nation on the planet.
***********
Yeah exactly, how likely is that?

[Georgia Girl 2]

Lets don’t leave out the pathetic cop who climbed the ladder to the roof and when the shooter pointed his gun at him climbed back down. I mean you cannot make this chit up!