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The Secret Service reportedly didn't have drones of their own flying over the site -- the only drone reported so far was from the shooter, Thomas Crooks. As we previously reported, the Trump detail had had requests for more resources turned down, and there were reports that resources were delegated to Jill Biden's dinner instead of the much larger rally, as well as that Jill Biden had 12 post-standers as opposed to Trump being given three. That was insane given the potential threats against Trump and the size of the rally.
Catherine Herridge @C__Herridge
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NEW:
“According to one whistleblower, the night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally.”
Via @HawleyMO
2:37 PM · Jul 25, 2024
The Secret Service is ‘encouraging’ the Trump campaign to halt the large-scale events his supporters have grown accustomed to. //
The Secret Service did not return an email from The Federalist requesting comment. So it’s not clear whether the agency has made the same requests of Vice President Kamala Harris, ... //
Sean Davis @seanmdav
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This is a direct threat from the regime to Trump: if he doesn’t stop trying to win, they’ll make sure the next attacker doesn’t miss. We all know what they’re doing.
Image
8:40 PM · Jul 23, 2024 //
The Post devoted several column inches to what a burden Trump’s outdoor rallies have been for an agency that glaringly failed its mission to protect him. The Post’s narrative is anything but subtle: Trump — and his penchant for massive campaign rallies — is to blame for his near-assassination.
“The rallies have long been viewed as onerous by the Secret Service because they include complicated outdoor venues with thousands — if not tens of thousands — of people,” the Post’s Josh Dawsey writes. “Most other former presidents rarely appear in public, and when they do, they usually appear in settings such as conferences and restaurants with fewer people. Trump requires a much larger security footprint than other past presidents because he holds so many large events.”
But Trump isn’t merely a former president showing up to a haughty cocktail party with D.C. elites. He’s the GOP’s candidate for president, whether the Post and their Democrat pals like it or not.
Was the assassination attempt a failure because Trump survived? Or was it a failure because he was shot in the first place? //
The FBI and the Department of Justice failed to take Trump down through the Russia hoax. Then the intelligence state failed to bring Trump down through impeachment with a hoax on aid to Ukraine. Then congressional Democrats failed to keep Trump down with another hoax surrounding the capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021. As the DOJ’s lawfare campaign to imprison Trump with a series of charges brought by prosecutors of the incumbent regime began to derail this summer, the Secret Service naturally became the agency of last resort through which Trump’s opponents could finally execute their “insurance policy” against another Trump presidency.
Trump’s shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, might not have deliberately coordinated with deep state security to pull the trigger on the Republican presidential nominee. But the string of security lapses in the former president’s detail clearly left the door open for any number of the crazies who wish to carry out an assassination, including even a deranged 20-year-old, to succeed just once.
On Wednesday, the FBI confirmed Crooks had been able to fly a reconnaissance drone just roughly 200 yards from the rally fairgrounds in Butler, Pennsylvania, only hours before the event. The news had already been leaked to The Wall Street Journal, which reported a programmed flight path “suggests Crooks flew the drone more than once as he researched and scoped out the event site.”
Several law enforcement officials were apparently stationed inside the building from which Crooks was able to fire off eight gunshots in under six seconds, injuring two rallygoers and killing one. According to the disgraced ex-Secret Service director, however, the rooftop from which the gunman fired was left vacant because it was “sloped.” A former roofer explained in a column for The Federalist why Cheatle’s “‘Sloped’ Roof Excuse Is Total Nonsense.” //
The courageous commitment of front-line agents to take a bullet for the former president was on clear display at this month’s rally, but the leadership within the upper echelons of the federal security agency obviously carries no such mandate. The Secret Service director who finally stepped down was also an appointee of First Lady Jill Biden’s, whose own detail was apparently beefed up while Trump’s team was stripped down. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied the Trump campaign’s requests for additional security “time and again,” and yet Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas still hasn’t joined Cheatle in resigning.
On Tuesday, the Secret Service requested Trump forgo any more outdoor campaign rallies right after Republicans wrapped up one of the most successful conventions to propel the party into the fall election. //
Even if Trump’s assassination attempt wasn’t a government plot to kill an ex-president, it’s obvious to Americans that the Secret Service was yet another hostile agency prone to the corrupt impulses of far-left ideologues in the capital who grandstand on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. If the Secret Service had been weaponized to block Trump’s triumphant return to the Oval Office, the events might look very similar to those of the last two weeks.
Of all the recent trends in automotive technology and design, the adoption of capacitive controls over mechanical switches and buttons—particularly on multifunction steering wheels—is among the most deplorable. One can see the appeal to the designer—slick-looking fiat panels trump dust-attracting seams, for starters. The bean counters love them, too—it takes less time to install the subassemblies, and that means a little more profit per car. It's just that they suck. And now, some Volkswagen drivers say capacitive buttons are to blame for their car crashes.
In the video, which runs one minute and twenty-five seconds, a witness in the crowd named Jon Malis was somehow able to keep his wits about him and keep filming even as he realized there was a shooter perched on a rooftop. Eight shots ring out from the attempted assassin, then two more from law enforcement, including the shot that took him out. That kill shot was reportedly fired by a Secret Service sniper. //
The cellphone cameraman, Malis, explained what he saw:
Definitely wasn't secure. I'm actually ex-military. One of the first things I noticed when we walked up, I'm like, we... None of us have been vetted. We're all along the fence. We all have a view of the stage. We could see Trump.
On Tuesday afternoon, Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA) shared bodycam footage taken shortly after the incident on his Twitter/X account. Grassley has marked the footage (appropriately) as "Sensitive Content," so I'm including the link to his tweet, along with an embed of the video (below) shared by other accounts on the platform.
In his tweet, Grassley stated:
SENSITIVE CONTENT: July 13 Bodycam footage provides more info than Secret Service will share w America We NEED detailed answers ASAP on security failures TRANSPARENCY BRINGS ACCOUNTABILITYVid obtained from Beaver Co Emergency Services Unit in compliance w congressional requests
Madam Director, I would fire you — regardless of the failure — I would fire you just how you've handled it since. You should have been the first to the mics, to say, "America, world, I want to assure you we're going to get to the bottom of this. I want to assure you full transparency. Our agency clearly had major gaps here. And I want to personally take responsibility and accountability. You should have been the first, standing alongside Secretary Mayorkas. And I would even go so far as to say have daily press conferences, updating everyone on what we know. But you haven't had any of that. What are you hiding behind? Because you're making the situation worse. I think you've heard that on a bipartisan basis here: You are making this situation far worse in the absence of information. //
Fishin'withFredo
2 hours ago
Just come out with it, for god's sake. This was a multi-agency orchestrated plan to kill Donald Trump. //
wildmlm Fishin'withFredo
12 minutes ago
No. Because those secrets would never stay secret. Listen to her…she’s incompetent. They were lax and overconfident. //
Spike the Kool-Aid P Bro
2 hours ago
There is no accountability because the true power does not lie with We The People or our elected representatives, where it is supposed to. The hubris of those who rule (not govern) us is yet again on full display.
America's true and only systemic RACE problem is the federal government, which takes zero Responsibility, has no Accountability, never faces Consequences, and does not apply Equal treatment under the law.
That needs to change. The federal government and those who control it do not have our consent to rule over us.
Rep. Eli Crane
@RepEliCrane
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This video was taken from one of the windows the Secret Service had access to, overlooking the entire roof.
As you can see, they had complete coverage.
Makes you wonder how on earth they allowed the shooter to access the roof, let alone crawl up it & fire several shots.
2:27 PM · Jul 22, 2024 //
With questions still swirling about why warnings to local police about the suspect were slow to reach Secret Service personnel, Homeland Security Chair Mark Green (R-Tenn.) said he learned Monday that local authorities were excluded from the Secret Service command posts for the July 13 rally, even though such officials had been granted that access at similar events in the past.
“Normally, the local law enforcement guys are allowed to sit in the Secret Service … control room,” Green said. “Today, the locals shared with us that they were not allowed to have anybody in there. So, that makes you want to dig a little further, right?”
After claiming to have ramped up security around former President Donald Trump because of an Iranian plot to assassinate him, the Secret Service provided only three agency personnel for “post-standing” Trump’s fateful July 13 Pennsylvania rally, compared to the 12 post-standers that first lady Jill Biden received at a dinner in nearby Pittsburgh that night, according to emails between and among Secret Service personnel obtained by RealClearPolitics.
The Secret Service typically assigns special agents in a candidate’s detail, or “shift” agents in Secret Service lingo, to posts within an inner perimeter of an event. The middle perimeter is then monitored by agents pulled for local Secret Service field offices and assigned as “post-standers” assigned to specific spots and responsible for security specific targeted areas. //
Probable Cause
31 minutes ago
To be fair, it does make sense that they'd assign more resources to protect the current president. /s. //
Chuck in TX
27 minutes ago
Now, let's dig a little deeper and see if it gets even more interesting. Three were assigned to the Butler, PA detail. Was this a one time, singular, reduction? Was this abnormally low compared to the weeks and months prior? In other words, did the Secret Service reduce protection specifically for this event? An event where they secured the building the shooter used but allowed him to access the roof? An event where multiple law enforcement and bystanders reported a man with a rifle in a shooting position and they chose to look the other way? //
Truth Seeker First
22 minutes ago
Now all needs to be done to make a head count of attendees at fake-doctor Jill's event and Trump's event to get a "post" to attendees ratio to evaluate that there is no political bias in assigning Aecret Servuce Agents.
I can tell you already, that Jill's 6 attendees event got already more agents assigned than Trump's 30,000 attendees!
Wow, politicising needed personal protection for opposition party's candidates!
Rep. Mike Waltz
·
23h
@michaelgwaltz
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Once again Mayorkas has MISLED the public.
On CNN he called my statement that President Trump’s detail was DENIED repeated requests for stronger secret service protection “an irresponsible statement that is unequivocally false”.
Now WaPo is citing officials that I was CORRECT,…
Josh Dawsey
@jdawsey1
NEWS: Secret Service repeatedly denied requests from Trump’s detail, contrary to their statement last week. Requests included at times: snipers, magnetometers and agents to work them, specialty teams. Our latest: https://washingtonpost.com/nation/2024/07/20/trump-secret-service-security-attempted-assassination/
Rep. Mike Waltz
@michaelgwaltz
·
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Next time you’re going to call me and your own Secret Service agents liars on national TV, make sure that you're not the one lying to the American people yourself.
7:39 PM · Jul 20, 2024
Rep. Mike Waltz
@michaelgwaltz
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I have very reliable sources telling me there have been repeated requests for stronger secret service protection for President Trump.
Denied by Secretary Mayorkas.
Chad Pergram
@ChadPergram
Comer wants USSS Director Cheadle to appear for a hearing on Trump shooting “soon.” His committee has oversight of Secret Service:
Comer: My prayers are with President Trump and the victims of the assassination attempt at today’s rally in Pennsylvania. I thank the brave Secret…
9:59 PM · Jul 13, 2024
Rep. Mike Waltz
@michaelgwaltz
·
Follow
Director Cheadle should be fired just for how badly she’s dealt with the public this week.
NO press conferences, NO on-camera briefings, NO flow of information to the American people.
The public has a RIGHT TO KNOW how someone came within 1/4 inch of killing President Trump!
5:00 PM · Jul 20, 2024
Insiders told The Post that local law enforcement was recruited for the Butler, Pennsylvania rally because Secret Service headquarters denied the ex-president’s request for extra resources.
Trump’s personal detail asks Secret Service headquarters for resources –manpower, equipment, tech — headquarters approves or denies at their discretion.
Only when denied would the detail inquire with the field office, which would backfill with any available resources, including local law enforcement.
A gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump was able to fly a drone and get aerial footage of the western Pennsylvania fairgrounds shortly before the former president was set to speak there, law-enforcement officials briefed on the matter said, further underscoring the stunning security lapses ahead of Trump’s near assassination.
Thomas Matthew Crooks flew the drone on a programmed flight path earlier in the day on July 13 to scour the Butler Farm Show grounds ahead of Trump’s ill-fated rally, the officials said. The predetermined path, the officials added, suggests Crooks flew the drone more than once as he researched and scoped out the event site. [....]
In this first lecture of Security Engineering (https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rja14/book.html), Ross looks at the various kinds of attacker and their capabilities: the crooks, state actors, corporate competitors, and "the swamp". Sam then looks at the various tools they all use, and how real-world vulnerabilities are patched and/or exploited.
I've written a third edition of Security Engineering. The e-book version is available now for $44 from Wiley and Amazon; paper copies are available from Amazon here for delivery in the USA and here for the UK.
Here are the chapters, with links to the seven sample chapters as I last put them online for review: //
Here are fifteen teaching videos we made based on the book for a security engineering class at Edinburgh, taught to masters students and fourth-year undergrads: //
The Second Edition (2008)
Download for free here:
A little-discussed detail in the Lavender AI article is that Israel is killing people based on being in the same Whatsapp group [1] as a suspected militant [2]. Where are they getting this data? Is WhatsApp sharing it?
"Everyone at ATSC knew there was nothing inside the ADE 651."[2] A whistleblower who worked to sell the device around the world with McCormick told the BBC that he once challenged McCormick over the device's effectiveness. McCormick was said to have answered that the device did "exactly what it's meant to ... it makes money."
TSA's self-screening trial in Las Vegas' airport should have been the standard checkpoint ages ago //
skeffles
liffie420
3/08/24 11:59am
A 9/11 style takeover became impossible once they started locking the cockpit doors. That was the only real change they needed. //
skeffles
Ryan Erik King
3/08/24 11:05am
The TSA is designed to be noticeable, intrusive, and cumbersome, as a feature and not a bug. If it ain’t creating a whole hassle, then how will the public NOTICE the government is DOING SOMETHING about that terrorism stuff? It is pure theater like that. It is meant to be in your face, and down your pants, by design.
If it just worked, seamlessly and quietly, then nobody would notice it. //
_beveryman
Ryan Erik King
3/08/24 2:26pm
I am going to regret weighing in with this perspective, but I have been mulling over some security theater in computer security (Web Application Firewalls), and unfortunately there’s a parallel here which explains the value of TSA security theater.
WAF’s do not stop dedicated attackers.
...
So too, the TSA. Security theater doesn’t keep the dedicated attackers out, it keeps the volume of attackers lower, especially the less sophisticated ones. WAF’s provide value in the same way the TSA does, and this was a very uncomfortable light bulb to go off in my mind. //
ilya212
_beveryman
3/08/24 10:30pm
You are not wrong, and you are not the only one. The best summary of TSA I had ever seen came from Israeli airport security (and I trust these guys know what they are talking about): It stops stupid terrorists.
The question however is: How much damage can stupid terrorists actually do? And does preventing this rather minor damage outweigh all the frustration, wasted time, and overall societal grief TSA causes? //
ncbo
Ryan Erik King
3/09/24 11:50am
“theater” itself is a deterrent. It’s like how your front door could be made of thin glass floor to ceiling, trivially easy to smash by a 9 year old. But has anyone ever? That small step of having to break something deters 99% of would-be criminals. //
xspeedy
Ryan Erik King
3/09/24 1:41pm
My biggest frustration is the lack of consistent rules between airports. Some have you remove laptops, others don’t. And so one is always guessing.
The Russian propaganda outlet RT.com released a transcript Friday of senior German military officers discussing the deployment of the German Taurus stealth cruise missile to Ukraine.
Luftwaffe commander Ingo Gerhartz led the 38-minute call that took place on February 19 involved. Other participants were the German Air Force Head of the Operations and Training Section, Frank Graefe, a Luftwaffe Space Command Air Operations Center staff member, Stefan Fenske, and another staff from the center identified only by the surname Frostedte. The call was intercepted because General Gaefe, who was attending the biennial Singapore Airshow (sounds a lot like "hiking the Appalachian Trail"), participated in the discussion using an unsecured hotel telephone line. //
Divulging sensitive operational details in a call recorded by the SVR has caused a lot of problems for Scholz and Germany.
Germany's lack of seriousness in manning its armed forces and now in the way that it handles highly classified details is showing more and more EU nations that it can't look to Germany for competent leadership. The call, which apparently revealed Scholz's thinking on the subject of the Taurus missile that he hadn't shared with allies, foreign or domestic, has given his already flaccid credibility a body blow. This has caused France's Emanuel Macron to make a stab at wresting the leadership of the EU and European NATO from Germany. The tenor of the leaked conversation was one of lukewarm enthusiasm for assisting Ukraine with a strong shot of defeatism.
The long-term impact of the leaked conversation remains unclear. While it's unlikely to lead to an immediate shift in German policy, it has undoubtedly raised the stakes in the ongoing debate about military aid to Ukraine. The damage to diplomatic trust is very real, and the increased pressure from allies creates a complex situation for Scholz. Scholz's approval rate is roughly half that of Joe Biden (17%), and his coalition allies see self-preservation in jumping ship. However, Germany's constitution virtually guarantees that Scholz's government will continue to move zombie-like for the next two years when Germany's power and influence are sorely needed.
What is crystal clear is that this intelligence coup by the SVR has had a significant impact in dividing the pro-Ukraine coalition.