{"id":24547,"date":"2025-11-25T12:49:17","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:49:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/?p=24547"},"modified":"2025-11-25T12:49:17","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T12:49:17","slug":"shocker-fbi-had-many-chances-to-stop-trumps-would-be-assassinbut-didnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/?p=24547","title":{"rendered":"Shocker: FBI Had Many Chances To Stop Trump\u2019s Would-Be Assassin\u2026But Didn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A former FBI assistant director is finally saying what millions of Americans have been thinking since the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last July. Chris Swecker \u2014 a 24-year veteran of the bureau \u2014 is openly venting his frustration, and he\u2019s not mincing words.<\/p>\n

According to Swecker, the emerging digital footprint of would-be assassin Thomas Crooks makes one thing abundantly clear: this guy should have been on the FBI\u2019s radar long before he climbed onto a rooftop and fired multiple shots at a former president. Police killed Crooks at the scene, but the questions about how he slipped through the cracks remain.<\/p>\n

Swecker went even further, saying former FBI Director Chris Wray appeared desperate to shoehorn the attack\u00a0into a \u201cfar-right extremism\u201d narrative:<\/p>\n

The FBI had multiple \u201cmissed opportunities\u201d to stop Thomas Crooks before he tried to assassinate President Trump, a former assistant director at the Bureau has told The Post.<\/em><\/p>\n

Last week, The Post reported on multiple extremist social media posts believed to be tied to Crooks, including numerous threats of political violence and a dramatic shift against Trump, after previously expressing his admiration for the Republican.<\/em><\/p>\n

If even \u201chalf\u201d of Trump\u2019s would-be assassin\u2019s extremist digital footprint turns out to be true, he should have been on the FBI\u2019s radar long before the 20-year-old opened fired on the then-presumptive GOP presidential nominee during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, said Chris Swecker, a retired FBI assistant director.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear that he was popping off on the social media sites and saying things that should have garnered attention,\u201d Swecker, who served in the FBI for 24 years, said.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThat constitutes a miss on the part of the FBI,\u201d he added, saying that the Bureau\u2019s handling of the investigation earned a \u201ca C- grade.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Swecker \u2014 who retired from the Bureau in 2006 \u2014 also claimed that the FBI under then-director Christopher Wray was desperate to pin Trump\u2019s would-be assassin as a far-right lone gunman.<\/em><\/p>\n

He said it seemed clear to him that when agents found evidence to the contrary, the Bureau \u201chad its thumb on the scales\u201d of the investigation.<\/em><\/p>\n

This led to a lack of transparency in the investigation, which allowed conspiracy theories to spread and multiply, he said.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cA little bit of transparency goes a long way in these types of investigations,\u201d said Swecker, who was the bureau\u2019s assistant director of the FBI for the Criminal Investigative Division from 2004 to 2006. \u201cThere was a bias in the FBI towards right-wing extremists. And if there was a right-wing extremist ideology, that got surfaced real quick in any of these shootings. But if there was a left-wing extremist ideology driving it, it was glossed over,\u201d Swecker said<\/p>\n

He said that view was \u201cshared by a lot of my colleagues\u201d in the FBI.<\/p>\n

Crooks appeared to harbor animosity towards everyone, as he also posted hateful messages advocating violence against Jews and members of the Squad on the Hill. The Squad consists of the most outspoken, progressive members of the Democratic House Caucus, including Representatives Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).<\/p>\n

This kid was allowed to perch on an unsecured rooftop some 400 feet from the main stage at this rally, a glaring security breach for which the Secret Service has yet to provide an answer that isn\u2019t laughable. The FBI also refused to disclose all information about this case to congressional investigators, prompting some to call for a new review and probe.<\/p>\n

This kid was literally allowed to set up shop on an unsecured rooftop roughly 400 feet from the main stage \u2014 an unbelievable, glaring security failure that the Secret Service still hasn\u2019t explained in any way that doesn\u2019t sound like a bad joke.<\/p>\n

And it gets worse. The FBI has refused to hand over key information about the case to congressional investigators, stonewalling at every turn. That stonewalling has only fueled bipartisan calls for a new review and a full-blown probe into how such an obvious threat went unnoticed \u2014 and how the system failed so catastrophically.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A former FBI assistant director is finally saying what millions of Americans have been thinking since the assassination attempt on Donald J. Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last July. Chris Swecker … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24548,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24547\/revisions\/24548"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cndailynews.store\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}