The lead Secret Service sniper at former President Donald Trump’s near-fatal rally in Butler, Pennsylvania “never set foot on or in” the building from which a would-be assassin shot the now-incoming president in the head, The Federalist’s CEO Sean Davis said in a Friday interview with Tucker Carlson.
“He has four days on site, puts together his plan, kind of sketches out where he wants everyone. He never set foot on or in that building,” Davis said, noting that the lead sniper blamed this oversight on needing to do “paperwork.”
The “counter sniper team lead” told the House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination Of Donald J. Trump that on the day of the rally, he looked at the locations where Secret Service agents were posted, then went to speak with an agent — but “did not walk any of the other parts of the site at the point.” Instead, he said, he started “paperwork.”
“When I saw the stage, I basically knew that I had to get back and start paperwork; basically generating the grids and the pictures,” the lead sniper said. “You live and die by your paperwork.”
Davis described this exchange to Carlson.
“I thought you lived and died by bullets,” Carlson said.
The House task force asked the lead sniper whether he felt it “would have made sense” to “walk over to one additional site [the AGR building] to be diligent.”
“Looking back, knowing what happened to the building and that Crooks was there, absolutely, that makes total sense.” the sniper said. “But I did not at the time think, I’ll go hit another building. I got to go start paperwork is what I thought.”
“He was so focused on his paperwork, that he never went and actually looked around,” Davis said to Carlson.
Davis also pointed out the Secret Service security perimeter was drawn around the shooter’s post — the AGR building — which was “130, 150 yards from the president.”
“[T]hey decided … we’re going to put that outside of our security perimeter, so you can get to that area without having been screened or anything,” Davis said. “No magnetometers, no pat downs.”
While the Secret Service excluded the AGR building from the security perimeter, local police were stationed in the same warehouse complex. However, Davis pointed out, they were assigned to watch the crowd — not the nearby roof. Nonetheless, the Secret Service “tried to blame the local cops” following the assassination attempt.
Local police were also looking out of “casement windows,” Davis noted, which open to the right or left and could have obstructed their line of sight.
“They had no idea that they were supposed to be looking at a building roof, which is 180 degrees to their left,” Davis said. “I don’t think they could have seen that if they had wanted to, just because of how that window opened. They’d have to get around, like almost leaning out the window, to see — which of course they’re not going to be doing, because they think their job is crowd overwatch.”
Davis relayed how local police did flag the shooter, later identified as Thomas Crooks, “as suspicious,” because he was seen with a rangefinder.
But the lead sniper — who, as Davis noted, “was the most junior guy” on the team with “no prior” military or sniper experience — “doesn’t even bother to go pick up his radio that would have given him comms with all of the local police.”
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