REVEALED: Secret Service Team for Trump was ‘Mostly Temporary Replacements’
Conspiracy theorists speculated Crooks was triggered by the CIA's mind control program MKULTRA.
Donald Trump was reportedly being guarded by "temporary replacements" in his Secret Service detail when he was targeted by a sniper at his rally in Pennsylvania over the weekend, RadarOnline.com can confirm.
A counter sniper took out the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was on a roof nearby shooting a semiautomatic rifle toward the former president and into the crowd in Butler. After a bullet grazed Trump's ear, the GOP candidate ducked and a group of agents surrounded him, eventually whisking him off stage. One rally attendee was killed and two others were critically injured during the terrifying ordeal.
Trump said his shoes were knocked off his feet when Secret Service agents threw him to the ground.
Trump praised the security detail In his first official interview following the assassination attempt, saying: “They took him out with one shot right between the eyes. They did a fantastic job.”
Yet lawmakers have begun to probe the agency over the failures that allowed Crooks to fire off at least seven rounds before he was stopped.
As more details come to light, questions have also been raised about why Trump was not evacuated from the stage sooner, and why security measures did not cover all nearby rooftops. The agents positioned on a barn close by were unable to spot the gunman due to a sloped roof obscuring their view.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter, was killed by a counter sniper after firing several rounds toward the stage and into the crowd.
Witness cell phone video has also surfaced showing several attendees trying to alert security about the man on the roof minutes before the shots were fired.
A witness also told BBC News they could "clearly see [Crooks] with a rifle," and despite trying to warn agents, he continud to crawl around on the roof.
Sources from the Secret Service community told Real Clear Politics the agency was stretched thin that day because Trump's primary detail had worked several seven-day weeks in a row and needed time off. Therefore, the ex-president was relying on supplemental special agents for protection during the assassination attempt, insiders said.
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Questions have been raised by lawmakers about the failures that allowed Crooks to fire off so many shots before he was stopped.
One source told the outlet: "Trump has a permanent detail, however it’s much smaller in the amount of bodies. His detail has been worked so hard with all the travel that they’re working 7 days a week with shift changes."
The insider added that putting "temp agents" in to fill the gaps was "not a good scenario," calling it a "mission failure."
Due to the ill-timed shuffling of staff, a "relatively new agent" from the Pittsburgh field office, who had "limited experience," was put in charge of coordinating all of the security measures for the event, the publication reported.
Eyewitnesses told cops about a suspicious person on a rooftop before the shooting.
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Another source said the Counter Sniper Team was approved in the eleventh hour — the day before the rally — which was "nowhere near enough time" to put appropriate measures in place.
The source said: "A site like that should have had at least three Secret Service counter-sniper teams at the very least."