We must do everything in our collective power to prevent a recurrence of the near-assassination and tragedy that occurred in Pennsylvania.

By Alan M. Dershowitz, Gatestone Institute

Now that the Republican convention ended without incidents, we must get back to considering the implications of the near-assassination of former President and current presidential candidate Donald Trump two days before the convention began.

Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle says she will not resign, despite the failure of her agents to secure the rooftop from where the shots were fired at Trump, and despite her refusal to come clean about the causes of the failure.

The Secret Service is being praised for protecting Donald Trump from an assassin.

This praise is justified if one focuses on the bravery of the agents who risked their lives to shield Trump from the immediate threat posed by the shooter after he fired the initial shots, but that well-deserved praise must be accompanied by constructive criticism for the failure to prevent the shooting in the first place.

The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, came within an inch of succeeding. An armed person should never have been allowed to be at a location from which he could take aim at a presidential candidate.

It is not as if this attack could not have been anticipated and planned for.

It is quite similar to the shooting of then President John F. Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.

The major difference is that Lee Harvey Oswald shot at a difficult moving target, whereas Crooks shot at an easier stationary target.

In both cases, there was a failure to secure an obviously dangerous location. One would think that the Secret Service would have learned from their failure in Dallas. They did not.

There must be changes in the protective procedures employed by the Secret Service, especially at large outdoor rallies.

Everyone admitted to the venue is vetted for weapons, but apparently there is insufficient protection against potential snipers shooting from outside the actual venue.

This failing must be remedied before the next rally.

The Secret Service should be devoted exclusively to preventing and responding to attacks on its protectees.

It must get out of the unrelated business of investigating currency counterfeiting and other crimes.

This assassination attempt may well be an outgrowth of the increasing acceptance of violence by extremists on all parts of the political spectrum.

We do not yet know the specific motivation of Crooks, but it is certainly possible that he may have been influenced by the current rhetoric justifying violence as an appropriate response to perceived injustice.

We do know that in addition to possessing a rifle legally purchased by his father, he also had explosives in his car and home.

He was determined to murder Trump, though for what reasons we do not yet know. Although there is no direct evidence of his motive, politically-inspired violence is increasingly common, especially among the younger generation of activists.

Our universities are turning out students who engage in violence and are only rarely punished for it. Some faculty members are teaching that noble ends justify ignoble means.

The result has been physical attacks on fellow students based on political, ideological, and religious disagreements.

It is only a short step from physically attacking those with whose policies you disagree, to shooting at political candidates who support such policies.

An atmosphere of violence has become pervasive and is likely to increase as a result of this nearly successful assassination attempt and the growing divisions over the coming election.

The Secret Service must learn from its mistakes and must redouble its efforts to protect candidates from what are likely to be increasing dangers over the next four months and beyond.

In its press conference, the Secret Service said it was not changing any plans regarding the Republican convention. Nor did it permit any questions regarding the failures that led to the attack.

Even more important, political, educational, religious, and other leaders must denounce violence advocated and practiced by those on their side of the political divide.

It is easy to denounce violence by one’s opponents. It is far more difficult, but more important, to denounce violence by one’s allies.

Social media is filled with extremist left-wing praise for Crooks and regrets that he missed. Had he succeeded, there would likely be blood on the streets.

This is an even more dangerous time than back in the 1960s, when three major assassinations occurred.

We must do everything in our collective power to prevent a recurrence of the near-assassination and tragedy that occurred in Pennsylvania.

We are not doing enough.

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Political commentator, Former NYPD officer and former Secret Service agent, Dan Bongino, gives a troubling review of shocking new information emerging about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.

The post WATCH: Disturbing new information about Trump assassination attempt appeared first on World Israel News.

The committee hearing hopes to clarify ‘how a rooftop within proximity to President Trump was left unsecure.’

By Blake Mauro, The Washington Free Beacon

The House Oversight Committee subpoenaed U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to testify about the “security lapses” that led to Saturday’s attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump.

“The assassination attempt of the former President and current Republican nominee for president represents a total failure of the agency’s core mission and demands Congressional oversight,” Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), chair of the House Oversight Committee, wrote in the subpoena.

The committee hearing hopes to clarify “how a rooftop within proximity to President Trump was left unsecure.”

The House Oversight Committee hearing, which is scheduled for Monday, is the first congressional investigation into the attempt on Trump’s life Saturday in Butler, Pa.

During a campaign rally, the former president was shot on stage by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was positioned about 400 feet from Trump’s podium on a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the candidate.

Rally-goers saw Crooks, armed, on the roof before he took the shot and warned authorities of his presence.

Three USSS snipers were in the building he was atop. After Trump was hit, his USSS detail jumped to cover him, and counter-snipers fatally shot Crooks.

Former U.S. Army sniper and Florida Rep. Cory Mills (R.) said the building Crooks shot from was an “obvious threat,” calling the position a “sniper’s paradise.”

“The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills added.

Given the Secret Service’s failure to secure the venue perimeter, Comer also called into question Cheatle’s ability to lead the Secret Service.

Many Republican party leaders have called on Cheatle to step down since the former president’s life was almost taken, including House speaker Mike Johnson (R., La.) and House majority leader Steve Scalise (R., La.).

Cheatle acknowledged that “the Secret Service is responsible for the protection of the former president,” adding, “the buck stops with me,” during an interview with ABC News on Monday.

In 2014, Julia Pierson, the director of the Secret Service under then-president Barack Obama, resigned after a series of security lapses far less severe.

Comer wrote that he subpoenaed Cheatle due to her “lack of transparency and failure to cooperate.”

“The lack of transparency and failure to cooperate with the Committee on this pressing matter by both DHS and the Secret Service further calls into question your ability to lead the Secret Service and necessitates the attached subpoena compelling your appearance before the Oversight Committee,” Comer wrote.

The House Committee on Homeland Security will hold a hearing into the matter on Tuesday, and the House Judiciary Committee will hold an event on Wednesday to examine the FBI’s investigation of the assassination attempt.

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But the only question is whether Cheatle knows she’s lying.

By Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage Magazine

There’s one school of thought that says the federal government is run by evil monsters. Another that it’s run by bureaucrats who have no clue about what their organization actually does. Or how anything works.

And Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle strikes me as having absolutely no clue.

Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle says she has no plans to resign, even after the stunning revelation that the agency decided not to guard the roof from which Thomas Crooks opened fire on former President Donald Trump because it was too slanted.

“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. 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,” she told ABC News in a startling admission.

“And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside,” she told the outlet.

Social media is full of memes of sloped roofs.

Secret Service personnel obviously do deploy, and in that particular setting, did deploy on sloped roofs.

This is a dumb excuse by a dumb person told to a dumb media which is eager to accept any excuse that it’s given.

But the only question is whether Cheatle knows she’s lying or her ample experience at PepsiCo and sucking up to Jill Biden left her with little time to figure out how anything in the field actually works.

Sure, people are making fun of that one particular member of Trump’s protective detail who can’t seem to figure out how to holster her gun, but give her twenty years and she’ll be running the place.

If you think I’m joking, you’re not very familiar with the Federal Government 3.0.

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