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Donald Trump claims Secret Service did not warn him about shooter before assassination bid: ‘That was a mistake’
Donald Trump has claimed that the Secret Service did not warn him about Thomas Matthew Crooks, even though agents had eyed the suspect hours before the attack.
Donald Trump has claimed that the Secret Service did not warn him about gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks before the assassination attempt, even though agents had eyed the 20-year-old hours before the attack. “Nobody mentioned it,” Trump told Jesse Watters in an upcoming episode of the Fox News anchor’s primetime show. “Nobody said it was a problem.”
“[They] could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15, 20 minutes, 5 minutes.’ Nobody said…I think that was a mistake,” he added.
The former president questioned how Crooks managed to climb onto a roof with a rifle just 130 yards away from the rally site without the Secret Service doing something about it. It has been reported that police saw Crooks on the building 26 minutes before the shooting, but took no action, even though they were alerted by witnesses.
‘How did somebody get on that roof?’
Secret Service snipers killed Crooks only after he had already injured Trump and others, and shot dead firefighter Corey Comperatore. An officer reportedly even saw Crooks using the rangefinder and looking at his phone almost an hour before Trump appeared on the stage in Pennsylvania.
“How did somebody get on that roof?” Trump said. “And why wasn’t he reported, because people saw he was on that roof.”
“When you have Trumpers screaming, the woman in the red shirt, ‘There’s a man on the roof,’ and other people, ‘There’s a man on the roof and who’s got a gun’ … that was quite a bit before I walked on the stage. And I would’ve thought someone would’ve done something about it,” Trump added.
Meanwhile, sources told New York Post that Secret Service officials repeatedly rejected the former president’s request for additional security in the two years before the attack. Trump is said to have asked for more agents and magnetometers at large public events he appeared at.
Trump had also asked for extra snipers for outdoor venues, sources told The Washington Post. However, senior officials turned down the requests, claiming that the agency did not have the resources Trump was seeking.
