Popular conservative pundit and former member of the Secret Service, Dan Bongino, sat down for a conversation with the folks over at the Daily Wire on Wednesday where he revealed that an inside source informed him that a local police counter-sniper post didn’t bother to show up at the rally in Pennsylvania on the day a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on former President Donald Trump from a nearby rooftop during a rally.
Man, there are so many failures concerning security in this incident. As a result, a thorough investigation needs to be conducted so that all those responsible for these massive screw-ups can be held accountable for what happened. We cannot tolerate this level of incompetence, if indeed that’s all it was.
Bongino, who previously served in the New York Police Department and the U.S. Secret Service, also relayed that President Joe Biden’s White House and the Homeland Security Department (DHS) instructed Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to clam up about the security failure at the event or risk losing her job.
An “unimpeachable source” divulged last night that there was “supposed to be a local police department counter-sniper post,” Bongino told Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro. “There were two Secret Service counter-sniper teams. That was supposed to be an additional one. Apparently … that post never showed up.”
EXCLUSIVE: @DBongino provides shocking new revelations about USSS failures in attempted assassination of Former President Trump – including that WH told Cheatle she needs to 'shut her mouth or she's out' pic.twitter.com/g2iwKDPNhM
— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) July 17, 2024
Bongino cautioned that he did not want to speculate about the reason for the absence but stated that it would explain why the Secret Service early on “appeared to pawn the blame off on the locals.” And, when the agency faced blowback, he said the Secret Service blamed the roof’s slope for not having someone stationed on the building.
Yet now the Secret Service is “getting backlash” for the roof claim, which was made by Cheatle in an interview with ABC News, Bongino noted. “They don’t know what to do, they don’t want to tell the truth that they just never checked the post that he showed up, and the post didn’t, so now they’re burying themselves,” he said.
As we speak, a number of investigations have been launched into the matter. With the FBI’s involvement, though, one has to wonder if these obviously politically bias agents will actually do their job in an objective manner. We know the bureau is corrupt, along with most, if not all, of the Justice Department, which is currently under the leadership of Attorney General Merrick Garland.
During the interview, Bongino also said that Cheatle has been given “very strict orders” by both the administration and DHS, to “basically shut her mouth about this or she’s out.” He also added that Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is “vigorously” defending the Secret Service director, saying he “basically knows she has all the cookies in the cookie jar, and there’s no excuse for that.”
The host of “The Dan Bongino Show” also talked to Shapiro about what he described as the “golden rule of Secret Service Protection, or any EP, Executive Protection for that matter,” which he explained was “when a threat presents itself, you get off the ‘X’” where the assailant is planning to hit a mark — in this case, on stage.
“The ‘X’ is where that protectee’s standing, or is in a car, a vehicle gets stopped and they start firing at it with RPGs, you get the hell off the ‘X.’ Cover and evacuate. That is rule number one. It’s Charlie Brown Encyclopedia EP Executive Protection. Why was he even on the ‘X’ in the first place?” Bongino explained.
“The guy was using a rangefinder at 5:41 p.m.,” he said concerning the gunman. “Trump didn’t walk on stage till 6. They have a holding room, Ben, at every site. It’s called the holding room for a reason. It’s a very sophisticated thing, Ben. Get ready. You know why? Because they hold the president there when something’s amiss.”
“Why was he not in the holding room? Why did you let him walk on stage with an open threat? The catastrophic failures in judgment here are legion, and it’s hard for me, as a guy who’s very proud of this agency and what I did there, to digest this all,” the podcast host finished.