Assassination attempt not a 'coincidence,' Donald Trump Jr. says

Editor's note: This article has been updated to include a headline that better reflects Donald Trump Jr.'s remarks as well as to state that he made the remarks on July 26, not July 29.

The conditions that allowed a 20-year-old would-be assassin to get a clear shot at assassinating former President Donald J. Trump didn’t happen by coincidence, Donald Trump Jr. said July 26.

“I don’t honestly think that the guys at the Secret Service — many who I know and respect — magically left an entire roof unguarded where a guy with a rifle could get there for 20 minutes within 150 yards,” Trump Jr. said in an interview with journalist Tucker Carlson.

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“Like, that doesn't happen. That's not being a conspiracy theorist,” Trump Jr. said. "Like, you're a freaking idiot if you think that that just happened by coincidence.”

The junior Trump’s explosive statement raises the public specter of what has been mostly whispered only in private: Were the U.S. Secret Service or others in government somehow complicit in the attempted assassination? Did would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks have help?

J. Michael Waller, senior analyst at the Center for Security Policy and author of the best-selling book “Big Intel: How the CIA Went from Cold War Heroes to Deep State Villains,” said the ugliest explanations cannot be ruled out.

“It’s really hard to separate incompetence from willful negligence or even simple negligence or malice," Waller said on the July 19 episode of "Blaze News Tonight." "You can’t rule out malice. You can’t rule out somebody wanted this to happen.”

A top-tier U.S. military special operations expert told Blaze News that after examining all of the evidence to date, the hallmarks are there to suggest that Crooks was groomed and trained for an assassination attempt.

"It’s not in the realm of real possibility for the government to be this incompetent," the special operator said on condition of anonymity. "There is no chance Crooks was not pointed to which building he needed to be on.

"Rank incompetence vs. rank arrogance. I’ve seen a lot of it in my 30 years in government ops. This was neither," the expert said, suggesting that initial clues are visible in Crooks' behavior.

Crooks' 11-minute drone flight two hours before the shooting was likely not for surveillance, the expert said, but for planning his route onto the grounds and up onto the roof. FBI Director Christopher Wray told a U.S. House hearing that Crooks flew the drone some 200 yards from the stage where Trump would speak.

The Oversight Project at the Heritage Foundation said geolocation data from a phone linked to Crooks traveled from the Crooks home in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, to Butler on July 4 and July 8.

Crooks likely knew the grounds would be changed on the day of the event, due to parking, fencing, and vendor parking and setup, the special ops expert said.

"A 20-year-old with no military or government training doing so many things correctly — range finder, drone, recon, turning off his phone — had to have been 'groomed' into this process. He was likely paid by some government or dark money source.

"I don’t think he went rogue or was a rogue operator," the expert said. "I’ve seen and been involved in these types of ops for too many years. He had instructions.

One special operator can train or groom about eight to 12 youths quite easily, the ops expert said, including precision operations, such as the setting of explosive devices for kill operations.

This is not the kind of thing done with only a single recruit; one operative can run up to 12 guys to take advantage of “multiple opportunities” and then "activate" the right emotionally disturbed and loner kid at the right opportunity.

"Depending upon the op, I’d need at least nine months for the source vetting and grooming, but I’ve done it in as little as six months," he said. "Then I’d need as little as three days to prep him for the specific operations, after the requisite number of months of grooming."

The Trump assassination attempt has likely inspired more people to make attempts, the expert said.

"Trump is more at risk now than he ever was before," he said. "His security has been stepped up, but that won’t stop a band of — for instance, and I say this with knowledge and authority — 'Somali immigrants,' who are gung ho for Kamala Harris, to risk a suicide operation to take out Trump."

If the Trump shooting were some kind of deep-state government op that failed, they would typically put other ops on hold and allow more radical groups to take charge, he said.

The mere thought of other operatives primed to try to get at Trump again has already prompted discussion among experts in law enforcement, event security, and even military special operations. Protecting former President Trump until — and beyond — Election Day will require the helping hands of combat-hardened private security contractors, they say.

“Today’s Secret Service doesn’t merely need additional, immediate help from private companies,” Waller wrote in a July 24 Blaze News opinion column.

'It is essential that we have a proper election and that these issues are solved at the ballot box and not with a cartridge box.'

“It’s clear from the attempted murder of Trump that its dysfunctional personnel quality, driven by politicized policy, runs deep,” Waller said. “This is where the privatization of Secret Service functions can help correct the problem quickly.”

Waller said the developments surrounding the assassination attempt now demand bringing in third-party experts for protection details and event security. He suggested that Erik Prince, founder of the security firm Blackwater, be tapped to take charge of Trump's security.

"No one on earth has a better record of protecting their people than Erik Prince," Waller said on the July 19 episode of "Blaze News Tonight." "When he was with Blackwater, he had a 100-percent perfection record of protecting the lives of the Americans whom his people were there to save."

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Waller wrote that today’s Secret Service had its roots in the Civil War era, when President Abraham Lincoln hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to provide counterintelligence. Pinkerton private security operatives had uncovered and thwarted a plot to assassinate Lincoln in Baltimore in 1861.

In July 2008, presidential candidate and future President Barack Obama was protected on a trip to Afghanistan by the private security firm Blackwater, Waller said. Blackwater set the standard for protecting Americans in the most dangerous environments, he said.

Prince said integrating private operatives into the existing Secret Service infrastructure would be complicated.

“Integrating private contracted support in with the federal effort would be exceedingly difficult and exceedingly dangerous, especially for the private guys because the federal bureaucracy will always protect itself and will always hang the private guys out to dry,” Prince said on the July 16 episode of "Blaze News Tonight."

“That being said, if the mission required it and if President Trump actually asked for it, I’m sure we can find a way to help him out because it is essential that we have a proper election and that these issues are solved at the ballot box and not with a cartridge box.”

Prince said the stakes could not be higher in finding out what went wrong with security on July 13 and ensuring that it doesn’t happen again.

“It was not Secret Service excellence that saved President Trump,” he said. “It was bad aim, President Trump turning his head, and probably the flap of an angel’s wings. We literally, the nation, dodged a bullet on Saturday.”

Another U.S. special forces operator who trains Secret Service counter-sniper and counter-surveillance teams told Blaze News that outside security help is a must.

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“U.S. Secret Service is not up to the task and will fail on the next attempt, which won't miss,” said the source, speaking on condition of anonymity. “The whisper campaign to provide private security for Trump, based on these facts, is starting.”

Former President Trump and the public need to realize how bad the problem is at the Secret Service, the source indicated.

“Helping the public — and President Trump — understand how negligent [Secret Service personnel] were and will continue to be for the foreseeable future is critical to keeping Trump secure,” the source said. “Otherwise security will continue to be lax.”

Trump's daughter-in-law, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Lara Trump, said she faults the Secret Service leadership for the July 13 failures, not the line agents protecting her father-in-law.

"I don't worry that the people on the ground with my father-in-law because I've seen them," she said on "Blaze News Tonight." "You saw them jump on top of him, literally put themselves between my father-in-law and an assassin. And you didn't know at that moment what else was out there. Was there another shooter out there?

"They risked their lives for him and they were willing to give up their lives for him, so I have no doubt about their capabilities," Lara Trump said. "Those people did their job exactly as they should have."

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