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‘Fingers Being Pointed’: Secret Service’s Explanations For Security Failures Ahead Of Trump Assassination Attempt Aren’t Adding Up

Published

1 year ago

12 minute read

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By KATELYNN RICHARDSON

 

Secret Service’s explanations for the security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday aren’t adding up, according to security experts and former Secret Service agents.

Emerging details highlight what seems to be a disconnect between local officials and Secret Service, while making it more apparent that there were major oversights. Many key questions hinge on the responsibilities delegated to local police, who U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle confirmed during a Monday interview with ABC News were inside the building the shooter fired from, though nobody was stationed on the rooftop.

Cheatle explained a decision was made not to put anybody on top of the building because the “sloped” roof made it unsafe, but security experts and former Secret Service agents who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation emphasized not having someone on the roof was a “big failure” and didn’t believe Cheatle’s explanation was sufficient.

“Let’s just say the local law enforcement officers [and] the Secret Service agree that it’s just not safe to keep someone up there for a couple of hours,” former Secret Service agent Anthony Cangelosi told the DCNF. “Then the question is, well, how do we maintain its integrity otherwise? It’s not like you just throw your hands up and say ‘can’t do that.’”

Cangelosi said there is no “justifiable reason” for failing to cover the roof, suggesting they should have found solutions like putting another platform up or getting an officer on a lift.

Peter Yachmetz, retired FBI agent and principal security consultant at Yachmetz Consulting Group, pointed out that the shooter was moving around on the “unsafe” roof prior to the incident.

“The slope didn’t affect him,” Yachmetz told the DCNF.

Law enforcement reportedly spotted the shooter on the roof 30 minutes before shots were fired, WPXI reported Monday. After the incident, a witness described watching a man climbing onto the roof and trying to warn a police officer, claiming officials responded with confusion.

“The reality is, regardless of the spin, that particular roof should have been under constant surveillance and or posted,” former secret service agent Tim Miller told the DCNF.

 

“In this particular instance, we did share support for that particular site and that the Secret Service was responsible for the inner perimeter,” Cheatle told ABC News Monday during an interview. “And then we sought assistance from our local counterparts for the outer perimeter. There was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building.”

However, a local law enforcement official told The New York Times Tuesday that the local forces were in an adjacent building, not the one the shooter was firing from.

The discrepancies in their accounts only add to the uncertainties surrounding who was responsible.

CBS News reported Monday that there were three snipers stationed inside the building shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks fired from, citing a local law enforcement officer. One of the snipers saw Crooks looking through a rangefinder in the minutes before he fired and radioed command post, according to CBS News.

The Butler Township Police Department declined to confirm the report to the DCNF, stating that there is an ongoing investigation by the FBI.

Butler County Sheriff Michael Slupe declined to offer additional comments Tuesday, telling the DCNF he is “backing away from media requests for comment and opinions.”

“There are too many questions being posed that I do not have first hand knowledge of and too many fingers being pointed,” he said. “I am in charge of the Deputy Sheriffs and no other law enforcement agency. My Deputies performed their duties at their assigned areas and went above and beyond after the shooting started and ended in the their actions to help people and assist police in clearing the nearby buildings.”

Slupe previously confirmed to CNN that an armed Butler Township officer encountered Crooks before he shot at Trump, but retreated down the ladder after Crooks pointed his gun at him. He told KDKA-TV there was a security failure, but noted “there is not just one entity responsible.”

“The Secret Service plays a key role in protecting, in this case, former President Trump, but they don’t act alone,” he told the outlet. “The Secret Service receives support from local police departments.”

Pennsylvania State Police, however, did confirm they had no members “inside the building or staging in it.”

“The Pennsylvania State Police provided all resources that the United States Secret Service (USSS) requested for former President Trump’s rally in Butler on Saturday, July 13th, including approximately 30 to 40 troopers to assist with securing the inside perimeter,” Pennsylvania State Police Lieutenant Adam Reed told the DCNF. “Among PSP’s duties at the rally, the Department was not responsible for securing the building or property at AGR International.”

Reed said he could not say when an officer witnessed the shooter, as it was not a state trooper who saw him.

 

Former secret service agent Jeffrey James explained to the DCNF that protection “works in a series of concentric circles.” Typically, there is an inner circle of secret service agents, a second circle that mixes both agents and local law enforcement, and an outer ring that is largely state and local partners.

If the agent in charge of the site told a local law enforcement officer on the outer perimeter that the building is his responsibility, then anything that happens is on the officer.

“But if that agent didn’t find one of the local law enforcement partners and give very clear, direct directions…then it’s going to be the responsibility or the fault of that agent for not delegating that,” he told the DCNF.

It’s unclear what instructions the Secret Service gave to local law enforcement.

Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger told The Washington Post Tuesday that “Secret Service was in charge” and that “it was their responsibility to make sure that the venue and the surrounding area was secure.”

“For them to blame local law enforcement is them passing the blame when they hold the blame, in my opinion,” Goldinger told The Washington Post.

However, the Secret Service released a statement on Tuesday pushing back against assertions that they were blaming local law enforcement for the tragedy that unfolded on Saturday. “Any news suggesting the Secret Service is blaming local law enforcement for Saturday’s incident is simply not true,” the statement posted to the Secret Service’s X page said.

“I am having difficulty reconciling the answer the Director gave in her ABC interview with the official statement made on social media,” Patrick Yoes, national president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said in a press release on Tuesday. “Our goal is to provide whatever assistance the Secret Service needs to perform their mission and to do so with mutual respect, trust, and accuracy.”

A RealClearPolitics report suggested Sunday that resources were diverted away from Trump’s rally to an event where First Lady Jill Biden was speaking. Anthony Guglielmi, chief of communications for the United States Secret Service, denied this was the case.

Questions also remain about why Crooks was not taken out sooner. Cangelosi explained to the DCNF that counter-snipers can face challenges due to their distance from the target.

“With counter snipers, you’re usually so far away, it’s not usually clear whether an individual is an imminent threat, ” Cangelosi said. “It’s harder to discern. Once they discern whether that person is a threat to life or serious bodily injury, they can take the shot.”

Yachmetz questioned why drone coverage was not utilized.

“A drone strategically placed a few thousand feet above could have oversaw the entire venue,” he said.

“In my opinion, a detailed, in-depth very specific investigation must be conducted of all procedures [and] this entire matter by a non-biased outside investigative group (possibly of retired agents),” Yachmetz told the DCNF, emphasizing the investigation must not be “politically motivated.”

House Committee on Oversight and Accountability Chairman James Comer announced Monday that Cheatle would testify at a committee hearing on July 22. President Joe Biden said Sunday that he directed an “independent review” of the events.

The FBI told the DCNF it has “nothing additional to provide at this time beyond previously-issued statements.” The Bureau said Monday that it gained access to Crooks’ phone and “has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, event attendees, and other witnesses.”

Trump suffered a wound to his ear, and two were killed, including Crooks and 50-year-old ex-volunteer fire chief, Corey Comperatore. Two other attendees were also wounded the attack.

Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment.

Wallace White and Owen Klinsky contributed to this report.

Featured image credit: (Screen Capture/CSPAN)

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Warning Canada: China’s Economic Miracle Was Built on Mass Displacement

Business

Warning Canada: China’s Economic Miracle Was Built on Mass Displacement

Published on December 23, 2025

By

If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again: Dimon Liu’s warning to Canadian Parliament.

Editor’s Note: The Bureau is publishing the following testimony to Canada’s House of Commons committee on International Human Rights from Dimon Liu, a China-born, Washington, D.C.-based democracy advocate who testified in Parliament on December 8, 2025, about the human cost of China’s economic rise. Submitted to The Bureau as an op-ed, Liu’s testimony argues that the Canadian government should tighten scrutiny of high-risk trade and investment, and ensure Canada’s foreign policy does not inadvertently reward coercion. Liu also warns that the Chinese Communist Party could gain leverage over Canadians and treat them as it has done to its own subjugated population—an implied message to Prime Minister Mark Carney, who has pledged to engage China as a strategic partner without making that position clear to Canadians during his election campaign.

OTTAWA — It is an honor to speak before you at the Canadian Parliament.

My testimony will attempt to explain why China’s economic success is built on the backs of the largest number of displaced persons in human history.

It is estimated that these displaced individuals range between 300 to 400 million — it is equivalent to the total population of the United States being uprooted and forced to relocate. These displaced persons are invisible to the world, their sufferings unnoticed, their plights ignored.

In 1978, when economic reform began, China’s GDP was $150 billion USD.

In 2000, when China joined the WTO, it was approximately $1.2 trillion USD.

China’s current GDP is approximately $18 trillion USD.

In 2000 China’s manufacturing output was smaller than Italy’s.

Today it’s larger than America, Europe, Japan, and South Korea combined.

If you have ever wondered how China managed to grow so fast in such a short time, Charles Li, former CEO of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, has the answers for you.

He listed 4 reasons: 1) cheapest land, 2) cheapest labor, 3) cheapest capital, and 4) disregard of environmental costs.

“The cheapest land” because the CCP government took the land from the farmers at little to no compensation.

“The cheapest labor,” because these farmers, without land to farm, were forced to find work in urban areas at very low wages.

The communist household registration system (hukou 戶口) ties them perpetually to the rural areas. This means they are not legal residents, and cannot receive social benefits that legal urban residents are entitled. They could be evicted at any time.

One well known incident of eviction occurred in November 2017. Cai Qi, now the second most powerful man in China after Xi Jinping, was a municipal official in Beijing. He evicted tens of thousands into Beijing’s harsh winter, with only days, or just moments of notice. Cai Qi made famous a term, “low-end population” (低端人口), and exposed CCP’s contempt of rural migrants it treats as second class citizens.

These displaced migrant workers have one tradition they hold dear — it is to reunite with their families during the Chinese Lunar New Year holiday, making this seasonal migration of 100 to 150 million people a spectacular event. In China’s economic winter of 2025 with waves of bankruptcies and factory closures, the tide of unemployed migrant workers returning home to where there is also no work, and no land to farm, has become a worrisome event.

Historically in the last 2,000 years, social instability has caused the collapse of many ruling regimes in China.

“The cheapest capital” is acquired through predatory banking practices, and through the stock markets, first to rake in the savings of the Chinese people; and later international investments by listing opaque, and state owned enterprises in leading stock markets around the world.

“A disregard of environmental costs” is a hallmark of China’s industrialization. The land is poisoned, so is the water; and China produces one-third of all global greenhouse gases.

Chinese Communist officials often laud their system as superior. The essayist Qin Hui has written that the Chinese communist government enjoys a human rights abuse advantage. This is true. By abusing its own people so brutally, the CCP regime has created an image of success, which will prove to be a mirage.

If you think the CCP will treat foreigners better than its own people, when it extends its power over you, please think again.

The Bureau is a reader-supported publication.

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Artificial Intelligence

UK Police Pilot AI System to Track “Suspicious” Driver Journeys

Published on December 22, 2025

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By Ken Macon

AI-driven surveillance is shifting from spotting suspects to mapping ordinary life, turning everyday travel into a stream of behavioral data

Police forces across Britain are experimenting with artificial intelligence that can automatically monitor and categorize drivers’ movements using the country’s extensive number plate recognition network.
Internal records obtained by Liberty Investigates and The Telegraph reveal that three of England and Wales’s nine regional organized crime units are piloting a Faculty AI-built program designed to learn from vehicle movement data and detect journeys that algorithms label “suspicious.”
For years, the automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) system has logged more than 100 million vehicle sightings each day, mostly for confirming whether a specific registration has appeared in a certain area.
The new initiative changes that logic entirely. Instead of checking isolated plates, it teaches software to trace entire routes, looking for patterns of behavior that resemble the travel of criminal networks known for “county lines” drug trafficking.
The project, called Operation Ignition, represents a change in scale and ambition.
Unlike traditional alerts that depend on officers manually flagging “vehicles of interest,” the machine learning model learns from past data to generate its own list of potential targets.
Official papers admit that the process could involve “millions of [vehicle registrations],” and that the information gathered may guide future decisions about the ethical and operational use of such technologies.
What began as a Home Office-funded trial in the North West covering Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Cheshire, Cumbria, Lancashire, and North Wales has now expanded into three regional crime units.
Authorities describe this as a technical experiment, but documents point to long-term plans for nationwide adoption.
Civil liberty groups warn that these kinds of systems rarely stay limited to their original purpose.
Jake Hurfurt of Big Brother Watch said: “The UK’s ANPR network is already one of the biggest surveillance networks on the planet, tracking millions of innocent people’s journeys every single day. Using AI to analyse the millions of number plates it picks up will only make the surveillance dragnet even more intrusive. Monitoring and analysing this many journeys will impact everybody’s privacy and has the potential to allow police to analyse how we all move around the country at the click of a button.”
He added that while tackling organized drug routes is a legitimate goal, “there is a real danger of mission creep – ANPR was introduced as a counter-terror measure, now it is used to enforce driving rules. The question is not whether should police try and stop gangs, but how could this next-generation use of number plate scans be used down the line?”
The find and profile app was built by Faculty AI, a British technology firm with deep ties to government projects.
The company, which worked with Dominic Cummings during the Vote Leave campaign, has since developed data analysis tools for the NHS and Ministry of Defence.
Faculty recently drew attention after it was contracted to create software that scans social media for “concerning” posts, later used to monitor online debate about asylum housing.
Faculty declined to comment on its part in the ANPR initiative.
Chief constable Chris Todd, chair of the National Police Chiefs’ Council’s data and analytics board, described the system as “a small-scale, exploratory, operational proof of concept looking at the potential use of machine learning in conjunction with ANPR data.”
He said the pilot used “a very small subset of ANPR data” and insisted that “data protection and security measures are in place, and an ethics panel has been established to oversee the work.”
William Webster, the Biometrics and Surveillance Camera Commissioner, said the Home Office was consulting on new legal rules for digital and biometric policing tools, including ANPR.
“Oversight is a key part of this framework,” he said, adding that trials of this kind should take place within “a ‘safe space’” that ensures “transparency and accountability at the outset.”
A Home Office spokesperson said the app was “designed to support investigations into serious and organised crime” and was “currently being tested on a small scale” using “a small subset of data collected by the national ANPR network.”
From a privacy standpoint, the concern is not just the collection of travel data but what can be inferred from it.
By linking millions of journeys into behavioral models, the system could eventually form a live map of how people move across the country.
Once this analytical capacity becomes part of routine policing, the distinction between tracking suspects and tracking citizens may blur entirely.
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