We all know by now that President Trump’s Secret Service detail left around him gaping vulnerabilities. My husband Brian O’Shea (@brianosheaSPI), who spent a career in military intelligence, in intelligence, and then in private security, including in “close protection,” — indeed, that was how I met him, as he had to secure me and my home, after I had received death threats — examined, at my request, videos of President Trump’s speech in Butler PA on July 13, 2024, assessing the shot that struck Pres Trump’s right ear, and the shots that killed heroic fire chief Corey Comperatore.
Brian identified at least ten major security practice anomalies.
These ranged from a missing third counter-sniper team — meaning that a “fan” of a given area is left unprotected — to the fact, noted by many, that several of the Secret Service agents were too short to cover President Trump, thus leaving his head and neck fully exposed after shots were fired, to the fact that neither building from which the alleged assailant, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired his shot or shots, nor the parking lot in front of it, was secured, to the fact that one of the Secret Service agents fumbled so obviously with her weapon, not succeeding in replacing it in its holster, that this revealed, in Brian’s view, a lack of familiarity with the weapon, as well as inadequate training.
Since we recorded that video, many other important anomalies have been identified by commentators.
Capping the many anomalies is the statement that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle made to ABC News, explaining that no Secret Service snipers were placed on the building from which Crooks allegedly fired, because it had a “sloped roof.” Four days after the assassination attempt, it’s clear, and not a “conspiracy theory,” that this event was not a simple tragedy — some random disgruntled kid somehow successfully firing at a President, in spite of all the efforts of what are supposed to be the best security forces in the world — but that other forces are at play.
I need to explain some important things about this story, based on my long experience around decision-makers in comparable contexts.
The first is that: at an event such as this, nothing happens by accident.
I was the wife of a Clinton White House speechwriter; my then-husband spent his days traveling to events such as the one in Butler PA, or to the one at which FLOTUS spoke at the same time, in North Pittsburgh, PA, or to other similar White House events. So our household was familiar with the mechanics of the events that Presidents and First Ladies attend.
I later became an advisor to Dick Morris, President Clinton’s chief campaign advisor for his re-election campaign in 1996. Still later, I was a formal campaign advisor to Vice President Gore’s campaign for the Presidency. In all of these contexts, which spanned years, I witnessed closely the process by which a President’s staff, and a First Lady’s staff, and then a Vice President and his staff, work alongside (and in very prescribed ways, with) a campaign, and I saw how staffers manage the day to day of the “Principals’' jobs.
People need to understand this process of how decisions are made during campaigns, in order to avoid the mistakes in interpreting the events in Pennsylvania, that many are now making; and in order to avoid being spun by the spin to which Americans are being subjected.
I wish to stress that NOTHING AT THAT LEVEL HAPPENS SPONTANEOUSLY OR CASUALLY.
While certainly there can be a specific staffer who is incompetent and who may make a specific mistake in event planning, that staffer will be quickly fired. Repeated sequential mistakes, let alone multiple mistakes at the same venue and time, simply cannot happen.
Every event you see that is attended by the President or the First Lady, has had, as a routine, daily, SOP-rigid process, from which there is never any deviation - -from which no deviation is possible — layers and layers of scrupulous vetting by multiple senior staffers and by multiple agencies.
Every detail is cleared by many layers of officials with various forms of authority, long in advance.
The current media and White House spin is that the First Lady “spontaneously” decided to speak at an event promoted for at least a week in advance: a Sons and Daughters of Italy event for 200, at the Rivers Casino in North Pittsburgh.
I state — and anyone who has worked in or with a White House can confirm or else challenge this — that there can be no such thing as a “spontaneous” addition to the schedule on the campaign trail. FLOTUS or POTUS can’t “spontaneously” change the schedule.
An event is proposed, during a campaign, by the Campaign Manager. Julie Chavez Rodriguez is Pres. Biden’s Campaign Manager. Interestingly, she formerly worked for him in the White House, as “Senior advisor and White House director of intergovernmental affairs, Joe Biden presidential administration.”
Jennifer O’Malley Dillon is Pres. Biden Campaign Chairwoman. She too was shifted over from the White House: as she was “Senior advisor and White House director of intergovernmental affairs, Joe Biden presidential administration”.
Mia Ehrenberg is Pres Biden’s Campaign’s “National Spokesperson.” Somewhat creepily, she came over from having been Press Secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Mia Ehrenberg:
It’s notable for several reasons to have White House staff transfer to serve as campaign staffers - in part because FEC law means careful separations between the two teams. The point here is, all the senior people in both the White House and on the Campaign, know very well how secure vetting for an event works.
A proposed event has to be signed off by the Campaign Director. It also has to be signed off by the Chief of Staff at the White House. Since the resignation of Ron Klain, Jeff Zientz has been the White House Chief of Staff. (He also joined the Facebook Board of Directors in 2018). He would also be very familiar with secure planning, as in November 2020, “he became a member of three agency review teams for the Biden Transition: Department of Defense, Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Homeland Security.[4]”
This is Jeff Zients:
Both the Campaign Director and the Chief of Staff are reacting to requests (which are nonstop) from donors, grassroots groups, other politicians, etc, for the “principal” - meaning POTUS or FLOTUS. These requests go to the scheduler for both the White House team and for the Campaign (two different people). The top White House staffers meet daily with the Chief of Staff to review the set of proposals and events for POTUS and FLOTUS, and to refine the schedule. The same process takes place with the campaign team. The campaign team puts their requests formally to the White House chief of staff and scheduler. Lawyers review each request, and indeed any contact between the Campaign and the White House, to avoid the campaign violating FEC law.
Each request goes to all senior staffers, including the Chief of Staff, before it is put by the scheduler (a very important, influential person) onto the all-important schedule. The process of clearing an event to put on the schedule is multifaceted and iron-clad.
The speech that will be given at the event has to be checked by the relevant departments: State Department and Pentagon if it involves foreign or military affairs. HUD if it mentions housing, and so on. If there is anything in the speech that is wrong or that causes political blowback, it has to be revised and resubmitted until it is cleared. And so on.
The people onstage with “the principal”, introducing “the principal”, near “the principal” at any time (all of which is carefully choreographed), and/or in photos with him or her, must all be vetted well in advance. The backgrounds of everyone must be checked, both in law enforcement databases and by opposition researchers in-house; did they say something racist in 2004, or harass an employee, in 1998? It all has to be examined in advance, in order to protect the reputation of “the principal” from unexpected risk, blowback or bad press.
The physical venue has to be thoroughly, I mean thoroughly, checked, for every event. Physical plans of the venue, including, to my knowledge, architectural plans, are sent to the White House and to campaign staff, and are available to both the advance team and to the security team. (Again, this process is recalled from my experience 24 years ago. It may have changed).
The route from the airport to the hotel, from the hotel to the venue, from the venue to the hotel, from the hotel to the airport, is checked by multiple layers of the staff of this daily meeting as well as by security services. Ingress and egress to and from the venue must be similarly checked by the Secret Service; roofs and basements are checked; perimeters and parking lots are checked. A security plan, which includes what to do in an emergency, is devised by the Secret Service for that specific venue, and then signed off by the Secret Service in advance, and only then can the event be placed on the schedule.
If the venue is not easy enough fully to secure, the Secret Service will say so. That is a crucial, central part of the Secret Service’s job: informing the White House staff and the campaign staff when something they hope to plan is not safe. If that happens, the staff cannot overrule the Secret Service, to my knowledge. Even POTUS or FLOTUS, to my knowledge, cannot overrule the Secret Service. If an event or venue is not safe, and if the Secret Service says so, this is not an informal, easily-misunderstood verbal back and forth, but it is quite formalized — the scheduler cannot okay an unsafe venue for final placement on the schedule.
This requirement — to vet all attendees near “the principal,” and to clear the safety of a venue or event — can cause a lot of friction at the daily meetings. Everyone at that daily meeting has an agenda and wants his or her own event, or an event serving his or her own donors or constituents, or one showcasing his or her policy goals, to be placed on the all-important POTUS or FLOTUS schedule.
The venue and surroundings will also be physically checked by the security team in advance of the event. The “advance” team — a separate group — also checks it in advance. (Hence the name “advance team.”) This happens days before. If there is a problem, that previous “advance” trip is intended to surface and remedy it.
All this protocol means that the perimeter, the parking lot, the rooftop, the basements, the stage, the bleachers, even the security fence that videos show, in Butler PA, prevented police from detaining Crooks in advance of his weapon being fired — should all have been physically checked and okayed in advance, all the way up the chain of command for the Secret Service.
Standard SOP in this way prevents any Keystone Cops-type scrambling around impediments such as barrier fences, any confusion, and any plaintive cries of “What do we do now?” - all of which we saw and heard in Butler, PA. Evidence of this prior planning is the diamond-sharp, thoroughly-drilled, hyper-certain coordinated reaction of Secret Service in 1981, to the shooting of President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley. This earlier Secret Service response took President Reagan out of the shooter’s range in seconds, not, as in this recent case, many long minutes. See the difference for yourself.
The assertion now by Secret Service that local police in Butler PA were in charge of securing any part of the venue, is baffling to anyone who has worked in or with a White House advance team. That is not how anything related to Secret Security operates, to my knowledge. If the SOP has changed in the last 20 years, then US Secret Service procedures have dramatically deteriorated. Or else — someone who does not want to secure US “principals” to the traditional standard, or at least not consistently, is now in charge.
Having seen how closely an event is scrutinized in advance, and how many layers of staffers in both the White House and the campaign need to sign off on it, let us look at the First Lady.
FLOTUS chose to speak at 5 pm on July 13, 2024, at North Pittsburgh, at a closed event of 200, at a casino. 5 PM was the exact time of President Trump’s speech in Butler PA. FLOTUS’ event was 54 minutes away from President Trump’s.
(Vice President Kamala Harris also spoke in Pennsylvania that day, at an event broadcast from 1-5 pm, at the Philadelphia Convention Center, at an APIAVotes (“Asian and Pacific Islander American Vote” Town Hall. Press around this event describes VP Harris as “our nation’s first Asian American Vice President.”)
The point is, both “surrogates” for Pres. Biden were speaking at closed, secure venues with limited entry points. Did FLOTUS’ event, and Harris’, require dozens of top Secret Service operatives, leaving Pres Trump exposed? Did these two events require all of the tall Secret Service operatives, or all of the Secret Service operatives that were actually well-trained in use of their weapons?
How did the Secret Service operatives who were with First Lady Jill Biden, react, when it was clear that a gunman had fired at and injured a President less than an hour away? Was FLOTUS whisked out of her casino event, as is standard when there is a heightened security context in the country? Or did she calmly finish her event?
Where did she go after that?
Did Secret Service get her to a more secure location than the one that was initially planned for her? That heightened response would have been standard under normal circumstances.
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