Radio talk-show host and podcaster Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, predicted another “incident” with the Secret Service, claiming that the agency is worse off today than it was before the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
After Congress began to ask then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle about the assassination attempt, Cheatle resigned, leading Ronald L. Rowe Jr. to step in as interim director.
Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., asked Bongino, “Is the Secret Service in a better spot today with Director Rowe in charge?”
“No, it’s worse,” Bongino replied. He predicted that “something else” will happen, although he added, “I pray to my Lord and savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong.”
“[If] you think this is the last incident, you’re out of your mind,” he said.
The former Secret Service agent said Rowe represents more of “the same people” in charge on July 13.
“Kim Cheatle, the director, wasn’t even fired. She was allowed to resign,” Bongino noted. “She’ll go get some cushy job somewhere, and her deputy” got promoted.
Bongino said whistleblowers within the Secret Service told him that Rowe “was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply they supported President Trump. This is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with.”
“If you can explain it, then good luck, because that’s not the agency I worked for,” he quipped.
Seeking Answers
Bongino spoke at a forum on the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, responding to questions from five Republican members of Congress: Andy Biggs and Eli Crane of Arizona, Matt Gaetz and Cory Mills of Florida, and Chip Roy of Texas. Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and founder of the private military contractor Blackwater, and Ben Shaffer, a Washington regional SWAT operator who assisted in security on July 13, also answered the lawmakers’ questions.
Speaking at The Heritage Foundation near the U.S. Capitol, the congressmen presented video clips from July 13, showing that members of the crowd at the Butler speech had attempted to alert police to the presence of Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old man who opened fire at Trump—an hour before the shooting.
Mills asked Shaffer a series of questions clarifying how poorly Secret Service had prepared for a potential threat.
Shaffer confirmed that Secret Service “didn’t take the communication platform that was given by local forces,” that the agency “didn’t take the surveillance drone offered by local forces,” and that agents “didn’t show up for the morning briefing to ensure that last-minute planning could be accounted for.” He also confirmed that Secret Service “did not access the water tower that has the highest vantage point.”
Biggs noted that rallygoers had first attempted to alert police to Crooks at 5:10 p.m., fully an hour before the shooting took place at 6:11 p.m. Shaffer said pictures of the shooter came across his text chat at “approximately 5:38 p.m.” He learned “within minutes” that Crooks had a range finder, which would have “automatically escalated” Crooks from a “suspicious person to a person of interest,” the level right below a “threat.”
Crooks’ position lay outside Shaffer’s sector of responsibility and outside his visual range, the SWAT operator said.
Jill Biden Comparison
“President Trump was definitely deprived of resources that day,” Prince noted.
The Secret Service “had one-third the amount of agents covering him as were covering Jill Biden in the same region at an indoor event,” he said. “She had 12 post-holders covering her, again no statutory or constitutional authority for the first lady. Donald Trump had four Secret Service agents assigned.”
‘Point-Blank Range’
Prince noted “140 yards is point-blank range” for a sniper. “Thank God that 20-year-old aimed for a headshot at President Trump, because if he had aimed center-mass, President Trump would probably be dead.”
“A Hezbollah team, or ISIS, or you name the terrorist organization that actually knows what they’re doing, would have been successful that day,” the former SEAL added. “The Secret Service was nearly defeated by a 20-year-old, and we all, including Donald Trump, dodged a bullet that day.”
‘Grade School-Level Politics’
Gaetz asked Bongino why it seems that Trump, “one of the most threatened people on the planet earth,” deals with “limited protection.”
Bongino emphasized that Secret Service “was definitely not a political enterprise” when he worked there.
Yet he suggested that politics likely played a motive in the Secret Service decreasing Trump’s protective detail.
“I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential, would have facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling,” Bongino said. “I think they were concerned about optics and making him look like a bigshot or whatever word you want to throw out there.”
“They were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school-level politics,” he lamented.
“I don’t want to believe that,” Gaetz responded. “I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI, either. … A lot of these agencies that have been, I think, subject to political capture. We want to think of them as above that.”
Rep. Laurel Lee, R-Fla., announced Monday that members of Congress launched the Bipartisan Task Force to Investigate the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump.
“On July 13, 2024, the American people witnessed a catastrophic security failure that nearly resulted in the loss of President Trump’s life,” Lee said in a press release. “The United States Secret Service has a no-fail mission to protect America’s leaders, and unfortunately, they failed at their core mission that day.”
The task force, which consists of seven Republicans and six Democrats, aims to understand what went wrong on July 13, to ensure accountability, and to prevent such an agency failure from happening again.