A steady drip of damning revelations about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump is starting to lead to agents in the Secret Service making predictions that it won’t be long before a second attempt is made on his life.
RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Susan Crabtree reported on internal messages shared by agency counter-snipers gnashing their teeth about the Secret Service’s worst security failure in decades, confiding that he hopes senior-level officials are fired and that if protocols don’t change soon his colleagues should expect another catastrophe. “A Secret Service counter sniper sent an email Monday night to the entire Uniformed Division (not agents) saying he will not stop speaking out until ‘5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions,’” Crabtree wrote on X. “The counter sniper also said the agency ‘SHOULD expect another assassination attempt’ before November and complained that he is no longer proud to be a USSS counter sniper after leadership failed the officers at the Trump rally in Butler on 7/13.”
She continued: “‘This agency NEEDS to change,’ the sniper wrote in the email. ‘If not now, WHEN? ‘The NEXT assassination in 30 days?’ Sadly we have fallen short for YEARS. We just look good doing it. I have conveyed these thoughts to not only supervisors (to include the current Captain of CS, but those responsible for training us (SOTS/CS). Only to be brushed off as those with less experience somehow knew more than me.”
Kimberly Cheatle, former director of the clandestine detail around current and former presidents as well as top candidates for the White House, resigned in disgrace last week after telling the House Oversight Committee that she accepted responsibility for allowing 20-year-old Thomas Crooks to come within an inch of killing President Trump. In previous interviews, she defended her decision to not place a sniper on the roof where Crooks was able to gain a line of sight to the stage, saying its slope would have made it difficult for a counter-sniper to be staged there. Other revelations produced by the FBI and Oversight Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) show that the Secret Service largely left the perimeter of the rally to local authorities who declined to investigate Crooks as he scoured the site in advance of the rally. The Bureau is also investigating the apparent fleeing by one officer who encountered Crooks seconds before he opened fire.
“The team I was once proud to be a part of, is something I have to somehow hide as I move into my next career,” the counter-sniper continued. “Who wants to hire a USSS CS guy who failed? That’s the public perception I’m not faced with. The USSS CS team is a stain I will never be able to cleanse.”
He concluded with these two lines: “The motto of the USSS…CYA. And every supervisor is doing it right now.” The email was quickly deleted, but not before a recipient grabbed a screenshot with the agent’s name and shared it with Crabtree who posted the unredacted message online.
🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE: A Secret Service counter sniper sent an email Monday night to the entire Uniformed Division (not agents) saying he will not stop speaking out until “5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions.” The counter sniper… pic.twitter.com/0dg99EESQk
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 30, 2024
