Stephen Bryen | Weapons and Strategy | August 6, 2024
Trump reaches for his ear when hit
It is increasingly unlikely that there will be an honest investigation of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. So far, no one has been fired or disciplined in any way. Infighting between the Secret Service and the Butler police continues.
But the real story is that the evidence from witnesses, including audio and video, supports the possibility of a second shooter.
The Secret Service cannot conduct an objective investigation. That is abundantly clear from the testimony of the former Secret Service director, Kimberly A. Cheatle, and her “Acting” replacement, Ronald L. Rowe, Jr.. Both were willing to admit that mistakes were made, but both also try to convince the public that they got the shooter and we can all rest easy.
Adding the FBI into the mix also won’t work because the FBI is extremely anti-Trump and spends their time at the behest of their Justice Department overseers trying to incarcerate Trump for phantom crimes. The raid on Mar-a-Lago, is a great example of how FBI thuggery was used against the former President.
The FBI lives in fear Trump will win the presidential election and clean house in the agency.
The Justice Department also has set up a team of investigators, but anything from the DOJ is not credible and should be dismissed out of hand.
There is a growing sense that Trump was set up at Butler. It is hard to believe that the Secret Service simply made “mistakes.” There are whistleblower reports, still to be run down and confirmed, that Secret Service agents were told to stand down and not take action against a threat that was known hours before the shooting happened.
The audio evidence and the location of victims also raises serious issues.
The audio records nine shots, eight that seems to originate in the same location and one shot that is the Secret Service sniper that killed the shooter, Thomas Crooks.
The first eight shots consist of three shots coming fairly slow and then a slight pause and the remaining five shots more rapidly.
Based on the audio and video evidence it is clear that it was the first shot that nearly killed Mr. Trump. It may be that the next two shots were part of the series aimed at Trump. We are missing information on where those shots ended up, but maybe they hit low down as Trump got down after his ear was hit. The remaining burst of five shots could have been the ones that killed Corey Comperatore and wounded David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania, They were seated in the stands to Mr. Trump’s right.
Victims including Corey ComperatoreWe do not have a comprehensive track on the two shooting sequences, but it is clear that Mr. Comperatore’s death and the wounding of Dutch and Copenhaver came after Trump was hit. In fact, Copenhaver was hit twice. It is noteworthy that Mr. Comperatore was trying to protect his family, so he was hit after he heard the first couple of shots.
Some important questions can be asked, assuming the above is correct. The first and most important is if the shooter hit Mr. Trump on the first shot (or possible one of the first three), why did he keep shooting? Added to this is the fact that the first shot or shots were extremely accurate, and the subsequent five shots (if they were aimed at Trump on the podium) were inaccurate, bizarrely so. These subsequent shots came no where near Trump and killed and wounded innocent bystanders.
A related question is why would the shooter, having hit his mark, go on to fire again, not hitting the alleged prime target?
Logic would say that once the shooter hit Trump, he would have skedaddled away in order not to expose himself to counter-fire. He could easily see the Secret Service snipers on the rooftops opposite him. Would he not have tried to extricate himself instead of shooting at non-essential targets? (He was earlier seen scooting across the roof, why would he not have done so after he hit his target?)
The shooter would not know if he actually killed Mr. Trump. He would have known that he hit the target, based on Trump’s hand going to his ear and his action to immediately hit the deck. The shooter would not know if Trump was alive or dead, but he also would not have any immediate way to find out.
An alternative theory is that there were two shooters. The first shooter accurately targeted Mr. Trump. As is well known, Trump was only spared because he turned his head exactly at the moment the shooter fired. The second shooter, in this theory, would have been Thomas Crook. He shot wildly because he was a poor gunman and was not the “real” assassin.
There has been a lot of speculation about the possibility of a second shooter. There also is confusion on the presence of 8 shell casings on the roof near the deceased shooter Thomas Crooks. We don’t have reliable information to back up the Secret Service claim that they found 8 shell casings. A video of shows that officers initially found five shell casings on the roof near the dead shooter.
An officer in uniform counts five shell casings on the roofWe now have a fragmentary video that appears to show gun flashes coming from a window in the same building as the shooter, who was on the rooftop. The source of the video is not stated, but it seems genuine. This obviously needs follow up and should be taken very seriously.
Screen capture of one of the “gun flashes” from a window below the shooter on the roofThere is now enough video evidence and testimony that supports a second shooter or, alternatively, leaves significant confusion about Thomas Crook’s behavior.
Congress should hire a team of top forensic investigators and not accept anything they are being told at face value.
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