The Plot to Assassinate Donald Trump: A Critical Look at Secret Service Failures | Ep 75

Former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke discusses the recent plot to assassinate former President Trump in this episode of Straight Talk Podcast. Sheriff Clarke singles out security lapses and leadership flaws at the US Secret Service, which director Kimberly Cheal is in charge of. He draws on his extensive experience in presidential protection to explain the series of failures that almost resulted in a catastrophic event. Concerning such high-stakes scenarios, Clarke goes on to talk about how local law enforcement plays a role and how there is tension between federal and local duties.

SUPPORT THE PODCAST:

Straight Talk With America's Sheriff, David Clarke | Podcast | Patreon

https://www.patreon.com/straighttalkwithamericassheriffdavidclarke/membership?fan_landing=true

------------------------------------------

SPONSORS:

mypillow.com Promo Code: CLARKE

------------------------------------------

Purchase COP Under Fire Book by Sheriff David Clarke

Amazon:   https://a.co/d/2jPJXV0

JOIN OUR STRAIGHT SHOOTER'S VIP CLUB:

 Receive special gift and invitations to Private Podcast Events

 Straight Talk With America's Sheriff David Clarke | podcast | Patreon

-------------------------------------------------------

For Podcast Sponsorship, Partnership, And Endorsement Opportunities, Please Submit The Following Form: 

https://form.123formbuilder.com/6370448/podcast-sponsor-form

-----------------------------------------------------

Websites: https://americassheriff.com | https://badgeofhonorcruise.com

Host: Sheriff David Clarke, America's Sheriff

Executive Producer: Judy L. Wilkinson, JL Wilkinson Consulting, LLC 

Producer: Josh Wentz | josh@wentzcreative.com

Copyright 2024  Straight Talk Podcast With America's Sheriff David Clarke     

All Rights Reserved

Chapters

• 1:39 Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump
• 3:27 Sheriff Clarke's Expertise in Dignitary Protection
• 4:27 Analyzing the Security Lapse
• 5:24 Critique of Secret Service Leadership
• 7:58 Event Day Security Failures
• 12:50 Communication Breakdown and Aftermath
• 21:55 Concluding Thoughts and Future Implications

Transcript

1:22

Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls to another edition of the Straight Talk Podcast with your host, former Milwaukee County Sheriff, David Clarke. Wow. What a week. What a week. We went in less than seven days from witnessing live on TV, a former president and now current nominee for the Republican presidency, Donald Trump, be nearly assassinated. on live tv. And in that same week the RNC held their convention, very successful convention I might add. Anybody who would deny that is just, they're, they're living under a rock or they're just not paying attention. So I, I avoided last week, last week's podcast, I avoided talking about the attempted assassination because the information was still coming in. It was very fluid. And the early days of an incident like that, and I've said this on national TV when I'm interviewed, I'm not prepared to talk about, you know, the school shooting or whatever, this sort after the event, because there's a lot unknown, a lot of misinformation, a lot of wrong information being thrown around. So I like to let things settle down a little bit with at least a few things that you can call facts. And then you can have some analysis, or I can have some analysis on stuff that's known, on stuff that's factual, on stuff that's true. Even though you might not have all of it, because that's still an ongoing investigation, but the fact is that there's enough out there now to make some assessments. And I've been asked, did numerous interviews, and I was asked, How could this happen? How could something like this happen? The way I look at it, oh, by the way, let me state my qualifications for even being able to talk about a presidential protection detail. I've been trained by the United States Secret Service in Dignitary Protection. I attended their two week program out in Washington DC and received a Certificate of Completion signed by the then head of the Secret Service. While I was with the Milwaukee Police Department, I was the commanding officer of the Intelligence Division and one of our responsibilities was Dignitary Protection. and working with the Secret Service when one of those events came to Milwaukee or the Milwaukee area. So I've worked several presidential protection details. I've worked with the Secret Service side by side so I kind of know how these things are put together, how they work, and what should happen in order to pull off a successful event. So with that out of the way, You know, rather than start with this, how did this guy get up on this roof with a rifle and a backpack, and he was able to fire some shots at the stage where the president was addressing the crowd. Rather than start there, because that's where everybody's zeroing in on. The way I look at these things, it's usually a chain of events that occur before the actual incident happens. transcript Emily Beynon And there are red flags all along the way. And all somebody would have had to do was, was remove one of those lakes of that chain, that chain of events, take one of those instances out of there. And you know what? You disrupt the, you disrupt there, you foil the plot, the, the incident, the attack, what have you. So what I want to start with and moving back a little bit before I talk about the scene that they. I want to talk about the current leadership of the United States Secret Service, and then work down toward the event itself. This director, Kimberly Cheal is her name, she's not qualified to lead the agents who are currently serving in that organization. It's obvious to me that she's an identity politics hire. She doesn't realize that there is a culture problem within the agency, and that's something that's been going on for quite some time. So, She watered down their mission. I remember the, uh, seeing a video of when she was first, uh, installed as the director of the Secret Service, a Biden appointee, by the way. She said in an interview early on that she's committed to making sure that by 2030, the year 2030, she wants 30 percent of the agents to be female. And I said, what? And by the way, that, 30 by 30 is sweeping local law enforcement agencies as well. Milwaukee police department announced their plan for it. The Milwaukee County Sheriff's office, uh, has announced it as well. Yeah. Like former agencies falling apart, they've gone woke. But anyway, she said that was one of her main objectives. First of all, That means more qualified males will have been passed over to achieve that goal, because I would imagine more males apply for that job than females. So, it also means, you know, they've lost their way on their mission. Folks, the United States Secret Service has one mission as it relates to their primary function, and that's to protect high valued persons in the federal government from death or attack. DEI programs should not be a part of their mission. So it's pretty obvious that the Secret Service suffered a catastrophic fail in Butler, Pennsylvania. And there's just no way to sugarcoat it. This security lapse, as I indicated, almost caused the loss of a nominee from a major political party for President of the United States. Think about that. Think of what we escaped, or what President Trump narrowly escaped. But we're the American people as well So what transpired that day as far as in my experience is typical of someone who doesn't understand the moment The first thing director Chito started doing was pointing fingers at the local police She said that the Secret Service was not the lead agency Like hell they aren't Like I said, I've worked those details There's meetings that take place in the city a week before at a minimum to put together a directed patrol mission. The Secret Service is the lead agency. And by the way, a couple of days later, she came out and said, yes, the Secret Service was the lead agency. So she was in cover your rear end mode right from the beginning. That's not a trait of leadership. And so, like I said, I'm basing this on newest presidential visits that I participated in. And the secret service, they come in and with an advanced team a couple days before, two, three days before, and they do an inspection of the site. That inspection includes mapping where the motorcade, where the motorcade, the route that they'll take to the event. The advanced team identifies every possible vulnerability on the route that they will take. Plus. the site inspection. Now the Secret Service only has so many people working on these details. They have to depend on the local police to accomplish this mission, which was like I said, the role of, uh, where I was the commanding officer at the intelligence division. That was our role to make sure that, uh, we had enough police to staff and to post this event in order to, you know, do things like shut down traffic for motorcades coming through. Get to the site. You got to have certain people posted at the site. The secret service usually covers the magnetometer, uh, people passing through the man magnetometer and the searches. So the team that one of the goals of the secret service team, and see, she should have known this. Is to identify every possible vulnerability on the route. They will take plus, like I said, the, the location of the event. No, you know, this is, it's, it's a long. Process the the when the actual the day of the event usually the local police starts staffing Where it's been mapped out where they need people early in the morning. So let's say if Uh president any president is going to come in at at one o'clock or so probably by 7 a. m The police need to be in place at these. Um uh marked posts So You know, it's it's like If she, let me take, let me put it this way. The local sheriff there said that he notified Director Cheal that they didn't have enough personnel to staff or to post that roof that the shooter climbed up on and fired shots from. Let's say that happened, I don't want to get into who's telling the truth, who's not, but let's say he did. That should have been kicked up From the advanced team to the supervisor, the, the secret service, super supervisor, who should have contacted director Chita and said, you know, we're being asked to do this mission and we cannot staff everything that needs to be staffed and neither can a local police. And let her make the decision as well, that event's not going to take place. You're not putting that protectee in that position. That's where it gets a little dicey, right? Who makes those calls and. You know, don't forget the president, or in this case, the nominee, the, the former president, he has, he has some say in this too. I can imagine the secret service going to president Trump and saying, we're not putting you on that stage because the local police are providing us with enough people to, to, you know, safely get you through this day. I could see Donald Trump going, Hey, I'm taking that stage. I'm not leaving all these people who attended up this rally empty. Well, okay. That's, you know, that's high level politics and it's actually the director that should get ahold of the president's team and say, look, we're not doing this. We're not putting him in that position. It's too dangerous. Well, that's, that's, you know, that's a side issue, but that communication has to take place. Because one of the problems that I see in what, in what happened is there was a communications failure, a breakdown. So then Cheadle in some post interviews. She's terrible by the way on the stump in front of a camera. She said one of the reasons that they didn't put anybody on the roof that the shooter was able to um, get onto the fire shot. She said it was, it was too slow and that it presented too much of a dangerous issue for her to put agents up there. And I thought, what? I thought The objective of the secret service was to put themselves in harm's way to protect, in this case, the president, or former president. That's their job. It's funny, she thought it was too dangerous for her to put, or for the secret service to put agents up there, counter snipers, whatever. But the shooter didn't see it that way. He didn't think it was too dangerous. So, you know, my take is I don't care whose responsibility is. It is that billing needed to be posted as a vulnerability. Then you get reports coming in that citizens attending a rally. Some of this is on video, so you can use it as factual. Some of the attendees of the rally informed police in the area of a guy with a rifle on the roof and that the shooter, the one that the shooter eventually use. It's, Hey, there's a guy on the roof over there with a rifle. But nobody took any real action and it is reported that a local law enforcement officer went up by that roof Was confronted by the shooter who pointed his rifle at the officer. The officer then took cover and went back down the ladder Why wasn't this communicated to the United States Secret Service at that time? Because they could have kept President Trump from taking the stage at the you know, we got a man with a rifle out of building, you know to the north Then you don't let the president go out there, and if he is already out there, you rush that stage, stop him in the middle of it, take him to the ground, I'm talking about the prison, and cover him. That's what you do. So like I said, you know, these things, it's a series of interrelated events that have acted upon effectively and decisively. It could have interrupted the assassination attempt, but you know, that's either here nor there now because it was accomplished. Also the shooter You know, he needed a series of events to go on perfectly in order to get himself into position Remember, there's video that exists. I've saw I've seen it where the shooter was Hanging around the front entrance by them, you know, the people going through the magnetometers He's just wandering around You look kind of suspicious and I think some people pointed him out to law enforcement again You It doesn't seem like any effective action or assertive action was taken. So, you know, people working in law enforcement, they know how critical seconds are to stopping a threat. But from what I've examined thus far, the United States Secret Service and local law enforcement, they had not only seconds, but they had minutes, they had hours and even days to prevent this. Folks, I am not second guessing. I'm just stating the truth. I just ran through you a series of things. that happened, or should have happened, and if performed properly, this guy wouldn't have been able to get into a position to fire shots at the stage. Costing one man his life. Can you imagine going to a political rally and ending up dead? A retired fire chief. Two other people were seriously wounded. So, you know, there'll be an after action report. There's still stuff coming in. Some of it still makes me shake my head. But there'll be a long time before and after Action Report is released. We may never find out the entire truth. I don't trust these federal agencies. I guess the FBI is in on the investigation as well. I don't trust them. I mean, there's some embarrassing things that they don't want out. So they slow walk this thing. And then, you know, there'll be, You know congressional hearings and what happened there been some already But you know where that's going. It's usually all theater with finger wagging by politicians Hollowing at the witnesses called to testify and that circus serves. No good. We need a thorough examination of What is wrong deep inside the United States Secret Service? We need structural changes and not technical fixes Because a technical fix sometimes will disappear over time and allows the dysfunctional culture a chance to re emerge. You go back to the way things always worked, their habits. Habits are hard to break. So, you can kind of see here the way that I approach this thing, starting at the top and then working toward the event. Instead of, you know, starting at when the shots were fired, when the shots rang out. And then you can see. I think in, in, in the way I've described things, you know, what really needs to happen in order for this to, you know, the air quotes never happen again. Cause that's what we'll get. I don't know what's going to happen with directed shield. I don't get to make that call, but I, I, I, I'd find it hard to believe that Biden would hang on to her. I mean, you know, you didn't need to fire her in the hours. after the event, but some of the things she said on TV, wasn't our responsibility. We were at the lead agency. It's not our fault. It's a local law enforcement officer. So no, it's her fault. And it's usually a failure of leadership. Also, there's an on scene supervisor from the Secret Service. Haven't heard from him or her. You know, the security lapses. Then I hear that, um, Secret Service was using temporary fill ins from Homeland Security because they didn't have enough of their own personnel. You can't do that. First of all, they're not trained in Dignitary Protection and they only see this as a one day assignment. You can't utilize a patchwork when you have a a mission this serious. You have to have cohesion. You have to have professionalism. You have to have an attention to detail. Agents for Homeland Security don't have that as it relates to Dignitary Protection. I'm not doubting them. I'm just saying, you can't do that on a mission this important. You know, it's critical, like I said, that you have this cohesion. Everyone's on the same page. Everyone's speaking the same language. Everyone knows what everybody else is doing. Well, that's a scene supervision issue. And when they said, whoever the Secret Service Special Agent in Charge is, when they said him, or fill ins from the Department of Homeland Security, he should have made a phone call. He should have asked to speak to the Director. Director, you know what they're doing to me? We got people working this important detail that have never done this before. To me, that was the most, one of, one of the most mind boggling aspects of this. Thanks. And that was the lack of a sense of urgency I talked about lack of attention to detail communications failure it all ends up to a catastrophic mission Fail, so we'll see what happens moving forward. Fortunately The president former president is alive Dodged a bullet no pun intended But you know And that's the other thing, too, I neglected to mention. When you have an outside scene, that presents some complexities. Outside scenes for dignitary protection are very hard to manage. But Trump likes to do outdoor events. They can't prohibit him. They can't say it's presents too much danger. Because you're out in the open compared to an indoor event. You can lock it down. Kind of hard to lock it down on an outdoor event. You could see that shooter, you know, meandering around and walking around and inspecting things and I mean he'd have to get inside in other words past the magnetometers in order to pull that off in an inside venue, but You know, they have to know that Trump isn't the only one who holds outdoor rallies or outdoor events, especially in a campaign season So we'll see how this thing plays out moving forward. If anything startling develops any more than has already been laid out for us. I may have some more comments on it, but anyway, now you know on how and why this stuff happens. Thanks for joining me.