An Agency In Crisis

The explanations coming out of our government about Saturday’s security failures just don’t add up. If anything, they are creating more questions and suspicions.

We have known for a while now that Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail was insufficient. The agents were overworked and undermanned, and the resources were not what they should have been.

James O’Keefe says that multiple Secret Service agents have contacted him, some in tears, struggling with whether they should risk their careers and go public with what they know about the agency’s failures.

And we know this is an agency in crisis. More than 200 agents have reportedly signed a petition protesting the leadership of Director Kimberly Cheatle.

There is no regular Secret Service agent who would leave a rooftop unguarded just 130 yards from where a former president and current presidential candidate was speaking if the decision was theirs to make.

Cheatle’s narrative of a “sloped roof” is insane. It does not pass the straight face test. Other agents were on sloped roofs. She should be fired just for suggesting that!

Making matters worse was the fact that multiple agents assigned to protect the body of Donald Trump were women who barely came up to his lower chest. You must be bigger than the principal figure you are protecting in order to sufficiently shield them.

One female agent in the intimate circle guarding Trump appeared to be hiding behind him. Another (perhaps the same one) struggled to holster her gun.

We’re being told that intelligence reports indicated there was an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump, so his security was increased in recent weeks. (There’s no evidence that the murderous young man who shot Trump had anything to do with Iran.)

But if this catastrophic failure happened even with “beefed-up security,” that’s even less reassuring!

I’m having a hard time with this story about a sudden Iranian plot. This didn’t just come up in the past few weeks. We have reported about the ayatollah’s desire to assassinate Trump for years. (Here and here.) Bringing it up now looks like a desperate attempt to distract our attention from the Secret Service’s failures.

Let me remind you of something. One month before the 2020 election, the federal government announced charges against a group of men for allegedly plotting to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. It was a major story that was used to smear Trump supporters.

The case completely blew up. Some of the men charged were acquitted. Others were convicted on charges unrelated to the alleged kidnapping plot. The reason the case fell apart was because the court concluded that the FBI was so aggressive that it had practically recruited these men.

But we later learned that the agent in charge of the FBI’s Detroit office, which led this corrupt entrapment scheme, was brought in to lead the FBI’s Washington, D.C., Field Office and was put in charge of the January 6th investigations.