Former Secret Service agent who served on Obama's detail tells Don Jr a police sniper WAS assigned to cover the roof where Trump shooter Thomas Crooks hid – but did not show up on the day

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  • ‘That roof was supposed to be covered,’ Bongino told Donald Trump Jr. 
  • READ MORE: Thomas Crooks pictured almost an hour before he shot Trump

 Ex-Secret Service agent Dan Bongino claimed Thomas Crooks’ vantage point was due to be covered but no one showed up while the agency’s director Kimberly Cheatle received backlash for her ‘BS excuse’ that the roof was ‘too sloped’ for snipers.

The political TV and radio commentator, who worked as an agent for over a decade, on Tuesday told Donald Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered that the rooftop spot where Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate the former president should have been occupied by law enforcement.    

‘According to my source, that roof was supposed to be a police post… [there] was so supposed to be someone there,’ Bongino said from the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. 

It comes as Cheatle now faces calls for resignation over what is being considered a huge security failure after the Secret Service considered the roof of the building too risky for an agent’s placement during Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday night.

‘They’re now making up excuses saying the pitch of the roof. My source says to me that no one knows why the post didn’t show up,’ Bongino added on the podcast.

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who has been criticized in the past for promoting conspiracy theories, is now speaking out about the Trump shooting

Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who has been criticized in the past for promoting conspiracy theories, is now speaking out about the Trump shooting

Bongino is a frequent guest of Donald Trump Jr on the eldest Trump son's podcast

Bongino is a frequent guest of Donald Trump Jr on the eldest Trump son’s podcast 

‘I was also told that the USSS director has been given instructions from the administration and the DHS secretary: ‘If you wanna keep your job, you’ll keep your mouth shut about this’

Bongino – who served on George W Bush and Obama’s detail – also chillingly told Trump Jr. that a person not showing up for their respective post ‘could have gotten your dad killed, within millimeters.’

Amid Bongino’s allegations, Cheatle has come under fire after claiming in an interview with ABC that agents were not positioned on top of the building where Crooks fired from because of a ‘sloped roof’ – despite images from the scene showing Secret Service snipers set up on a sloped roof behind where Trump was delivering his speech.

Read More

Pictured almost an hour before he shot Trump: Last photo of Thomas Crooks taken by Secret Service

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These new claims were echoed by another former Secret Service agent, Bill Gage.

He told Fox News that the agency is ‘stretched too thin.’ 

‘They got a real opportunity after 9/11 to ask for increased funding, double the size of the agency, really increase the capabilities, and none of did that,’ Gage told the network.

‘In a perfect world, you have 30 [Counter Sniper] teams and 500 agents. But the Service just doesn’t have those resources,’ he said. 

Former top Secret Service agents told The AP that Crooks should never have been allowed to gain access to the roof, and the agency will have to figure out how that happened. 

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has come under severe scrutiny in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has come under severe scrutiny in the wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump

 

They said such a lapse could have been caused by officers neglecting their posts or a flaw in the event’s security plan.

The agency is ‘going to have to go through the security plan and interview a number of people from the director on down’ to figure out what went wrong, said Stephen Colo, who retired in 2003 as an assistant director after a 27-year career in the service.

Colo said presidential candidates and former presidents don’t typically get the same level of protection as the sitting president. 

In fact, Colo said he was surprised that the agency had staffed the event with a counter-sniper team. Such a valuable resource — there are not many of those highly trained agents — is usually reserved for the president. 

Candidates don’t usually get such teams.

Timothy McCarthy, a former agent who retired from the agency in 1994, said the Secret Service ‘better be doing a deep dive into what happened there and doing whatever it takes to figure it out’ because the gunman should not have been able to occupy such a vantage point.

‘How did that person get up on that building?’ said McCarthy, 75, who in 1981 took a bullet when President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton Hotel.

 ‘How did that happen? I mean, that’s the key to the entire thing. And what measures were put in place to prevent it?’




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