On Tuesday night, Fox News’ Jesse Watters reported on shocking new revelations about the handling of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. These revelations raise serious concerns about the transparency of the Secret Service and FBI.
According to Watters, “Every couple of weeks, the FBI and Secret Service give us, you know, drip, drip, drip. Little info on the Trump shooting, but it never amounts to anything. The real investigative work is being done by Congress.”
He cited a new report from Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) that has uncovered crucial details about the incident. Higgins' findings reveal that a local Butler, Pa., SWAT team operator was the first to engage Thomas Crooks, damaging his rifle and effectively ending his shooting spree before the Secret Service could fully neutralize the threat.
"I didn't know that," Watters remarked. This critical piece of information contrasts sharply with the testimony of acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr., who failed to mention the local officer's role and took credit on behalf of the agency for neutralizing the threat.
"New images released by the FBI show Crooks's rifle with apparently a damaged stock from the local officer's shot. But when the acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe testified, he made no mention of this local officer, gave his agency total credit for bringing down Crooks."
Here's what Rowe said in his testimony:
I am extremely proud of these actions and those taken by the countersniper team to neutralize the threat that prevented further loss of life, and I applaud the actions of our tactical teams that responded so quickly. The Secret Service counter sniper neutralized the assailant within seconds after the assailant fired his weapon.
"Why didn't the Secret Service chief mention that the locals were the first ones to get rounds off on Crooks, not the Secret Service?" asked Watters. "Why the Secret Service turned down a drone. Why they never pick up the radios they were supposed to use to communicate with locals with. Why wasn't the Wi-Fi working that day? Why wasn't there a countersniper team on the roof? And why aren't the FBI and Secret Service cooperating with congressional investigators?"
Those are all good questions. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) provided further insights into the situation based on information from whistleblowers, revealing shocking details about the agents present at the rally.
Hawley disclosed, “Most of the agents who were there at that rally in Butler were not Secret Service agents. They were, in fact, Homeland Security agents. And get this, most of those Homeland Security agents, the only training that they received was an online webinar, a two-hour online webinar.”
"It is absolutely outrageous," he added.
Hawley pointed out that some Homeland Security agents were reassigned from critical cases to provide protection at the rally with little to no effective training.
“I'm told that actually agents Homeland Security agents were pulled off of child exploitation cases, child endangerment cases, the stuff they normally do," he said. "They don't normally do protective detail work at all. They were pulled off those cases and said, here, you're gonna go guard the former president of the United States.”
Related: New Report Exposes Rampant Dysfunction in Secret Service Before Trump Assassination Attempt
The revelations from Hawley and the congressional report highlight significant gaps in the handling of the incident and raise questions about the accountability of the Secret Service and FBI. As Watters put it, “This is a nightmare, and we still have no answers. The only reason we know this stuff is because of whistleblowers. It's outrageous.”
Watch the entire interview here:
ALERT: @HawleyMO reveals shocking new whistleblower testimony about the agents assigned to Trump's detail the day he was nearly assassinated. pic.twitter.com/IFR8c25hI1
— Jesse Watters (@JesseBWatters) September 4, 2024
Contrary to claims, it was not the Secret Service but a local police countersniper — operating from the ground, not an elevated position — who first neutralized the shooter, and the Secret Service just fired the fatal shots. Rowe blatantly lied about this during his testimony.
To make matters worse, experienced Secret Service agents did not staff the protective detail; Homeland Security personnel were pulled off critical jobs like child endangerment investigations instead. These DHS agents had no proper training, limited to a single webinar that didn’t even work for parts of its duration. This entire debacle reveals a disgraceful level of incompetence and deception at the highest levels of the Secret Service and the FBI.
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