Tucker: "It's Not Crazy To Think That. . . It Wasn't Just A Lone Gunman"

Tucker says this at about 8:00 in the video above, but he simply isn't the only one. To think this might even be an inside job is, frankly, against ordinary charity, against ordinary decorum in publc discourse, and against ordinary restraint -- but people are starting to come out and say it. The FBI investigation, which Joe says will be "thorough and swift", so far has been neither. But every day the loose ends go untied leads to more speculation, and the deep state is simply digging a hole for itself when it allows people like Secret Service Director Cheatle to set the tone:

As the head of the agency, Cheatle said it's her responsibility to investigate what went wrong and make sure nothing like it can happen again.

"The buck stops with me," she said. "I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary."

Cheatle responded to reports that the suspect was seen and identified as potentially suspicious before he opened fire, saying that "a very short period of time" passed between then and the shooting.

Except that in his remarks Sunday afternoon, Joe strongly inplied that the FBI would be the lead agency investigating what happened: "Let the FBI do their job and their partner agencies do their job." Yet Director Cheatle seems to think her job is to investigate her own agency.

What's puzzling is that so many people with experience both in the Secret Service and working as snipers have been claiming something's hinky. For instance:

Dallas Alexander, who spent 14 years in a sniper team for the Canadian military doing close protection for major world leaders including the Canadian prime minister, suggested in a video Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who opened fire at the former president's rally Saturday night, may have had help from the inside.

'I'm very familiar with the layout of these types of things and what the job should be, and yesterday what happened,' he said.

'I have no doubts in my mind that the shooter had help from somewhere within an agency, an organization or the government.'

. . . 'So something happened, and I'm not pointing fingers at anyone. It's just too obvious that this guy had help getting there.

'So whether it's someone turned a blind eye or it was strategically planned, it had to be planned to a certain level, because events like that, security like that, it's not a small thing - and that is an obvious place to be.'

But although Director Cheatle claims "a very short period of time" passed between the time Crooks was spotted and the shooting began, that time span keeps expanding:

Channel 11′s Nicole Ford confirmed that Beaver County’s ESU team had eight members at the rally, including snipers and spotters. According to Ford’s sources, one of them noticed a suspicious man on a roof near the rally at 5:45 p.m., called it in and took a picture of the person. We have learned from our sources the person in that picture is Thomas Crooks. We’re told it’s not clear if Crooks had a gun with him at that point.

ccording to multiple sources, a law enforcement officer had also previously seen Crooks on the ground and called him in as a suspicious person with a picture prior to 5:45 p.m. Our sources tell us an officer checked the grounds for Crooks at that point, but did not see him where the first picture was taken.

It shouldn't be that difficult to get hold of the tapes from the command center that received the call and determine who said what to whom, or didn't. So far, we've heard nothing further. But beyond that is the problem that the Secret Service snipers on the roof above the Trump rally stage appear to have been aware of Crooks on the building roof before he shot:

Televised pictures of snipers behind the stage where Trump had begun to speak appeared to be looking in the direction of the sloped-roof building just as Trump began to speak.

Why they didn't fire before Crooks ever had a chance to aim at Trump let alone open fire also baffles [retired police niper Jim] Scanlon.

"You wonder if they saw the threat and hesitated," Scanlon said. "But the real failure comes with not having someone on that roof. From 130 yards away, you have to own that roof.

"I have never been on a detail where that possibly could have happened."

The report that Crooks was lurking around the site with a range finder adds yet another question to my own list. On one hand, the report that he had a gun club membership with a firing range for AR type rifles is one explanation for how he improved his marksmanship from the time he was a "comically" bad shot in high school -- but at a firing range, you don't need a range finder. This is the sort of stuff you learn at sniper school, not at the gun club.

Although the FBI was finally able to crack the advanced security on Crooks's phone, this story says it revealed nothing:

The Bethel Park High School graduate’s phone yielded little evidence, and even his laptop showed typical online activities, including an interest in gaming and coding, CNN said.

Matthew Crooks — who called the police sometime Saturday to report his son and his gun missing — and the shooter’s mother have cooperated with law enforcement, sources said.

How could Crooks's parents have been so clueless about his activities? On one hand, OK, he and his dad liked to shoot at the gun club, but you use range finders to hunt big game in the wilderness, or, of course, as a sniper. Did dad know anything about the range finder? Where did Crooks learn to use it, and from whom? How was he so well informed about where to scout a sniper's perch?

So far, these questions aren't being dealt with. Again, as someone who's worked in the crisis management and contingency planning field, I know that it's important to have a single, credible, and knowlegeable spokesman to serve as a point of media contact to provide just such answers. One of the best examples is James Kallstrom, who headed the FBI investigation into the explosion of TWA Flight 800 and also served as its chief spokesman.

Although the investigation was surrounded by controversy, and there are other continuing theories concerning the flight, Kallstrom is a good example of how any such event should be handled, and in his role, Kallstrom gained a reputation as a man of openness and integrity. The impression of integirty he projected at the time probably increased public confidence in the investigation's conclusion that the accident was neither a terrorist attack nor an errant missile.

So far, no figure equivalent to Kallstrom has emerged in the Butler investigation, which is yet another failure among the responding agencies. In fact, nobody at the FBI or the Secret Service seems yet to have recognized they have a crisis on their hands that is, if anything, more serious than TWA 800, and nobody has yet recognized that a Kallstrom (who passed away in 2021) is what they need. On the other hand, I get the feelinmg that a James Kallstrom would not be welcome in today's FBI.