‘Credible intelligence’ threat might have actually saved Trump’s life in Butler assassination attempt

A Senate Homeland Security Committee report released Wednesday found that U.S. Secret Service counter snipers were only assigned to former President Donald Trump’s Butler rally on July 13 due to “credible intelligence” of a threat.

The snipers who prevented a would-be assassin from killing Trump were assigned to the security detail only after “credible intelligence” of a threat was identified by officials, according to the report. Just days before the rally, the Department of Justice (DOJ) charged 46-year-old Asia Merchant, a Pakistani national with ties to Iran, of working on a “murder for hire plot” to assassinate American government officials, according to court documents.

Officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigations told CNN that Merchant had intended to assassinate the former president.

“This dangerous murder-for-hire plot exposed in today’s complaint allegedly was orchestrated by a Pakistani national with close ties to Iran and is straight out of the Iranian playbook,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said in a press release. “A foreign-directed plot to kill a public official, or any U.S. citizen, is a threat to our national security and will be met with the full might and resources of the FBI.”

“The July 13 rally was the first time a USSS counter sniper team was assigned to a protectee other than the President, Vice President, or a presidential candidate who had been formally nominated by his or her party,” the Senate report reads. “USSS provided the counter snipers in response to ‘credible intelligence’ of a threat.”

Tensions with the Iranian government came to a head when Trump successfully ordered a drone strike to kill top Iranian military leader Qasem Soleimani in January 2020. On the three-year anniversary of Soleimani’s death, then-President Ebrahim Raisi vowed vengeance against the “murderers and accomplices,” saying that officials behind the general’s death should “know that retaliation is obvious.”

Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has considered Trump as well as former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo responsible for the assassination of Soleimani.

Despite this, nearly all of the Secret Service personnel interviewed by the Senate committee said they were “unaware of any credible intelligence of a threat,” with one official even detailing in a security planning document that there was “no adverse intelligence” leading up to the rally, according to the report.

“What happened on July 13 was an accumulation of errors that produced a perfect storm of stunning failure,” Chairman Richard Blumenthal said in a press release. “It was a tragedy and completely preventable from the outset. There was both a failure to provide resources – like a working radio, drone detection system, or counter surveillance team – and lack of an effective chain of command. Looking forward, we need structural reform in the agency itself.”

On July 13, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was spotted by witnesses, flagged by the Secret Service, and identified by a counter sniper over an hour before he fired shots at the former president, according to the report. The Senate report called these security failures “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to” the assassination attempt.

Just two months after the shooting, 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh was arrested after his “AK-47 style rifle with a scope” was seen by a Secret Service agent on the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, Florida. Routh was later charged on Sept. 24 with several federal counts including attempting to assassinate a presidential candidate.

“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service,” Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe said after the Senate report was released. “It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13th and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again.”

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