If you have ever been frustrated that your group chat notifications are not working, imagine that same problem except the notifications are about a guy with a rifle on a roof 500 feet from a presidential candidate. Now imagine there were 102 of those notifications. Welcome to the Secret Service.
As USA Journal reported, a 64-page DHS Inspector General report confirms that on July 13, 2024, local law enforcement sent 102 radio transmissions warning about a suspicious person later identified as Thomas Crooks. The transmissions described a man with a range finder and a long gun who had climbed onto a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the stage where Donald Trump was speaking. The Secret Service received exactly zero of those 102 radio transmissions. They got five phone calls and three text messages. Crooks fired eight shots. Firefighter Corey Comperatore was killed. Trump survived by turning his head at the precise right moment, dodging a bullet by a fraction of an inch.
The reason the messages never arrived is not that anyone ignored them. It is that the Secret Service radio setup physically could not receive what local cops were broadcasting. The agency whose entire reason for existing is to protect the President of the United States showed up to a major rally with a communications system that was incompatible with the people trying to tell them about the armed man on the roof. That is like showing up to a fire with a garden hose that does not attach to any hydrant.
This is on top of everything we already knew, which was already a disaster. A counter-drone operator was busy Googling the building location instead of watching his equipment. A site agent suggested using trucks to block the rooftop sightline, a proposal rejected because it would mess up camera angles. The lead agent on the ground was relatively inexperienced for an event of that scale. And the supervisors who approved this masterpiece of a security plan were subsequently promoted. Promoted.
Former Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned after her congressional testimony went about as well as the Butler security plan. A handful of agents got suspended without pay. Sean Curran, who oversaw the Butler operation, is now running the entire agency. If you are keeping score at home, the career trajectory for presiding over a nearly successful assassination of a former president and current candidate is apparently: lateral move, brief vacation, corner office.
The IG report paints a picture of failure that was total, systematic, and preventable at multiple points. Not one point. Not two. Multiple. One hundred and two radio warnings went into the void. Eight shots were fired. A man died protecting his family. And two years later, accountability remains a concept the Secret Service has heard of but cannot seem to receive on their radios.
At some point, someone with actual authority needs to stand up and say this is unacceptable. Not in a press release. Not in a carefully worded statement reviewed by six lawyers. Out loud, on camera, with names attached. Because 102 unanswered warnings and a dead American citizen deserve at least that much.
Read more conservative news commentary at: USA Journal News
