Don’t be surprised if there aren’t satisfying answers to the myriad questions raised by the shooting of Donald Trump on Saturday despite the emergence of dozens of “Zapruder” movies, writes Joe Lauria.
Map of Trump rally during assassination attempt in Butler, PA. (MediaGuy768/Wikimedia Commons)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
Among the slew of questions about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump on Saturday in Butler, PA, perhaps the biggest is whether we will ever get any credible answers at all.
More than 60 years after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, essential and troubling questions remain, dividing people who still demand answers. It seems we’ll never get them.
Trump as president was supposed to have revealed some of those declassified answers about JFK himself but backed away after apparent pressure from members of his own administration.
Two investigations and a review have been ordered into the attempt on Trump. The House of Representatives and the F.B.I.’s national security branch are doing the investigations and President Joe Biden ordered an independent review of security measures before and after the attempt.
The F.B.I. national security branch ran Operation Crossfire Hurricane, the failed attempt to smear Trump as a Russian stooge. This taints the division regarding its dealings with Trump.
The Republican-led House investigation will almost certainly be harder on the Secret Service, the F.B.I. and the local police. The committee has already called for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify next week. Cheatle is refusing calls to resign. We could expect fireworks. But will there be answers?
Dozens of Zapruders
Four frames from Zapruder film featuring the backwards motion of President Kennedy after the fatal shot. (Abraham Zapruder/Wikimedia Commons)
We wouldn’t have had to wait nearly six years for the first public broadcast of the 1963 Zapruder film if everyone had had a mobile phone in their pockets that day in Dallas and social media to publish it on. If the dozens of people lining Kennedy’s route on the Grassy Knoll and across Elm Street in Dealey Plaza had had cell phones, it would have made a cover-up much harder. It makes one now — if indeed one is needed — next to impossible, one would think.
A Kennedy-type plot would be hard to conceive in the age of mobile movie cameras in everyone’s possession. There were dozens of Abraham Zapruders in the crowd on Saturday at Butler fair grounds. They, and not the mainstream, produced the most revealing videos of day.
Perhaps the most revealing are those that show the shooter on the roof preparing to attack, while bystanders loudly alert the police:
NEW – Trump Assassin video shows him crawling on the roof while multiple people point him out to police
They yelled about him for *almost an entire minute*
It’s insane how Secret Service allowed this amateur to almost kill Trump pic.twitter.com/CWfHBGzOCp
— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 15, 2024
WPXI, a local TV station has reported that police spotted the shooter on the roof at least 26 minutes before he fired at Trump. The station reported:
“Channel 11’s Nicole Ford confirmed that Beaver County’s ESU team had eight members at the rally, including snipers and spotters. According to Ford’s sources, one of them noticed a suspicious man scoping out a roof near the rally at 5:45 p.m., called it in and took a picture of the person. We have learned from our sources the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. We’re told it’s not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point. …
According to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken.
26 minutes after the second picture of Crooks was taken by law enforcement and the information called in, shots were fired from the roof of the American Glass Research building. Seconds later, a Secret Service sniper returned fire and killed Crooks.”
Also, a “local police counter-sniper team” was inside the building while Crooks was on the roof, the New York Post reported on Monday, citing “law enforcement sources.” The newspaper said:
“The building — the AGR International Inc. factory in Butler, Pennsylvania — was being used by local police as a ‘watch post’ for snipers to scan for threats as the former president spoke onstage only 130 yards away, according to sources. Cops were inside, but not on the roof during the shooting, sources said. … Law enforcement sources said it was not clear as of Monday night whether any of the local officers — who were tasked with securing the perimeter outside the Butler County Farm Show grounds — were able to warn Secret Service agents about the gunman.”
Speaking to The New York Times, a local police official, trying to defend his men, contradicted the Secret Service director, saying his officers were in an adjacent building, not the one directly under the roof on which Crooks was perched.
The Times said:
“The director of the Secret Service said the local forces were in the very same building, an account suggesting that the gunman was essentially on top of them. A local law enforcement official told The New York Times on Tuesday that was not the case, and that the local officers were in an adjacent building.
The discrepancy in their accounts is just one unsettled element in the effort to determine how security broke down and allowed a 20-year-old with a semiautomatic rifle to open fire in a rapid barrage that left Mr. Trump hurt, one man dead and two other people at the rally gravely wounded.
That this simple matter — whether law enforcement used the same building as the gunman — is still not easily resolved three days after the shooting shows that divisions are emerging among the law enforcement agencies after a would-be assassin came close to felling the Republican presidential nominee two days before the party’s convention.”
Suspicions will soar if these questions aren’t answered.
Cock-up or Cover-Up
Days later, surprisingly little is known about the 20-year-old gunman. Crooks is so far a mystery. After authorities searched his home, car, and electronic devices; interviewed family, schoolmates and teachers, no clues have emerged about a motive or whether he acted with anyone else.
What we have now is a lone-wolf without a motive.
Even if incompetence is the sole reason for the massive security failure on Saturday, authorities may still try to cover up or downplay evidence that would embarrass and threaten their jobs. Already, the Secret Service is blaming local police and the local police is blaming the state police and the Secret Service, as seen above in comments to The New York Times.
The NY Post reported:
“Secret Service representative Anthony Gugliemi point[ed] out that local agencies were responsible for the area where the shooter opened fire. … [But] a Butler City police dispatcher told The Post that the Pennsylvania State Police were charged with securing the AGR grounds…. [meanwhile]
Law enforcement sources said the building was swept by cops before the event and that the local sniper team used the large manufacturing site as a staging and lookout post — but did not climb on the roof for the event — possibly over concerns that it would interfere with the Secret Service snipers.”
How will the authorities explain away this massive failure without holding anyone to account? This is what we are about to see.
Media Discourage Full Inquiry
It’s unfortunate if the partisanship that has ruined American journalism progressively over the past 30 years in a process that accelerated after Trump’s 2016 election extends to coverage of the assassination attempt.
Martha Raddatz, a long-time ABC News correspondent, on Saturday night said all buildings within 1000 yards of the event needed to be secured and the shooter was just 150 yards away. The anchor then logically asked her why the building the shooter was on was missed?
“Well you can’t get them all,” said Raddatz.
She was apologizing for the Secret Service, defending the authorities instead of challenging them: what the job of journalism was once supposed to be.
On CNN at the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, anchor Kate Bolduan was interviewing Republican Congressman Cory Mills, a former U.S. army sniper, when she freaked out after hearing Mills merely raise the possibility these security lapses may have been intentional and that that should be considered in the investigations.
JUST IN: CNN host loses it after former US Army sn*per Cory Mills suggests the July 13 assas*ination attempt on Trump *could have been* a setup.
Holy sh*t.
Mills explained how everything about the incident made no sense.
CNN anchor Kate Bolduan was visibly stunned and… pic.twitter.com/ss6G0opgKx
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 16, 2024
It will be very hard to get answers if certain questions are not allowed to be raised. Like Raddatz at ABC, CNN wants to stop some of them from being asked.
What Needs to be Explained
These are some of the most important questions that need answers:
- Did police and/or Secret Service see Crooks on the roof 26 minutes before the shooting?
- Why wasn’t the roof he was on just 130 yards away secured? Were local cops inside that building as the shooting occured as The New York Post reported?
- After numerous eyewitnesses alerted police to Crooks crawling on the roof with a rifle, did the police alert the Secret Service snipers?
- Were the local police and Secret Service on the same radio frequency to communicate?
- Did Crooks really act alone?
- What was his motive?
- Did the fierce anti-Trump rhetoric from top Democratic leaders play any role in the shooting?
Will we get any answers?
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette, the London Daily Mail and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He is the author of two books, A Political Odyssey, with Sen. Mike Gravel, foreword by Daniel Ellsberg; and How I Lost By Hillary Clinton, foreword by Julian Assange.
Trump was not brought to the floor by the SS. He felt the sting of the shot, felt his ear, looked at his hand, saw the blood and immediately went to the floor. As he was kneeling on his way down the SS swarmed him and covered. The SS fumbled around trying to move him. Trumps GI control is famously weak and that may have played a part in the delay in getting him up. I mean, he got his ear nicked and he could barely stand up off the floor of the stage. He had to be pulled up by a couple of SS. He didn’t get up until the SS agent announced “shooter is down”. Once safe, they got him up, the crowd starting cheering, then he started pumping his fist, inciting a riot as he does at all his rallies for eight years
Absolutely astonishing the way that young CNN reporter tried to shut down Congressman Mills for merely suggesting that an investigation making no predetermined assumptions, including that these mistakes were in fact intentional, was necessary. Mills was calm, collected, infinitely reasonable, and drawing on his own considerable experience in securing a public gathering like this. The reporter either thought she was working for the Secret Service P.R. staff or was a graduate from the Karine Jean-Pierre School of Journalism.
Forensics is always problematic. But the upshot of that is that we have no basis for trust of anybody or any agency involved in any of this.
It is not as though our misgivings were never confirmed before, is it?
The fact that the snipers were on the roof behind the stage in full view of the crowd negates the click bait view that they were going to let him get shot. They’re saying that the snipers dastardly deed was to let T get shot in full view of the crowd and then take the consequences of it? I don’t think so. I think it all happened fast. The shooter and the snipers both climbed on to their roofs about the same time slightly before T took the stage. It was all happening simultaneously and the snipers hesitated before shooting at whatever they were seeing 146 yards away.
The shooters position was in an industrial complex of some kind. It’s not unusual at all to see random service trucks with ladders in and around the parking lots and even in back of the buildings for AC service and what not. The area that Crooks put the ladder up was in a narrow grassy section between buildings with parking spaces right in front of it. The opening to the space between buildings was partially closed off from view, from the parking lot, by a couple of tall Italian cypress trees planted in front of the opening. The rear of the space between buildings was blocked by a small connecting hallway building blocking view from the rally grounds. I think Crooks bought too small of a ladder and put it up on the hallway building and from the top of it pulled his way onto the taller building. A local cop went up the ladder, pulled himself up and looked down the barrel of a rifle and ducked back down to the top of the small hallway building, having no shot, using both arms to pull up. Crooks must have taken his shots just after, knowing he had been found and there was not much time. At that time he stuck his head over the peak of the roof and that was all the snipers needed.
And those same questions were not answered about J6
At least there is only one dead patsy, in contrast to the jfk event. The collateral deaths won’t let this go away from that local venue. Scaring supporters could be a side-event. Motive, means, opportunity. Means were evident. The other two? Not so much.
Corporate mainstream newsmedia is a total farce. As if the FBI who covered up Hunter’s laptop claiming it Russia disinformation ought to be trusted to get answers for we the people. Fool me once, etc.
You have to love it every time that Kate Bolduan has a “stunned” reaction to an interviewee puzzling out the most plausible (and implausible) scenarios for the events that she is covering on the basis of available information, as she also did when she sputtered “Wh-wh-who do YOU think is behind this?!!” with (faux?) angry incredulity at Rep. Thomas Massie when he expressed skepticism of Bashar al-Assad’s motives or incentives for involvement in the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in a CNN interview on April 5, 2017 (setting the stage for their later tense exchange over AIPAC-sponsored resolutions earlier this year).
Nobody’s asking why Trump wasn’t taken off the stage when they had 3 to 4 minutes notice of a potential threat
Occam’s Razor applies here.
This kid was a deranged bullied sad sack who happened to get lucky in being able to get off his shots. The bureaucratic incompetence was at full display with different law enforcement agencies running around the scene all day in different uniforms, which means it wouldn’t be hard for this kid to sort of blend in and look official for the short duration of time he’s seen carrying the gun and ascending that rooftop. He was wearing semi military garb.
Of course, a kid like Crooks is absolutely in no way, shape or form a guy the CIA, deep state and high ranking Trump-haters would use to pull off one of the biggest assassinations of the past 100 years.
Never forget that law enforcement agencies can be sloppy and lazy and be struck with inertia at times. The fact that one cop apparently confronted Crooks on the rooftop and did nothing indicates confusion and perhaps “buck fever”. Buck fever is a hunting term when a hunter has a clear easy shot at a beautiful buck but chokes or panics and never pulls the trigger.
Occam’s Razor applies in this Crooks case. Coincidences do happen.
It cuts both ways though. Occam’s razor doesn’t exactly favor a 20 year old social misfit with no military training being able to pull off an highly complex assassination attempt (complete with remote controlled IEDs) as a lone wolf with no help thanks to a confluence of multiple ‘coincidental’ security failures.
It looks especially sketchy when we are asked to believe that same 20 year old American misfit has no social media profile, no search history, no apparent motive, and has no history of mental illness or run-ins with the justice system. It’s like he just popped up out of the ether and took a shot at the Citrus Caesar for no reason whatsoever.
Occam’s Razor demands the simplest explanation that accounts for the facts. The simplest explanation here is the one we’re being presented with – crazy loner gets gun, climbs up on roof, shoots and misses his target. Police aren’t up to the job of covering all threats, and blow this one. But this is based on the facts as presented, facts that may change as more is known, while some facts are withheld or misrepresented by interested parties.
The simplest explanation of the Kennedy assassination is the one we’ve been given, but important facts may have been hidden or manufactured. Hence the conspiracy theories.
Apply the test of “Qui bono?” Who benefits? Well, millions would be breathing easier today if the shooter had killed Trump, so anyone could’ve done it.
Speaking as a retired police officer from Toronto Ontario ??with 32 yrs. experience I would concur that sloppiness and laziness does absolutely occur in law enforcement,particularly at the Provincial ( State) and local levels due to the sometimes mundane nature of the job. Hours of routine tedium interjected with very occasional moments of shear terror.
However, in a Service like the Secret Service this type of excuse doesn’t hold due to the meticulous nature of the work and eliteness of the unit. For me , the most egregious oversight in this whole debacle was not covering a rooftop within a perfect 130m line of sight to the stage. This is basic. Whoever was responsible for overlooking that must be fired.
As for Crooks being seen carrying a rifle across an open field and not being stopped by numerous officers in the vicinity is such an American phenomenon. Especially in an open carry State like Pennsylvania. In Canada that would never happen in those same circumstances . Anywhere. Not just a special Presidential event. He’d be immediately arrested and questioned. And his weapon confiscated. Just one of the differences between our two countries’.
Simplest would be to assume that his opponent tried to have him shot. Were it true, it wouldn’t be unusual, and it would explain all the anomalies at a stroke.
It might not be true. But then, Occam’s razor, useful as it is, doesn’t really prove much.
It would seem that final responsibility rests with sec.serv. — expresident’s security!
Negligence is not a factor at that minimal proximity.
Three investigations point to massive & hoped for coverup — let House , with absolute freedom & power, investigate while everyone else stands down.
Will we get any answers? Not from the official media or the government which is in full circling the wagons mode doing what Washington does well, i.e., covering asses. But yes, we will get, as we are, answers coming from the rapidly growing alternative media community which is not directly tied to big corporate bosses. This community is essential in all areas and it is growing and will continue to grow in the next few years.
The most intriguing question for me comes from Larry Johnson:
What was Crooks’ prior knowledge? How did he get it? Such as: How big a ladder needed? Which roof to get on?
The latest scuttlebutt (I hesitate to call it news since the situation is still fluid) is that he didn’t use a ladder. He crawled on top of an air conditioning unit and used that to get on the roof. Same questions apply though. How did he know he would have line of sight? How did he know there wouldn’t be any secret service or cops on the roof? How did he know where the exact vulnerabilities were in the protection plan?
We crave detailed, complex answers to explain the unexpected, and we may never know what drove Crooks to be a shooter. But It’s already pretty clear that multiple parties responsible for security were negligent. How could that happen?
Well, it happens in every profession every day. In some, like presidential security, the negligence can have dire consequences. But that doesn’t change the fact that people screw up, and not because of any complex plot or plan. And not because they intend to. That’s why it’s called negligence, and that’s why we call the results accidents.
Absolutely true.
However, multiple concurrent screw-ups from multiple agencies make it awfully hard to sell that argument. It’s like the entire protection detail went Keystone Cops all at once. The locals, the state boys, the Secret Service, and everyone else involved, all at the same time. That degree of overlapping incompetence seems unlikely.
At the very minimum, the involved agencies were grossly negligent. The very legitimate question remains of whether that negligence of trained and career professionals was SO gross, the preparations SO incompetent, that in fact it was not negligence at all, but intentional. No investigation that does not look into that very question could itself be legitimate. Katy Bolden was completely out of line when she asked Congressman Mills, who has extensive personal experience in securing public gatherings, “just because there was gross negligence, how does your brain go to the possibility that it was intentional?” As if he had literally lost his mind! But then that is the kind of question you’d expect from an organization that sees its job more as the newsletter for the neoliberal establishment than as being journalists.
The guards step aside and let an assassin get in. OOPS, we made a mistake. That’s how assassinations get done. Tell-tale evidence that this was planned will be this: 1. the shooter is immediately killed; dead men tell no tales. 2. No one will be meaningfully punished for allowing this to happen.
and even though it cost him part of his ear (or did it?), Trump got his (re)election.
What are you suggesting with your comment ( or did it?)… that in the split second moment he had a fake blood pouch and slapped it on his ear? Good grief. You sound like one of these “ hoax” conspirators. You’re totally ignoring the evidence we actually do have to date that totally crushes that suggestion.
I agree with you that it is highly improbable that this was a hoax, but we don’t much of anything in the way of evidence at the moment sufficient to crush any suggestion. And I suspect that will be the case until an independent investigation is conducted.