‘Preventable’ mistakes led to first Trump assassination attempt: House report



The House bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempts against former President Donald Trump released a report Monday revealing "stunning" and "preventable" security failures that took place ahead of the July 13 rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

The report details the lack of coordination, communication, and planning at "several pivotal moments" between the U.S. Secret Service and local law enforcement prior to the rally, as well as the security risks that were overlooked. As a result, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to fire shots at the former president from an exposed rooftop positioned just 150 yards from the rally stage, killing an attendee and injuring two others.

'There were security failures on multiple fronts.'

"Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened," the report reads.

The report reiterated the Secret Service's negligence leading up to the rally, confirming that there was no joint meeting between the federal, state, and local agencies to coordinate security the day of the event. The task force also found that the agency identified several security risks outside the perimeter but failed to actually secure them.

As a result of these failures, Crooks was spotted by multiple attendees, flagged as suspicious by Secret Service agents, and identified by a local counter-sniper over an hour before he fired shots at Trump.

"In the days leading up to the rally, it was not a single mistake that allowed Crooks to outmaneuver one of our country's most elite group of security professionals," Chairman Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) said in the report. "There were security failures on multiple fronts."

Then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testified before Congress on July 22, less than two weeks after the assassination attempt in Butler, receiving bipartisan scrutiny from lawmakers. The day after her evasive testimony, Cheatle resigned from her post.

Just two months after the Butler rally shooting, Trump survived a second assassination attempt.

58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh was apprehended on Sept. 24 after a Secret Service agent allegedly spotted his rifle and scope poking out of the bushes at the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh was later charged with attempting to assassinate Trump.

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Trump is returning to Butler, Pennsylvania, for another rally — and why it's a big deal



People might assume that Donald Trump would steer clear of Butler, Pennsylvania, after narrowly surviving an attempt on his life — but then they would be wrong.

The former president plans to return to Butler, Pennsylvania, for another rally on October 5 — and Glenn Beck of “The Glenn Beck Program” believes it’s an incredible show of strength.

But Trump isn’t the only one who has refused to go into hiding after a brush with his own mortality.

Steve Scalise survived an assassin’s bullet himself. The House majority leader ended up in the hospital for three and a half months after the shooting.

“I was fighting for my life,” he tells Glenn. “I made an early decision, because I really needed to put all my focus into getting better. I had to learn how to walk again.”

“Once I got that mindset, I said, ‘You know what? I’m not looking back. Like literally, rip off the rearview mirror. I’m not going to worry about what got me here.' God spared me,” he continues, adding, “I knew I was given a second chance.”

Trump visited Scalise on the day of the shooting in the hospital, which happened to be the former president’s birthday.

“He and Melania came, really consoled my family at that lowest moment. But I just made a decision, I’m not going to be a victim; I’m not gonna focus on why he did it, why I got here,” he explains.

After Trump survived his first attack, he told Scalise it was “divine intervention.”

“Here’s a man, Donald Trump, who’s put himself up for persecution by so many different people who have gone after him,” Scalise says. “And yet, he still moves forward. He still knows I have to do this for the country, and he believes that, and believe me, the country believes that too.”


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Melania Trump on assassination attempt: 'Definitely more to this story'



Former first lady Melania Trump wants to know why law enforcement did not arrest would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks before he opened fire on former President Donald J. Trump at the July 13 campaign rally in Butler Township, Pennsylvania.

“The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,” the former first lady said in a video posted Sept. 10 on X. “Now, the silence around it feels heavy."

“I cannot help but wonder, why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?” Mrs. Trump continued. “There is definitely more to this story, and we need to uncover the truth.”

In the nearly two months since the Butler shooting, the assassination attempt has slipped from the headlines as nearly a dozen federal and state investigations churn away with sporadic public updates.

The U.S. House-appointed Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump is gathering records from local and state authorities. The task force recently asked the Butler County coroner and the Allegheny County medical examiner for a copy of the autopsy done on Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper after he fired eight shots into the crowd.

The task force has also asked for transcribed interviews with local law enforcement and for a slew of documents from the Secret Service, Department of Homeland Security, and local officials on the security planning for the July 13 event.

Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs investigators have been conducting transcribed interviews with officials involved in the Butler rally.

The FBI’s updated timeline says that Crooks, 20, accessed the roof of the American Glass Research complex at 6:05 p.m., then made his way south across several buildings in the complex before selecting a shooting perch. He opened fire at 6:11:32 p.m.

A Pennsylvania state trooper posted under a nearby water tower spotted Crooks at 6:08 p.m. and put out a radio dispatch warning, “There’s someone on the roof.” The Secret Service never heard that broadcast because it had no shared communications system with state and local police.

Specially programmed radios set up for the Secret Service were not only never used but never even picked up by Secret Service officials, according to local law enforcement sources and U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.).

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Top 10 questions Americans should be asking about the Trump near-assassination



It’s been one month since former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“And yet, what do we know about this attempt to murder the former president of the United States?” asks Liz Wheeler. “We don't know much.”

Therefore, “we are going to catalog the 10 questions that you and I, as American citizens, must demand that our government, which is supposed to represent us, answer,” she says, noting that the mainstream media is “not only incurious” as to what actually happened on July 13 but has also effectively “[buried] this story.”

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1. What ideology motivated Crooks?

“What was Thomas Crooks’ ideology” and “what was known about [him] before the shooting?”

“There is no way that there is not a digital trail of the ideology of Thomas Crooks,” says Liz, pointing out that as a member of Gen Z, Crooks must have some kind of “digital footprint.”

“It's being hidden from us. Why?” she asks. “We must find out the answer to that question.”

2. Why no counter drones?

“Thomas Crooks flew a drone over the Butler County rally area some hours before Donald Trump took the stage,” which should have been picked up by the Secret Service's counter drones that are designed to “identify if there are hostile drones.”

Suspiciously, “on this day, July 13, 2024, the U.S. Secret Service counter drones weren't working.”

“Why did these U.S. Secret Service counter drones not work? Who was in charge of them? Was it a mechanical issue? Was it a communication issue? And most importantly, was it unusual for the U.S. Secret Service countersurveillance drones not to be working?”

3. Why wasn’t Trump removed from the stage?

“At three and a half minutes prior to the shooting, Thomas Crooks was seen on the roof; at 30 seconds prior to the shooting, Secret Service knew he was armed and lying on the roof.”

“Who then made the call … not to remove Donald Trump from the stage at that point, when law enforcement was aware of an armed, credible, and accessible threat? ... Who allowed him to stay on stage?”

4. Why wasn’t Crooks neutralized sooner?

“18 minutes before Trump took the stage, Secret Service knew that Thomas Crooks had a range finder. Why was he not neutralized at that point? Why was he not confronted? Why was he not arrested?”

“Why did it take until he had fired those shots for him to be addressed? Who was in charge of that decision?”

5. Why did the three snipers assigned to watch the roof abandon post?

There were three snipers assigned to the window that overlooked the sloped roof that former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle maintained was too dangerous for her agents to stand on.

However, “all three of those snipers abandoned their post moments before the shooting.”

“Why? Where did they go? Who gave them the direction to leave?”

6. Was Crooks groomed by the feds?

“Are we willing to consider that the feds may have groomed Thomas Crooks into an attempted assassination of President Donald J. Trump?”

Liz contends that this question is absolutely necessary “because if we look at the history of our country, we know that our government has abused citizens in the past” and “targeted politicians that the Deep State dislikes.”

She cites the following examples: the CIA’s involvement in the assassination of President John. F. Kennedy, the FBI “fomenting the riots outside of the capital on January 6,” and the FBI grooming “ne'er-do-wells and homeless people” into staging the kidnapping of Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer.

“If we are unwilling to even investigate whether this happened, if we come at this analysis with preconceived notions or preconceived conclusions that no, the government couldn't have been involved in any way, then we are no better than the mainstream media,” she says.

7. Why was the Trump campaign denied additional SS coverage?

“Why did the Secret Service lie about denying resources to the Trump campaign when the Trump campaign requested additional security? What was the justification for the denial of those requests, and who made that call?"

8. Does our government even care to know the truth?

Liz’s eighth question is specifically for “the elected representatives of the United States of America … both Democrat and Republican.”

“Do you care that the former president of the United States was targeted for assassination? Do you care that this could happen again? Do you care what the implications of this would have been had Donald Trump not turned his head at the last second to look at that chart?”

“Do you understand that this would have thrown our country into a civil war?”

9. Have any additional threats been identified?

“Are there any more known threats trying to gain access to President Trump or to his family? If so, what's being done to protect them so that what happened on July 13 does not happen again?”

10. Why is Ronald Rowe the one leading the investigation?

“The formal investigation … is being headed by the acting director of the Secret Service” – Ronald Rowe – who also happens to be “the former deputy director of the Secret Service.”

“He was involved in decisions leading up to the July 13 attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The failure to protect Donald Trump is as much his responsibility as Kimberly Cheatle’s, and yet now he's the one supposedly conducting oversight and investigating what happened?” says Liz, adding that this “disgusts” her.

“Donald Trump was almost killed on stage at a rally because leftists have spent the last eight years calling him Hitler and a dictator and authoritarian and telling LGBTQIA-identifying people and black people and women that they are on the verge of genocide, that our democracy is under attack, and that Donald Trump is the reason why,” says Liz, adding that “this hatred and fear has been fomented to the point that someone is willing to murder president Trump rather than letting an election take place.”

We need answers. Now.

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Trump rally attendees tell ALL: Assassination attempt was ‘an INSIDE job’



When former president Donald Trump was nearly assassinated, it wasn’t only his life that was forever changed but his supporters that attended the rally.

And two attendees, Mia and Eric, are telling Alex Stein everything that happened that day — including how one of them was detained by the Secret Service.

“They were rushing him out, I ended up running up, I got within 30 feet of Trump in his motorcade driving off after he had just got shot. That was a failure of the Secret Service, terrible, terrible work,” Eric tells Stein.

“So then, I was coming back, and they said, ‘Put your hands up,’” he continues, noting that he complied. “I was definitely riled up. A lot of adrenaline.”

While Eric saw what happened firsthand, there have been plenty of conspiracies forming, particularly on the left, that it was all staged.

“I do think that the government, the Secret Service, and probably the CIA wanted it to happen, and they didn’t follow the proper procedures in stopping this,” Stein says before asking Eric what he believes.

“I do not agree with them,” Eric says of the “staged” conspiracies. “I definitely saw him get shot and go down. I think it was definitely an inside job of some sort because there’s no way he should have been able to get on that roof. It’s like a direct perimeter for the Butler Fairgrounds.”

“I mean, that would’ve been covered. Even I would have done that and I’m not like Secret Service or nothing,” he adds.

Mia, the other attendee, actually got the shots on video.

“When it first happened, we thought it was firecrackers to be quite honest, but after I’ve listened to the videos,” she explains, “you can hear multiple [shots being fired].”


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2 shooters? Audio calls official Trump assassination story into question



As a scientist, Dr. Chris Martenson knows better than to just take the official narrative of any large event in America at face value.

“I’ve looked into Oklahoma City, 9/11,” Martenson tells Pat Gray of “Pat Gray Unleashed.” “I’m a scientist, and if you have pieces of the story that don’t fit, it drives me nuts.” Regarding 9/11, Martenson couldn’t get past building 7 free falling for two and a quarter seconds.

“I don’t need to talk about who might have done it or how, I’ve got to explain that fact. And it’s impossible, right? Using the official story. So, we have to come up with a different story,” he explains.

The assassination attempt against Trump is no different, and while it warrants a thorough investigation to uncover the full scope of the incident, Martenson believes incredibly important details are being overlooked.

“I find out on CNN, of all places, that an audio expert concluded that there were two shooters,” Martenson says. “There were the sounds from the guns. One, two, and three were inconsistent with those from four, five, six, seven, eight.”

But the story then was memory-holed and forgotten.

“As soon as I see that silent space, I say, ‘Well, I got to dig into this.’ So, that’s what kicked me off,” he tells Gray.

Martenson then plays the audio from the shooting, where it sounds as if the shots are from completely different guns.

“Dramatically different,” Gray comments, stunned.

“We now have resolved that the first one obviously was the one that nicked Trump’s ear and splashed off a railing in the back,” Martenson says. “I was actually getting ready to go to the fairgrounds as soon as the FBI was going to release the tape, because I wanted to go stand on that back railing and look down and have a 6'3'' guy standing down on the stage.”

The point of this would be to figure out precisely where the first shot came from.

“Unfortunately, the FBI dismantled the stands and had them taken away within days. So, interesting,” he adds.


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Alex Jones’ ‘eerily accurate’ prediction on Biden leaving the race — and what may happen next



President Joe Biden ended his campaign this week, and to no one's surprise, Alex Jones was right again.

“Your prediction was eerily accurate to the day on which he would step down,” Liz Wheeler of “The Liz Wheeler Show” tells Jones. “Who’s behind that? Who made him step down? I have a very hard time believing that it was him.”

“We know the answer to that,” Jones says confidently. “The question is: What are the specifics?”

“It’s a big deal,” he continues. “Biden’s been out of his mind for years, the perfect puppet, and now they know that one’s going to buy a new election steal if it’s him. So, they want Kamala or Newsom or Hillary or ‘Big Mike’ Michelle Obama or Kamala. Anybody but him.”

“That’s why I’ve been predicting they would remove Biden imminently. Which they did,” he adds.

While no one knows exactly what has happened to the president, there are theories swirling. And Jones has his own.

“The point is that Biden was refusing to step down, and I said last week, I said, ‘He will have a medical emergency,’” Jones says. “They just tried to kill Trump, that's failed. Biden’s refusing to step down. It’s the same Deep State that wants full control and people that follow their orders.”

Now that Biden’s out, Americans have been left wondering who the Democratic nominee will be. While it seems that Kamala Harris will step into Biden’s shoes, Jones isn’t so sure.

“It needs to be Kamala on paper under the law to get the 198 million as of yesterday — it’s probably up now,” he tells Wheeler.

“But the Democrats have said that they want to have kind of a weird snap primary where the delegates or the donors with the delegates decide who’s there to at least act like it’s Democratic,” he continues.

“I mean, the sky’s the limit. They already tried to kill Trump, in my view. They already tried to take Trump off the ballot. They’ve already done all this, so we’re really seeing the desperate coup of the Democrat-controlled Deep State out in the open right now,” he adds.


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Joy Reid goes full BlueAnon; spreads conspiracy theory on the shooting of Donald Trump



The left has been using “conspiracy theorist” as a derogatory term to call conservatives for years — but some of leftists might need to look in the mirror instead.

MSNBC anchor Joy Reid is no exception.

“We still don’t know for sure whether Donald Trump was hit by a bullet, whether he was hit by glass fragments, whether he was hit by shrapnel,” Reid said to her followers in a video posted to her social media account.

“We actually have no details from his physician even though this man is still a Secret Service protected, you know, and presidential candidate,” she continued. “Why don’t we know that much? We know that three people were shot, one person unfortunately was killed at the rally.”

“We don’t know why for nine full seconds Donald Trump was allowed to stand back up during an active shooting, an active shooter situation.”

“How would they have known if there were more shooters or not? Nobody knew that. There could have been five shooters for all they knew, yet they allowed him to stand up in the middle of that crisis and pose for a photo,” she added, hinting that it was for the “iconic photo.”

“What is the actual injury to Donald Trump’s ear that’s under bandage? Shouldn’t we know that by now?”

Pat Gray and Keith Malinak of “Pat Gray Unleashed” are horrified.

“To plant that seed of conspiracy that this was done to help his standing, to make him look tough,” Malinak says, unbelieving.

“So he’s in on it? He stood there waiting for the bullet to go through his ear?” Gray adds.

“I think that is exactly what she is saying,” Malinak confirms. “So, if Alex Jones is going to lose his empire over not believing the narrative about Sandy Hook, then what is going to befall MSNBC and Joy Reid?”


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Trump needs to say THIS in his RNC speech after assassination attempt



Former President Donald Trump has demonstrated serious heroism in the wake of the attempt on his life.

Not only did he stand up after the bullet grazed his ear, pump his fist, and make sure he made contact with his supporters while telling them to keep fighting — but he has already completely changed his RNC 2024 speech to allegedly focus on unity instead of political jabs.

Glenn Beck is thoroughly impressed and has an idea of what he hopes Trump will tell the nation in his speech.

“I would hope the president will come out and say something along the lines of ‘We’re standing here today because America is resilient. A few days ago, somebody tried to kill me, but by God’s grace that bullet only grazed me,’” Glenn says.

“When you have a bullet whiz by your head, there’s two ways to go. One is vengeance and the other is unity. And our nation is divided. Trust is low in our neighborhoods, in the media, everywhere,” he continues.

Despite knowing exactly what Trump meant, Glenn also believes he needs to address his use of the word “fight” that he yelled while pumping his fist.

“When I say ‘fight,’ what I mean is the little guy needs to rise up. Make sure your voice is heard, to be not afraid. We need to fight, but not with violence. We fight with our words, we fight on the streets with our words and with our actions,” he explains.

“Let’s show the rest of the world what it means to be American,” he continues. “Every voice matters, every citizen matters. Stand up for the principles in our Bill of Rights. Defend the truth with integrity and courage. Forgive others without compromising our values.”

Glenn leaves one parting message for Trump.

“It is important today that we all reach out to somebody that doesn’t agree with us, that is a friend. Just say, ‘How you doing today? Yeah, I know our guy was shot, but I want you to know I don’t hold you responsible for that, I’m sure you were just as offended as I was,’” he says.

“If they weren’t, move on. But most likely, any decent American was horrified by what they saw.”


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NEW: Mayorkas Questioned by Reporters on Trump Assassination Attempt

NEW: Mayorkas Questioned by Reporters on Trump Assassination Attempt