A Dereliction of Duty?

Serious Problems with the Shooting Timeline

[Updates to this article are in double brackets, dated and in bold]. The VoiceOver for this article is only the original July 16 post]

I wrote on X a couple of days ago decrying the rush to conspiracy theories about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. “How about waiting for the facts to emerge?” I asked. “There is a story behind the Trump assassination. I just don't know what it is yet.”

It is still too early to answer most questions, especially given the sparse information available on Thomas Crooks, the wannabe assassin. It is not too early, however, to draw some conclusions about what appears to be a startling security failure as information emerges about missed opportunities to intercept the shooter before he pulled the trigger.

I studied security protocols around political assassinations for books I did on the murders of John F. Kennedy (Case Closed) and Martin Luther King, Jr. (Killing the Dream). Presidential security was lax before the Kennedy assassination changed everything. Publishing in local newspapers the president’s motorcade route was common practice. JFK was in an open convertible when Lee Harvey Oswald gunned him down with a long-distance rifle shot in Dallas. When it came to Martin Luther King, Jr., the civil rights preacher, King himself eschewed much of the local police protection offered in different cities. He did not want to be surrounded by a contingent of cops wherever he went. And federal protective services were not helping to protect him but rather used to spy on him.

We have become accustomed to much better protection around presidents and presidential candidates in the decades since Kennedy’s murder. All the multiple layers of redundant security again got tightened considerably after the failed 1980 assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan.

Protecting the president and candidates for the office is not fail safe. Secret Service agents with whom I have spoken over the decades acknowledge they always fear any professional assassin willing to die for the mission.

That was not what the security team confronted this past Saturday in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. A 20-year-old came within an inch of pulling off the assassination and did so notwithstanding there having been considerable time to have stopped him after eyewitnesses warned law enforcement about a potential shooter and his location.

The timeline of the assassination is a damning indictment of a dereliction of duty.

An NBC Pittsburgh affiliate reports this morning that one of eight members of a local Beaver County Emergency Services Unit assigned to security outside the Secret Service perimeter, spotted a suspicious man on the roof from which Crooks fired his shots. The Secret Service will almost certainly have to reevaluate its rules for setting a security perimeter for such large public events. There is always enhanced security inside the perimeter, usually weapon checks on entering the area, as well as increased surveillance by the Secret Service. Outside the perimeter local and state law enforcement are responsible. There will be plenty of questions as to how a gunman with an AR-style 223 rifle was able to shoot in an unobstructed view about 150 yards from his target. That distance, for proficient shooters, is considered an almost certain kill zone. [[July 17: It is also the same distance that Army recruits must repeatedly hit a human-sized target in order to qualify for basic proficiency with an M-16 rifle. According to an unidentified law enforcement source cited by CNN, the day before the attempted assassination, Crooks practiced with his rifle at a shooting range of which he was a member.]]

The Beaver County ESU unit was composed of spotters and snipers.

That first encounter with Crooks was at “prior to 5:45 p.m.” 

[[July 17: The New York Post reported what was meant by “prior to 5:45 p.m.” A “local police counter-sniper officer” took a long range photo of Crooks apparently crawling or leaning low to the ground around 5:30 p.m. In the photo, Crooks is wearing a gray t-shit with a logo for Demolition Ranch, a popular YouTube channel. The police sniper who took it searched the area for him but Crooks had moved away by then.

At 5:45 p.m., eighteen minutes before Trump began speaking, the same Beaver County counter-sniper officer saw Crooks again, this time on the roof of the building from which he soon tried to kill Trump. He called that into the command center. What the command center did with that information is not yet public.

About 10 minutes before Trump took the stage, Secret Service went from looking at Thomas Crooks as “suspicious” to considering him a “threat.” Still, the Secret Service did not inform Trump or cancel his rally appearance.

Moreover, around 3 p.m., more than three hours before Trump took the stage, CNN reports that Crooks was spotted at the rally’s screening area with a rangefinder, a binocular-like device used mostly by golfers and hunters to measure distance. The rangefinder would not have stopped him from entering the inside perimeter. Secret Service agents evidently monitored him near the screening area but did not keep surveillance on him when he walked away. The CNN reports is based on “a senior law enforcement official briefed on the investigation.” A report in the Daily Mail cites unidentified eyewitnesses who report that Crooks “was also acting strangely around the metal detectors” and that he “was furiously checking his phone and operating a hunting range finder.”]]

Let that sink in.

Trump did not take the stage for until 6:03 p.m.[[July 17: That was about an hour later than scheduled.]]

No one is certain yet how Crooks gained access to the roof of the commercial building from which he planned to shoot Trump. [[July 17: According to an unidentified law enforcement source cited by CNN, on the morning of the shooting, Crooks bought a five-foot ladder at Home Depot. However, an ABC News report on an unclassified congressional briefing reported that Crooks did not appear use the ladder to climb on the roof and the ladder was not found at the scene. Investigators believe Crooks scaled an air conditioning unit of an adjacent building and pulled himself up onto the roof. He managed from there to gain access to the top of the building he had chosen to set up a sniper’s nest. Eyewitnesses told ABC News that Crooks shimmied up the slope of the roof to the area where he ultimately shot at Trump.]].

A stunning development today was that Secret Service Director, Kimberly Cheatle, told ABC News that a local police sniper team was stationed inside the one story structure while Crooks was on the roof. Cheatle emphasized that local police - not the Secret Service - were “responsible” for securing the outer perimeter.

The New York Post quoted unidentified sources that the police were still inside the building when the shooting started.

By 6:09, people at the rally began voicing concerns about the man they saw in a prone position on top of a building roof. An amateur video captures the anxious couple of minutes of chaos that preceded the shots.

“Look, they're all pointing,” someone says as at least one police officer walks around the side of the building.

“Someone's on top of the roof.”

“There he is, right there. Right there, see him? He's laying down.”

Someone else gestures to the cop, “He's on the roof … right here, right on the roof!”

Other witnesses told CBS News, they had seen “the guy move from roof to roof. [I] told an officer [he] was on the roof.”

Michael Slupe, the Butler County Sheriff, confirmed to CBS’s Pittsburgh affiliate, KDKA, that shortly before the shooting began, one of his armed officers reached the ledge of the roof that Crooks had picked as his sniper’s nest. The cop evidently backed off when the gunman pointed the rifle toward him.

“All I know is the officer had both hands up on the roof to get up onto the roof,” Slupe recounted “because the shooter had turned towards the officer. And rightfully and smartfully [sic], the officer let go.”  

Slupe admitted that after that officer retreated from confronting Crooks, the shooter pointed his rifle back toward the rally stage.

It is not yet known if the police who learned of a man on a roof with a rifle immediately warned Secret Service agents. Although four police officials told NBC news that when rallygoers told local cops about a man behaving strangely near the security checkpoint, the Secret Service was told and the local police began looking for him.

Twelve seconds before the first shot, a police officer on amateur video is seen walking around the building that has Crooks on the roof. Yet in another video which starts exactly five seconds before the first shot, a group of people are screaming that the man on the roof has a gun. Some start running away from where Crooks is readying to shoot Trump.

A third video –- only four seconds before Crooks pulls the trigger — shows more people yelling that the shooter is “right here” and pointing to the rooftop sniper’s nest.

A multi-feed video montage put together by MilkBarTV uses video clips from different angles to show the chaos in the agonizing 120 seconds preceding the failed assassination. People spot Crooks on the roof and try to alert the police. The rally attendee shooting the video hears a nearby commotion. “Look, they’re all pointing,” he says. He pans the camera seconds later and captures a police officer walking around the front of the building that Crooks was on top of.

More people start gathering around to see what is happening. A few can be heard in the background.

“Yeah, someone’s on top of the roof, look! There he is right there, see him? He’s laying down, see him?”

“Yeah, he’s lying down,” replies a female voice.

Crooks comes into view for the first time, lying on his right side, at the video’s 17-second mark.

Five seconds later the crowd moves closer to the building to check on the growing ruckus. Another ten seconds passes before the man filming points out Crooks to another bystander. At the 34-second mark, Crooks is in the frame and rolls from his right side to rest on his stomach.

While Crooks is changing his shooting position, a male voice yells “Officer!”

A woman begins providing a play-by-play of what she sees and calls out to nearby police. “Come over here, he’s on the roof! He’s flat! Right here, he’s flat on the roof! He’s standing up now, he went flat on the roof again.”

Others in the crowd can be heard calling out but it is not possible to make out what they were saying.

At the 52-second mark, about a minute before the first shot is fired, the video montage shifts to a full frame of Trump speaking on stage. It returns to a split-screen when the timer gets to 1minute and 15 seconds and later changes to four simultaneous views, two of Trump, one from the original videographer, and one view from behind Trump.

At a minute, 50 seconds, a man in what seems to be a military uniform, with a green helmet, steps into the frame and seems to motion to the crowd before disappearing as he walks in the opposite direction of the building with the shooter.

At the 1 minute, 55 second mark, a male voice screams, “He’s got a gun!”

It is then that the film gets increasingly shaky, yet still manages to capture what looks like a uniformed police officer walking toward the building where Crooks is prone on the roof.

The first shot is only five to six seconds away. As the clock ticks down we all know now what comes next. There is no hero’s intervention, just the crack of the first rifle shot and everything erupts into chaos.

The sequence of shots can be timed from news coverage of Trump’s speech. Crooks gets off the first shot at 6:11:33, as Trump was talking about immigration. The next two come on top of one another only a second later, at 6:11:34. Three seconds go by before a volley of at least three shots. And a final shot that sounds different, described by ballistics experts as an “outgoing shot.” That is likely the shot that two law enforcement officials told CBS News was the single round fired by a Secret Service sniper, assisted by a spotter, that killed Crooks. [[July 17: The Secret Service agent in charge of security for the rally was on the phone wit local and state police when the shooting began]]

Did the Secret Service have all the assets it needed for the event? That is still to be determined and might not be known until after Congressional investigations obtain access to electronic and phone communications between the local Secret Service field office and Washington D.C. headquarters. Law enforcement sources who were on previous presidential protection details told the New York Post that field offices often had to fight with Washington to get the protection budget for an event, and often got only “a fraction” of what they needed.

The Trump shooting timeline begs many more questions. If government officials and law enforcement should have learned anything from the JFK assassination, it is that transparency is critical to not only getting to the truth, but also to eliminating the many legitimate questions ordinary citizens will have about what took place. Does that mean the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement, and any military assets, are likely to open their files for public inspection any time soon? Do not count it. But one thing that is certain is that I, and lots of other investigative journalists, will not stop looking for the answers behind such a staggering security failure.