Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, a top priority for whom is pushing women into positions for which they are unqualified, told ABC News why no law enforcement was on the roof of the building from which Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
The slope on the roof, she said, was too steep and dangerous. Crooks, apparently, didn’t know that.
The risible explanation immediately drew the ridicule it richly deserved. The sniper who shot Crooks dead was on a sloped roof, and experts say snipers operate from sloped surfaces all the time.
Meanwhile, the local BeaverCountian.com has reported more details about what went on in the building, where local police were staged to provide perimeter protection for the event.
Too Dangerous to Station Sniper
Cheatle said she accepts full responsibility for the near-assassination of Trump, the murder of firefighter Corey Comperatore, and the wounding of two others.
But during the interview with ABC, Cheatle explained that manning the roof was just too perilous.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” Cheatle weakly explained:
And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.
Cheatle also confessed, as NBC News reported, that the building was a major security risk. Despite being the staging area for local police, who spotted Crooks multiple times before he opened fire, the 20-year-old made it to the roof for his deadly mission.
“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” a former agent told NBC. As well, even if local cops failed in their job, the agency should “ensure that they are following through either beforehand or in the moment.”
Another agent told NBC that the Secret Service shouldn’t fob off its job to local police.
“You don’t surrender the discretion of what’s supposed to be done to the local police,” Anthony Cangelosi told the network. “In other words, you guys have the outer perimeter, but you would want to say, ‘We need an officer on that roof.’ Not ‘that’s your responsibility; do what you see fit.’”
Spotted Multiple Times
Sources told the local BeaverCountian.com that too little manpower and “extremely poor planning” nearly ended Trump’s life. And again, it did end Comperatore’s.
“Local law enforcement agencies were tasked with securing areas outside of magnetometers that screened rallygoers,” the website reported:
Contrary to reports in several national news outlets, officers say the building just outside of a security perimeter established by Secret Service was in fact occupied by local law enforcement.
“There were three counter-snipers located in the building that the shooter eventually used to take shots at Trump,” one officer told BeaverCountian.com.
A security operations plan had placed each of the three counter-snipers inside of the building looking out of windows toward the rally, with none stationed on its roof. Due to a lack of manpower, the men did not have spotters assigned to them, as would be standard operating procedure.
And one of those snipers, a source told CBS News, photographed Crooks and saw him “looking through a rangefinder minutes before he tried to assassinate the former president.”
The NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, WPXI, also reported that police spotted and photographed Crooks almost 30 minutes before he fired.
Sloped Roof?
Experts had an answer for Cheatle’s claim that a sloped roof was too dangerous a place: Are you kidding?
“Holy s**t,” former Army Ranger Sean Parnell wrote on X:
A sloped roof? That is a total BS excuse.
Our snipers used to set in on mountain tops in Afghanistan. On the down slopes if need be.
The stupidity of this statement explains so much of why s**t hit the fan that day.
Absolute incompetence.
Former Green Beret Joe Kent, a GOP candidate for Congress in Washington State, said likewise.
“This is a BS answer,” he wrote:
But let’s temporarily accept it for the sake of the argument.
You can’t get on the roof, but you identified the building/roof as a threat, so what’s the excuse for not securing the perimeter & all access points to the building/roof?
Photos of the sniper who killed Crooks showed him a very sloped roof.
A report on X said the slope was “less than 10 degrees.”
The slope did not, of course, stop Crooks from nearly assassinating a former president, murdering a husband and father, and wounding two others.
As for Cheatle’s mismanagement at the Secret Service, one of her priorities is pushing women into 30 percent of positions by 2030.
That push has resulted in at least one mentally unstable agent, detailed to protect Vice President Kamala Harris, getting into a physical altercation with other agents and a supervisor. That agent was permitted to graduate training despite failing a major test.
During the assassination attempt on Trump, one woman agent, now known as “Secret Service Barbie,” repeatedly failed to re-holster her pistol, another fiddled with her sunglasses and coat with both hands, while a third hopped to and fro, wondering what to do.
H/T: Fox News, New York Post