Serious questions surround how a 20-year-old nursing home dietary aide with no military training evaded security services and fired six to eight rounds at Donald Trump with an AR-style weapon. The first shot would have pierced President Trump’s head had he not pivoted at the last millisecond.

The near assassination of Donald Trump presents the biggest crisis in the United States Secret Service’s 159-year history. Presidents have been shot before, but no previous assassination attempt has been this preventable.

The Secret Service and the local police are playing the blame game and refusing to admit their mistakes. But this whole scenario represents catastrophic incompetence and criminal negligence at best. The facts strongly suggest a more sinister explanation.

Security Failure

On the morning of Saturday, July 13, Thomas Crooks headed to Home Depot. cctv footage shows him entering the store alone at 9:27 a.m. and leaving 15 minutes later with a ladder. Then he drove his Hyundai Sonata to the Butler Farm Show Grounds for a Trump rally, arriving around 10 a.m. and staying about 70 minutes.

When Crooks left, he drove back to his hometown of Bethel Park and purchased 50 rounds of ammunition at Allegheny Arms and Gun Works. It is unclear whether he used his newly purchased ammo and ladder in his attack on Trump. But after these purchases, he again drove one hour north to the Butler Farm Show Grounds.

A police sniper spotted Crooks near an American Glass International warehouse nearly 90 minutes before the rally started. He texted his incoming replacement at 4:26 p.m. about a suspicious man sitting by a picnic table. The new sniper confirmed receipt of the text and kept an eye on Crooks for well over an hour. He snapped a photo of Crooks at 5:14 p.m. and another at 5:32. The second photo showed Crooks looking at his phone and using a rangefinder—a tool used by target shooters to measure distances. Video footage of the lawn between the American Glass International warehouse and rally site shows police officers removing spectators from the lawn, but none of these officers removed Crooks. In fact, the police sniper didn’t “call into command” regarding Crooks until 5:41 p.m.

Meanwhile, Crooks retrieved an AR-15 rifle he had hidden on site and climbed onto the roof. The Beaver County Emergency Services Unit saw him on the roof at 5:45.

Even after security spotted Crooks, who was on the roof for more than 20 minutes, Mr. Trump was not warned. As he continued to speak, rally attendees were shouting to officers to do something about the mysterious man on the roof at least two minutes before the first shot was fired. At 5:59 p.m., the Secret Service confirmed receipt of the information the local police sniper had sent them 18 minutes earlier. But instead of preventing Trump from taking the stage, they simply asked for more information about Crooks’s movements. So the local sniper left his post to personally alert law enforcement to Crooks’s presence on the roof.

In the meantime, four Butler Township officers assigned to traffic duty bolted from their post and raced to confront the gunman. When one of them poked his head above the roof, Crooks turned his rifle on him so he ducked back down. Crooks, as soon as he saw the police, turned back around and started firing at Trump.

It was only after Crooks had taken eight shots at Trump that a sniper on an adjacent roof killed him.

The sheer number of security failures at this event was so staggering, it seems they had to have been deliberate. At the very least, federal agencies and law enforcement cleared the way for the gunman to get an open shot. As disturbing as this notion is, nothing makes sense unless someone on the inside wants Trump dead.

‘Malice Aforethought’

It is not difficult to imagine someone having this malevolent motive. Just consider the train of failed attempts the political class has made to prevent Donald Trump from ever seeing office again: framing him for colluding with Russian oligarchs; impeaching him for seeking investigation into Biden family corruption in Ukraine; falsely accusing him of leading a violent insurrection after they stole an election; a host of bizarre lawfare cases. Their increasing desperation to find some means of ending Trump’s presidential aspirations has led many people to believe that their efforts were certain to escalate to a deadlier level.

“Joe Biden’s security regime deliberately and with malice aforethought created the conditions that led to an attempted assassin shooting Donald Trump in the head,” wrote Sean Davis, cofounder of the Federalist (July 16). That is a bold statement—but think of the evidence that supports it. The radical left has been calling Donald Trump a Nazi, a white supremacist and a mortal threat to American democracy for years. In such a vitriolic environment, an assassination attempt was all but inevitable. Just days before the incident, Joe Biden publicly said it was “time to put Trump in a bull’s-eye.” Yet instead of increasing protection for the Republican front-runner, the Secret Service director allowed a lone shooter to climb up on a roof and take up an exposed firing position only a football field-length away from the former president.

Many die-hard Biden administration supporters label the Secret Service’s actions as gross incompetence because they know these actions cannot be defended. But let’s look at a few more facts and consider whether such shocking dereliction of duty is the result of “incompetence” or “malice aforethought.”

Democrat Bennie Thompson, the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security, introduced legislation in Congress in April to remove Donald Trump’s Secret Service protection. Eight Democrats cosponsored his bill. This proposed legislation was voted down, but the fact that nine Democrats tried to strip Trump of his Secret Service protection on grounds that he is a felon shows us that there is indeed a Democratic Party movement to starve Trump of security resources. That certainly sounds like “malice aforethought.”

Congressional legislation is not the only way to strip a former president of protection.

Limited Resources

Two anonymous sources within the Secret Service notified Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics that Trump’s regular security detail had been overworked, so supplemental agents from different field offices were called in to staff his Butler Farm rally. This allegation was supplemented by a whistleblower report given to Sen. Josh Hawley showing that Trump’s security team were not all highly trained Secret Service agents; the Department of Homeland Security assigned low-skilled, inexperienced and unprepared security personnel to protect the former president. So while the Biden administration may not be able to remove Trump’s security detail without congressional authorization, it certainly can deny his request for more security while assigning the worst agents in the department to do a half-hearted job protecting him.

Crabtree’s sources further noted that some of Trump’s security was diverted to Jill Biden’s event that just happened to be concurrent with Trump’s rally. Of course, the Secret Service officially denies diverting resources from Trump to Jill Biden, but it is undeniable that the security team at Butler Farm Show Grounds was understaffed, under-resourced and stretched to its limits at a time when Democrats in Congress were trying to totally deny Donald Trump Secret Service protection.

Outside the Security Perimeter

Even a child should have been able to identify the roof of the American Glass Research facility as a potential assassin’s perch. So why was this location left completely unguarded prior to and during Trump’s rally?

Many people asked this obvious question, so a Secret Service spokesman responded to these concerns. He told nbc News that the Secret Service had flagged the rooftop as a security concern, but it designated the rooftop as being outside the event’s security perimeter and, therefore, under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement.

That’s right: Secret Service told local law enforcement to secure the American Glass Research facility and made no attempt to block the line of sight from the assassin’s perch to Trump’s location. Security experts ripped into Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle for allowing this to happen. She brushed aside criticism, saying, “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.”

Trumpet

That roof had a 5-degree slope that even a toddler could handle. Executive security expert Bill Stanton said Cheatle’s “explanation that it was dangerous that the roof was pitched to me is the equivalent of a schoolchild saying that the dog ate their homework. How does that pass muster for anybody, regardless of political affiliation?” Cheatle has resigned for her role in this debacle, but the Secret Service site manager at Butler Farm also has much to answer for.

An added obstacle was revealed in Sen. Ron Johnson’s preliminary report on the assassination attempt: Local law enforcement said communications were siloed so that they were not in direct radio contact with the Secret Service. So when the local police sniper alerted command to Crooks’s presence, there was a preplanned delay in communication.

As more of these details come out, the more improbable it is that the Trump assassination attempt was merely a series of independent “innocent” mistakes.

What Security Experts Say

Canadian Army sniper Dallas Alexander released an Instagram post saying, “I have no doubts in my mind that the shooter had help from somewhere within an agency, an organization or the government.”

That is a serious accusation, but what other explanation is there for the fact that a young man who worked as a nursing home aide was able to get himself on an elevated platform within 400 feet of Donald Trump without any opposition?

“I’m not pointing fingers at anyone,” Alexander continued. “It’s just too obvious that this guy had help getting there. Whether someone turned a blind eye or it was strategically planned.”

Green Beret sniper Matthew Murphy concurs. “There’s absolutely no way possible that that kid was able to get up there and take those shots of the president without a lot of internal help,” he noted in a TikTok post.

Murphy admitted that he did not know whether that inside help came from the local police, the Secret Service or another agency. But he was adamant that Crooks could not get off a shot without help.

Conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza also noted that the monumental security failure at the Butler Farm rally cannot simply be chalked up to mere incompetence. “It goes beyond incompetence,” he said in a July 16 podcast. “This is a matter that makes, from the point of view of what happened, makes no sense except if there was somebody in the police or in the intelligence agencies or in the Secret Service who was in on it—who actually was working in tandem with this kid, allowed him to get up there.”

Lone Wolf

Joe Biden has called for an fbi investigation into the Secret Service’s astounding failure to protect Donald Trump. Yet many Republicans are pointing out that an executive agency like the fbi is not going to expose its own failure or the Secret Service’s failures. This type of scandal requires outside congressional investigation.

Four years ago, the fbi used covert agents to manipulate a group of militiamen into a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Witmer. Then it arrested these men for going along with their plot. That is entrapment. After this corrupt activity was exposed, many of the men the fbi betrayed were declared innocent.

There is also a plethora of evidence that fbi plants encouraged Trump supporters to break the law by trespassing on Capitol Grounds during the Jan. 6, 2021, protest so the agency could later prosecute them. This is how the fbi operates: It manipulates people into committing crimes. It is certainly possible the fbi or another government agency manipulated Thomas Crooks into an assassination plot while the Secret Service made sure the roof was unguarded. As Alexander, Murphy and D’Souza noted, someone on the inside must have alerted Crooks to a preplanned security vulnerability.

fbi officials told U.S. senators on July 17 that Crooks, just days before the shooting, wrote a threatening message on Steam, a popular platform where tens of millions of gamers purchase games and communicate. Who were the “gamers” Crooks was talking to? Did any of them know that the Secret Service was planning to leave the roof unguarded? Crooks does not seem to have had much of a social media presence, but in addition to using Steam, he also had an account on the encrypted Discord app. So he is the rare type of 20-year-old who wants all his online communications to remain private.

The Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project has tracked the cell phones that visited the home of Thomas Crooks in the months preceding the assassination attempt and found that one of them visited a Washington, D.C., location near an fbi office. The Heritage Foundation also found that a device linked to the Crooks’s home had visited Butler twice in the days before the shooting—once on July 4 and again on July 8. The Secret Service didn’t even do a site evaluation until July 10. So it seems Crooks scoped out the area before the Secret Service did.

The shooter seemed to know that if he hid a gun at the Butler Farm Show Grounds, he could retrieve it and climb up on the unguarded roof of the American Glass Research facility. This disturbing fact is either history’s greatest coincidence or else someone in government told him that.

It is difficult to avoid drawing the conclusion that the “deep state” thought its only option to prevent the Republican frontrunner from winning reelection was to kill him.

Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry has noted for years that Bible prophecy indicates Donald Trump will have to war to recover the presidential office stolen from him. Now literal bullets have been fired by a mysterious gunman with apparent inside knowledge about security vulnerabilities.

The facts of this case make it highly likely the assassination attempt was an inside job. A thorough understanding of Bible prophecy makes this probability an almost absolute certainty.

Deep State

Americans today are not living in the nation of their Founding Fathers, or even of their own fathers. The nation’s government is evolving away from the constitutional republic it once was into an authoritarian technocracy. President Trump is leading a populist revolt against the American deep state (which includes the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Secret Service and dozens of other executive bureaucracies). The authoritarian technocrats in these bureaucracies obviously oppose Trump’s populist revolution and desperately want it to fail. This desire was the driving force behind the RussiaGate scandal and the various other deep state attempts to destroy Trump’s career. When all these attempts failed, it seems the deep state decided to kill Trump.

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This is the only explanation that makes sense of all the embarrassing security failures at the Butler Farm Show Grounds that day. The deep state has attempted assassinations in other countries; it is not far-fetched to think they might attempt one at home—especially when they consider the candidate to be such a big threat.

Most Christians recognize that the book of Daniel is prophecy. Yet few realize it prophesies that a “deep state” will rise to prominence in the United States in the end time. Daniel 8:11-12 say, “Yea, he magnified himself even to the prince of the host, and by him the daily sacrifice was taken away, and the place of his sanctuary was cast down. And an host was given him against the daily sacrifice by reason of transgression, and it cast down the truth to the ground; and it practised, and prospered.”

The “he” in this passage is an end-time type of Antiochus iv Epiphanes, who desecrated the temple in Jerusalem with an idol of himself. Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry explains in his book America Under Attack that Barack Hussein Obama, the most anti-Bible president in American history, fulfills this role. Yet he does not cast truth to the ground all on his own. Rather, Daniel says he has an organized “host” helping him.

Strong’s Concordance defines “host” as “a mass of persons (or figuratively, things), especially regiments organized for war (an army).” Depending on the context, the expression can refer to an army of demons, angels or men. The host referred to in Daniel 8 is an army of demons and evil men who help Antiochus. This is a prophecy about the army of bureaucrats, military leaders, intelligence agents, media moguls, tech entrepreneurs, Wall Street financiers and Chinese spies helping Obama fundamentally transform the United States.

Understanding this “host” is key to understanding the Trump assassination attempt. The fact that Trump’s security detail was understaffed, under-resourced and stretched to its limits at a time when Democrats in Congress were trying to make sure that he was totally denied Secret Service protection shows that the Secret Service does not care about Trump’s safety. The fact that the site manager at Butler Farm chose not to station anyone on a rooftop only 400 feet away from Trump further highlights the fact that he did not care if Trump got shot. And the fact that Thomas Crooks seemed to know that the roof was unguarded strongly indicates that there was some sort of organized plot against Donald Trump’s life. We do not yet have conclusive proof that Crooks had inside help, but Daniel’s prophecy about an organized host of demons and evil men helping Obama destroy America makes this disturbing possibility very likely.

A related prophecy in 2 Kings 14:26-28 foretells a time when there is no “helper” for end-time Israel, so God has to raise up an antitype of King Jeroboam ii to save the nation. America Under Attack identifies Donald Trump as this end-time Jeroboam. This means he is standing alone against an organized host that wants him dead.

Something more fearsome than politics is going on in America. This is an all-out war. It is a calculated and destructive plot against President Trump.

Many people recognize the fact that God miraculously intervened to save Trump from assassination. They now need to start asking hard-hitting questions about exactly what God saved President Trump from. This isn’t about a lone wolf who wants Trump dead. This is about an organized host that wants Trump dead.

No man can save America from the evil forces arrayed against it, so Americans must look beyond Donald Trump to the Almighty God who has chosen to use this imperfect human tool to save the nation!