Former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino, whose assignments during his 12-year career included protecting Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, dropped some insider information during an interview this week regarding a massive security failure involving the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump.
During Donald Trump Jr.’s “Triggered” podcast, where he appeared alongside former Fox News star Tucker Carlson, Bongino disclosed that the rooftop from which the would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at former President Trump was intended to be under the protection of law enforcement personnel.
An “unimpeachable source” who had firsthand knowledge of the situation told Bongino this information, he claimed.
“That post, according to my source, that roof was supposed to be a police post. It was supposed to be someone there. They’re now making up excuses, saying the pitch of the roof… my source says to me, no one knows why the post didn’t show up,” Bongino said.
He also revealed that if she wants to keep her job, Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle must “keep her mouth shut” about the situation, according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Crooks fired from a rooftop with a clear line of sight located roughly 130 yards from the former president’s podium. Several experts like Bongino have stated that rooftop never should have been left unattended. Worse, there are questions about why law enforcement did not react more quickly after rallygoers spotted Crooks on the rooftop with a rifle well in advance of him opening fire on Trump, who escaped assassination with just a minor bullet wound to his right ear.
Describing the attack at a Saturday rally in Butler, Pa., an “apocalyptic security failure,” Bongino, who also served as an instructor at the Secret Service Training Academy in Maryland, was responding to a statement the agency put out claiming officials “added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”
He went on to slam his old employer for refusing to take responsibility for the incident, which left Trump exposed after a series of prior discoveries by bystanders, local police, and Service agents on the scene that should have led to some sort of intervention against the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks.
“This is the best technology we have’? Really? To let a sniper 150 yards away from the potential next president shoot a piece of his ear off?” Bongino told Fox News. “Kimberly Cheatle has failed Donald Trump, and honestly failed Joe Biden too.”
He also said that agency counter-sniper teams failed to engage Crooks before he was able to squeeze off several shots.
“We’re trained out to 1,000 yards in the Secret Service with the counter-sniper team. How did they miss someone at most one-fifth of the way there? It doesn’t make any sense. And even worse, it’s broad daylight on a white roof,” Bongino added.
The Secret Service has strongly denied reports that Trump’s security detail requested reinforcements and were denied. However, Bongino asserts that he can prove otherwise. “I can tell you actual quotes,” he said on Sunday.
“I can tell you, and absolutely confirm, from the horse’s mouth, from multiple people … there have been repeated requests to increase the security footprint, around not just the residences of Donald Trump, but the body itself,” the former Secret Service agent said. “And they have been rebuffed.”
Bongino summarized the incident as his interview wrapped up: “Never forget, an uneventful failure is never a success, and the fact that Donald Trump didn’t die yesterday is no reason for anybody to take some kind of victory lap,” he said.
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