by Steven Richards and John Solomon
A Pakistani trying to support Iran assassinate Donald Trump is allowed into the United States. An American who would later try to shoot Trump is flagged down at the border but given no further information. A juvenile man acting suspiciously at a Trump rally is not confronted until he starts shooting. And agents are unable to confront a would-be assassin after receiving a tip about illegal weapons.
Two consecutive assassination attempts on the 45th president and current Republican nominee have exposed glaring mistakes and weaknesses in several federal law enforcement agencies and raised painful questions about whether the FBI and Secret Service are being too lax when it comes to proactive security.
“I was disappointed by just the blasé attitude. These are not normal times,” Sen. Ron Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told Just the News, No Noise.” television programme.
“They need to provide more security for President Trump, and they need to get those resources wherever they can get them. And President Biden, using his executive authority, needs to make sure they get those resources,” he added.
The former Navy SEAL turned congressman said: Only news that the country was lucky that the first two attacks were carried out using amateur methods and warned that a real professional killer would most likely have succeeded.
“The problem with this is that we’re sending a signal to the rest of the world and even to people in our own country who hate President Trump that these guys, with no training, no experience, are very close,” said Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz. John Solomon’s Reports podcast.
“This is a very dangerous precedent and a very dangerous signal that we send to President Trump’s enemies,” Crane said.
Sunday’s attempted shooting in Florida baffled security experts because the Secret Service did not search or secure the golf course and had no cameras or drones to detect Ryan Routh, even though the alleged gunman prowled the area for 12 long hours, looking for a place to fire his shot.
Now questions arise about Routh’s earlier intervention.
Growing evidence suggests Routh has appeared on federal law enforcement’s radar at least four times since 2019 without any significant intervention.
For example, Only news said Tuesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection reported Routh’s case on his return from Ukraine and referred him to Homeland Security Investigations for review, but the agency declined to do so.
Instead, the suspect went to Florida and was spotted by the Secret Service with the barrel of a gun sticking out through the bushes, ready to shoot at Trump, who was playing golf at a South Florida golf course on Sunday.
The FBI and the Secret Service have recently struggled with cases in which investigators flagged suspicious behavior by suspects before they planned or committed grave crimes. Examples include the failure to track down Thomas Crooks, the original Trump attacker, at a rally in Pennsylvania and the Department of Homeland Security’s decision to allow into the country Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national who planned to assassinate U.S. officials.
Routh’s attempted murder was no different. Two other known warnings preceded the flag issued by border officials in 2023. A 2022 report by a volunteer nurse warning officers of Routh’s volatile behavior and a 2019 tip-off to the FBI that Routh illegally possessed firearms as a felon apparently show that Routh was on the radar of federal law enforcement at least twice. Interestingly, Routh was interviewed by mainstream media outlets several times before his death haunting Trump last week. Routh was quoted as a credible voice by Reuters, Newsweek, New York TimesAFP and othersspeaking two years ago about his alleged involvement in supporting the war in Ukraine.
US border crossing records show Routh was interviewed in June 2023 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers after returning from Ukraine last year and flagged for further investigation based on off-the-cuff comments he made to agents, but the Department of Homeland Security simply declined to act, Only news it was announced on Tuesday.
Government documents show CBP officers knew Routh had traveled to Warsaw, Poland, near the border with Ukraine, and Istanbul, Turkey, in 2022 and 2023, and admitted in an interview that he had recruited up to 100 foreign fighters from Taiwan, Afghanistan and Moldova to join Ukraine’s war against the Russian invasion.
The self-proclaimed defender of Ukraine was sent to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI)Homeland Security’s chief investigative arm, but the department declined to investigate. It’s unclear why HSI declined to investigate Routh further. The agency responded Only news to the FBI when reached for comment on Tuesday.
The FBI did not respond to a request for comment. Only news.
Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who volunteered in Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2022, says, she told border security agents about several encounters with Routh in the country. She told CBP authorities that she suspected Routh was a threat to intelligence when she returned to Washington’s Dulles Airport a year before Routh met with the agency in Honolulu. In a notebook kept during the trip to Ukraine, Walsh wrote that Routh exhibited “generally predatory behavior (or antisocial traits),” according to the page she shared Wall Street Journal.
Walsh also said Journal that after Routh described to her his efforts to recruit Syrian refugees to fight in Ukraine against Russia, she sent an online report to the FBI and Interpol expressing her concerns about the would-be killer.
Jeffrey Veltri, Special Agent in Charge of the FBI Miami Field Office, at the press conference in South Florida yesterday told reporters that a tip came in in 2019 that Routh was in possession of a firearm as a felon. Veltri said the tipster did not confirm the details of his tip, so the office referred the complaint to the local police department where Routh lived in Hawaii. It does not appear that local police followed up on the lead after it was forwarded by the office.
Routh was convicted of possessing a weapon of mass destruction — a machine gun — as well as carrying a concealed weapon, possession of stolen property and fleeing the scene in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he lived before moving to Hawaii in 2018. There are also charges of driving on a suspended license, according to court records obtained from Guilford Countywhere Greensboro is located.
Only news It was previously reported that federal authorities allowed Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani accused of conspiring with Tehran to kill Donald Trump and others, to enter the U.S. in April under a special permit known as “significant public welfare parole,” even though he was on a terror watchlist and had recently traveled to Iran, according to similar border crossing records.
The FBI’s Joint Counterterrorism Task Force questioned Merchant, fingerprinted him and checked his electronic devices when he arrived at George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, but then allowed him to fly out on special parole that expired May 11 despite his questionable travel history, including a visit to Iran — a state sponsor of terrorism — and being placed on a watchlist.
The Justice Department says Merchant he tried to hire someone to carry out the attack shortly after he entered the country in April, and that person became a confidential informant for law enforcement after reporting the contact. He reportedly targeted Donald Trump. Merchant was eventually arrested on July 12 as he tried to make arrangements to leave the country.
The Secret Service was plagued by numerous security lapses leading up to the first assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. The FBI is investigating the attempted assassination, which left one participant dead and three injured, including Trump.
Before Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man, opened fire on the former president and attendees at his rally, local law enforcement had identified him as a suspect and even taken photos of the would-be assassin before he climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and began his attack.
In the period leading up to the rally, several participants reported this to local police officers that Crooks was suspicious as he circled the metal detectors, according to the Associated Press. Crooks reportedly tried take the rangefinder often used by shooters through metal detectors, which arouses the suspicion of law enforcement.
Other reports also indicate that a law enforcement officer who was part of a tactical sniper team took a photo of Crooks during a stakeout at 5:30 p.m., more than 40 minutes before he shot the former president, this Daily mail reportedThe photo, taken by law enforcement, was widely circulated on social and news media. CBS News reported: that the tactical team saw Crooks looking at the building and using a rangefinder on at least two occasions.
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John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist, author, and digital media entrepreneur who serves as CEO and editor-in-chief of Just the News. Steven Richards is a reporter for Just the News.
Photo “Donald Trump” by Daniel Scavino Jr.
