The House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released its final report on Tuesday. The report covers the July 13 wounding of President-elect Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania, and the September 15 assassination attempt in West Palm Beach, Florida.
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The report paints a picture with which we are sadly familiar. The Secret Service’s actions in Butler, in particular, reek of complacency and privilege. Basic principles, like “communication” and “unity of command,” were totally absent. The elementary principles of tactical operations — reconnaissance, planning, control, and security — were tossed to the winds.
The Task Force found that the tragic and shocking events in Butler, Pennsylvania were preventable and should not have happened. There was not, however, a singular moment or decision that allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to nearly assassinate the former President. The various failures in planning, execution, and leadership on and before July 13, 2024, and the preexisting conditions that undermined the effectiveness of the human and material assets deployed that day, coalesced to create an environment in which the former President—and everyone at the campaign event—were exposed to grave danger. Conversely, the events that transpired on September 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida, demonstrated how properly executed protective measures can foil an attempted assassination.
But there is this howler: The events in “West Palm Beach, Florida, demonstrated how properly executed protective measures can foil an attempted assassination.” Wait, what?
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Let’s look into what the report says about West Palm Beach.
Although the Secret Service was notified at approximately 2:30 a.m. on September 15 that former President Trump intended to golf at approximately 12:30 p.m. that day, former President Trump made a last-minute request to leave for Trump International Golf Club just after 11:00 a.m., moving his anticipated arrival time up by an hour.
Okay, then what?
At approximately 1:30 p.m., former President Trump was on the hole of the golf course when a Secret Service site agent, who was riding along the fence line conducting a [REDACTED], noticed an individual by the fence line on the external perimeter by the [REDACTED] green.
So, the Secret Service was notified at 2:30 a.m. that Trump would play golf. He arrived at the golf course around 11 a.m. At 1:30 p.m., Trump having been on the golf course for about two hours, the Secret Service is conducting its preliminary sweep of the golf course boundary and discovers the shooter. The shooter, Ryan Wesley Routh, had been in his shooting position since 1:59 a.m. This latter data point is not mentioned in the report.
I’m not a highly trained Secret Service agent; I’m just a dumb sh** infantryman from Southside Virginia, but if I’d been given that mission, I would have conducted a preliminary sweep of the golf course sometime after dawn, placed observation posts at key spots and then done a rolling sweep after the golf party started moving. I would not have started my first pass over the golf course as Trump was playing through.
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But it gets a lot better.
NEW: The Secret Service Agent who spotted Ryan Routh missed six shots from five feet away, according to Fox News.
“The Secret Service agent who spotted Ryan Routh in the bushes outside Trump’s golf course was only five feet away…”
“[The agent] missed him six times from five… pic.twitter.com/aSQVC7GOJP
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) December 12, 2024
The agent who discovered Routh fired six rounds (they think) at the gunman from a distance of five feet, scoring a perfect goose egg.
The agent first noticed the suspect, later identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, and then noticed the barrel of Routh’s gun sticking through the fence line. The special agent, who may have been as close as five feet away from Routh, immediately responded by firing shots toward the suspect. It is believed six shots in total were fired; however, final ballistics are pending an ongoing FBI investigation.
In the immortal words of P. J. O’Rourke: “What the f***? I mean what the f***ing f***?”
How does any human miss a target basically within arm’s reach? How do you get within five feet of a gunman without seeing anything (rhetorical question: you probably have your earbuds in, listening to tunes or a podcast, and daydreaming about what you’re going to do when you get off shift)? And how, in the name of all that is Holy, can’t you definitively tell how many rounds were fired? “[B]elieved six shots in total were fired” is NOT a number. Don’t they keep track of ammunition in the Secret Service? Don’t they have an SOP for loading magazines? How will “final ballistics” help determine this if you apparently don’t know how many rounds you started out with?
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Just a couple of days ago, some folks on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, dragged some luckless Secret Service supervisor who required two weeks’ notice of any non-emergency time off requests. Apparently, he was the bad guy because he didn’t like his entire organization being jerked around by whiney little…uh…babies…taking time off at the last minute.
I’m failing to see the issue. He’s just saying that if you want to be on the PPD, then he needs 2 weeks’ notice of time off requests. It’s pretty simple: the PPD is an elite group and has a very high OPTEMPO. If you can’t hang, then move aside and let someone else have the job.
— streiff (@streiffredstate) December 10, 2024
He was forced to apologize.
SCOOP UPDATE: A SECRET SERVICE BOSS ISSUES AN APOLOGY.
The Secret Service boss in the Presidential Protective Division who sent out a harsh email last week about agents requesting time off apologized yesterday to all staff after I posted his email. He blamed the nasty tone,… https://t.co/bJ8R2xgM7l pic.twitter.com/35dNSHHQES— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) December 11, 2024
The Secret Service is a broken organization. A shameful performance by Director Kimberly Cheatle at a congressional hearing (BREAKING: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle Resigns After Disastrous Hearing – RedState) and the juvenile “I’m a public servant” rant by Acting Director Ronald Rowe last week (MUST SEE: Screaming Fight Between GOP Rep, Secret Service Director at Trump Assassination Attempt Hearing) are just the most visible indicators of an organization that is just not capable of carrying out its mission of protecting the president.
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READ THE REPORT
Report by Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump by streiff on Scribd
