Sen Fetterman On Eating The Cats

Welker: "Why should voters trust" Kamala wouldn't ban fracking?

Fetterman: "It's so strange why we keep talking about fracking"

Welker: You called fracking a "stain on Pennsylvania." What do you now like about fracking?"

Fetterman: "They're eating dogs. They're eating cats." pic.twitter.com/kkVkT13PU7

— Trump War Room (@TrumpWarRoom) September 22, 2024

Sen Fetterman uttered a sphinx-like remark over the weekend that seems to have pundits confused. In the wake of the apparent non-sequitur in the clip above, Tim Haines said,

When repeatedly pressed about abandoning his opposition to fracking during a "Meet The Press" interview on Sunday, Pennsylvania Democratic Sen. John Fetterman said he doesn't have to answer that kind of specific policy question because "the other side" doesn't take policy seriously.

I don't think that was whnat the senator said, and I definitely don't think that was the subtext of what he said. Here are key excerpts from the transcript quoted in the story:

KRISTEN WELKER: . . . In 2018 you said you don't support fracking at all. But then in 2022 you said you absolutely support fracking. Senator, what exactly do you like about fracking now?

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN: . . . And you know, here I am now, I'm a United States Senator, and I won by five points, a record margin back in '22. And again, it might be an issue in fracking. And I totally support fracking. So does the Vice President Harris. And now if you want to have a serious conversation about policy, then I would challenge Trump and Vance to have one other than talking about eating pets.

KRISTEN WELKER: . . . But to the point, what do you now like about fracking? You say you're not going to ban it; you support it now.

SENATOR JOHN FETTERMAN: "They're eating dogs, they're eating cats." You know, again, so okay. Yes, any more on fracking?

His basic answer to Kristen Welker's question obout fracking was an appeal to realpolitik: he ran on fracking in 2022, he supported it in that election, and he won by five points. She continued to press him, and losing patience -- he's a surprisingly smart guy -- he answered with another appeal to realpolitik: Trump and Vance are running on Haitians eating pets, and it's winning, the same way he won by supporting fracking in 2022. That's his answer.

This is consistent with his earlier remarks on Trump:

“Trump has created a special kind of a hold” among voters in the Keystone State, said Fetterman, securing “a special kind of place in Pennsylvania.”

Fetterman said, “I want people to understand, it’s not science, but there is energy, and there is kinds of anger on the ground in Pennsylvania and people are very committed, and Trump is going to be strong.”

Earlier in Sunday's interview, he suggested fracking won't be the issue that decides this year's election in Pennsylvania:

While Fetterman suggested fracking is now a fringe issue among Pennsylvanians, a recent poll showed broad bipartisan support, with 68 percent of those polled supporting fracking and just 19 percent against the practice.

But what will be the issue that decides the election, then? I think he gave his answer -- "They're eating dogs, they're eating cats." There's anger on the ground in Pennsylvania.

This is where many republicans misread Trump's strategy. Karl Rove had this to say after the September 10 debate:

Rove, who is also a political contributor for Fox News, recalled Trump’s previous insult of Harris in July as “dumb as a rock” and wrote: “Which raises the question: What does that make him?”

The question concluded Rove’s withering critique of Trump’s debate performance, which he said was a “train wreck” for the former president and “far worse than anything Team Trump could have imagined.”

Trump “let his emotions get the better of him” and “did a terrible job at his most important task — tying her to President Biden’s failed policies,” said Rove.

Harris “came across as calm, confident, strong and focused on the future” while Trump was “hot, angry and fixated on the past, especially his own,” he added.

Except, as Sen Fetterman says, there's anger on the ground, something Trump sees, and he's reflecting it in his manner. Why was the one memorable line in the debate about eating dogs and cats? Why did that find its way into a viral video? Why is legacy media so intent on using it to call Trump supporters racist?

Sen. Marco Rubio responded to questions about what Donald Trump has said about the migrant crisis in Springfield, Ohio, during an interview with Margaret Brennan on CBS's "Face The Nation."

MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, here in this country, in terms of people being inspired to take action, we have been looking, as you heard about, what the perception of the public is right now, particularly some of the things that Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance say. Our poll shows two thirds of Trump supporters believe those false and disparaging claims about Haitian migrants are true. . . . the verbal attacks dilute and cloud what should be a winning argument for Republicans about the border. Do you agree that this kind of thing is a distraction from the broader point and dangerous?

. . . SEN. RUBIO: That is a story here that everyday Americans are being made to feel like they're haters because they're complaining about something all- any of us would complain. If any of us, I don't care who we are, live in a city of 4,000 people, and you bring in 2,500 migrants overnight into one place, there are going to be problems there.

MARGARET BRENNAN: There are absolutely problems--

SEN. RUBIO: It doesn't make you a bigot there. That should be what we're focused on.

Margaret Brennan is simply supporting Sen Fetterman's insight: CBS's own polls show that Trump's remarks about eating the cats have had a powerful effect. These are the subliminal messages that Trump understands instinctively. and Sen Fetterman, a politician who seems to have been underrated, understands that Trump understands them.

A Harris-Trump Second Debate? Of Course Not.

A puzzling exchange between the Harris and Trump campaigns over a second Trump-Harris debate hasn't drawn much attention. Yesterday, on a Saturday. the New York Post reported,

Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted CNN’s invitation to debate Donald Trump for a second time ahead of the November election — despite the latter’s insistence that he doesn’t see a “need” to face-off again.

“The American people deserve another opportunity to see Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump debate before they cast their ballots,” Harris-Walz campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said Saturday.

“It would be unprecedented in modern history for there to just be one general election debate. Debates offer a unique chance for voters to see the candidates side by side and take stock of their competing visions for America.

“Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump, and she has accepted CNN’s invitation to a debate on October 23.”

Well, for starters, weren't there actually two debates, scheduled when Joe was still in the race? The first was June 27, and we know what happened. Kamala appeared for the second one, in which Joe was originally scheduled to appear, on September 10. The background for that schedule is given in Wikipedia:

On May 15, 2024, the Biden campaign announced that it would not participate in the [Commission on Presidential Debates]-hosted debates and instead invited Trump to participate in two alternative debates to take place in June and September, each hosted in a TV news studio without an audience. Jen O'Malley Dillon, the Biden campaign manager, laid out three reasons for sidelining the CPD, indicating that the debates were not completed until early voting started, that the debates had become "a spectacle" and that the CPD could not "enforce its own rules". . . . Biden and Trump accepted an offer from CNN to hold the first of these debates on June 27 and from ABC to hold the second on September 10.

Trump indicated the same day that he had accepted a Fox News debate to be hosted on October 2, 2024, though the Biden campaign dismissed the prospect of a third debate.

In other words, Jen O'Malley Dillon, at the time the Biden campaign mabager, set the debate terms and schedule on May 15. Following Joe's withdrawal, she continues as Kamala's campaign manager, although the actual organization chart by this point is unclear. And as of May 15, she rejected the idea of a third debate.

Except that by September 21, the same Jen O’Malley Dillon, campaign manager, announced that the American people deserve the same third debate that she rejected on May 15 -- even though the date she proposed, October 23, is well after voting starts, one of her reasons for rejecting the original CPD schedule.

At a Wilmington, NC rally later in the day, Trump rejected the call:

Trump revealed that he would reject CNN’s invitation to face off against Harris. He cited multiple factors, including that she’s losing the election, he’s already done two debates, voting has begun, and CNN won’t be fair.

The last two are particularly critical because perhaps over half the country will have already voted by the time October 23 arrives, and CNN was scratched by their media peers for being too fair to Trump. Thus, there is no upside to a second showdown.

So Jen O'Malley Dillon has done a 180 on one of her reasons for not having an additional debate, that it would be held after voting starts. That says to me that she, at least, wants a do-over for the September 10 debate, even though the conventional wisdom (which I noted that Sean Trende signed off on) was that Kamala "won" it. How could this be?

Well, here's a headline in Rolling Stone: In Springfield, Trump and Vance's Campaign of Racist Terror and Panic Is Working:

It didn't have to be this way - but, former President Trump and his running mate, Ohio's junior senator, gave voice to a baseless, racist lie about the small city's growing Haitian immigrant community stealing and eating pet dogs and cats, and made it a centerpiece of their campaign during the final weeks of the 2024 presidential election.

A TikTok video of Trump chanting "Eat the cats! Eat, eat the cats!" went viral. Ir didn't help that the Sunday after the debate, Trump survived a second assassinationm attempt, and a few days after that, he went on Gutfeld to record ratings and cracked jokes about the episode. I've said already that Gutfeld's poopy-pants routines about Biden probably had more to do with driving him out of the race than the June 27 debate.

But then Kamala had a disastrous appearance at a rally with Oprah, which followed the refusal of the Teamsters to endorse her. But pay no mind! Nate Silver says,

Harris is pretty clearly getting a bounce in national polls. She’s now up by 2.9 points in our polling average, as compared with 2.2 points on the day of the debate (and 2.0 points on the day after the debate, when there wasn’t yet any post-debate polling included in the averages).

Among the most recent polls that conducted some interviewing on Sunday or Monday, Harris has a larger lead: 4.6 points. So it’s possible that Harris is benefiting not just from the debate but also from the favorable news coverage that it’s brought her.

So why would Jen O'Malley Dillon seem to want a do-over on this same debate that has Kamala soaring in "the polls"? Good question. In fact, I have other questions:

• Why did Jen O'Malley Dillon announce that she wanted a third debate on a Saturday morning, when nobody would be paying attention?
• Why did she choose October 23 for the proposed date, when half the country would already be voting, and less than two weeks before November 5, election day, so late that the debate probably wouldn't matter anyhow?

One possible answer to the first question is that Trump's rejection would also come on a Saturday, when nobody would be paying attention. An answer to the second question would be that not even a Hail Mary play of a second debate would help the campaign. Trump clearly sees a second debate as nothing but the same waste of time the first one was, and Jen O'Malley Dillon pretty clearly agrees.

The strategy all along has been the same, whether for Biden or for Harris: the less voters see of them, the better. They didn't want an extra debate in May, and they understand pretty clearly that another debate in October won't help now. All I can think is that Saturday's announcement was some sort of token gesture intended to keep someone happy -- possibly Kamala herself.

So the debate proposal was on its face a feckless token, made for reasons that aren't clear by someone whose position on the org chart isn't clear, either. I don't think this augurs well for the campaign, but this isn't the picture "the polls" are painting. I think this shows you still have to watch for other, more subliminal signs.

Springfield, OH Mayor Profits From Haitians

In this post a week ago, I suggested that municipalities like Springfield, OH, Aurora, CO, and Charleroi, PA have experienced particulary troublesome influxes of illegal or quasi-legal immigrants because local power players, abetted by politicians, have exploited government subsidies, routed via non-profits, to make money off them. It hasn't been hard for local investigative reporters to uncover these schemes, as I discussed at that link regarding the case in Aurora, CO.

Now it turns out that the mayor of Springfield, OH is in on the same sort of boodle. Via the Buckeye Reporter,

A Buckeye Reporter investigation has confirmed that Mayor Rob Rue of Springfield, Ohio, is renting out apartments in buildings that he owns to Haitian immigrants—a move that some local residents are calling a conflict of interest.

. . . A few blocks away from Little and Rue Funeral Home, also owned by Rue, a 37-year-old man who introduced himself as “Works” lives in an apartment on an estate worth an estimated $1.3 million.

Works told Buckeye Reporter that he and other Haitian immigrants reside in properties owned by Rue.

. . . According to public records, Rue owns several rental properties in Springfield through his company, Littleton Properties of Springfield LLC.

. . . Rue became the Mayor of Springfield in 2023 and previously served as City Commissioner and Assistant Mayor, and is actively involved in local community boards.

Several residents have expressed disappointment with Rue’s leadership, suspecting he may have ulterior motives as he has overseen a significant influx of Haitian immigrants over the past two years.

Approximately 20,000 immigrants from Haiti have been brought into the community, with rumors suggesting that another 10,000 may arrive.

. . . “If Mayor Rue is renting out his properties to illegals the public should know. He should recuse himself from any vote on the Commission because he directly benefits financially from any federal funds received to support the illegals,” the Futurist™ X account said last week.

Residents of Springfield have noted they have been kicked out of their apartments to make room for Haitian immigrants.

“They've been raising the rent a lot,” 16-year-old Saphire Flores told Buckeye Reporter.

Rentals and government-subsidized rents are just one way the local power players make money off the Haitians.

[Springfield activist Bill] Monaghan said the situation is being exploited by certain individuals who are turning a profit.

“You've got this George Ten guy from First Diversity who now, you live in his house, he drives you to work, he takes a cut of your pay. It's just like a modern day slave operation,” he said.

Next door to Ten's First Diversity offices are a general store geared towards the Haitian population as well as a Haitian religious and community center.

. . . Through Ten Enterprises, LLC he owns at least 42 buildings in Springfield.

“He runs these temp agencies, brings in migrant workers, recruits them at the border, or probably with that all of these Haitians,” Monaghan said. “They're probably flying in straight from Haiti with this TPS program (Temporary Protected Status). So, yeah, he's kind of one of the leading slumlords, slave masters or whatever you want to call the guys in his operation.”

Monaghan said the entire immigration operation in Springfield reeks of corruption.

Let's recall that the people who've been consulted by the media that's been "fact-checking" claims that Haitians are eating cats, dogs, ducks, and geese have been the Mayor of Springfield and other city officials like the city manager and police chief, who at best don't want to get crosswise with the mayor, or at worst may be in on the boodle themselves. Thus we heard last week,

Springfield city and Clark County officials sought to set the record straight Tuesday after Springfield became fodder for the broader immigration debate as misinformation about Haitian immigrants garnered national attention.

Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said at a press conference Tuesday that rumors of pets or wildlife being eaten by Haitian immigrants were absolutely false, with zero verified reports of specific claims. He said Haitian immigrants had also not been reported to police to be squatting or littering in front of people’s homes.

“Rumors like this are taking away from the real issues such as issues involving our housing or school resources and our overwhelmed healthcare system,” Rue said.

Except that Rue himself, a Republican, is making money off the Haitians and raising rents on everyone, profiting from the housing shortage he's caused by bringing in the Haitians. And he definitely doesn't like it that Trump is focusing attention on his city, and neither does Republican Gov DeWine, who seems to be allied with Rue on this:

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine and Springfield Mayor Rob Rue said at a press conference Thursday that they would like former President Donald Trump to stop making false claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield and added they had not been in direct contact with him about his upcoming visit to the city.

Asked during a Q&A session if they were directly asking Trump not to come to Springfield, neither would go that far, but Rue came close. “As a visit from the former president will undoubtedly place additional demands on our safety infrastructure, should he choose to change his plans, it would convey a significant message of peace to the city of Springfield,” Rue said.

. . . In response to a question about whether he is hopeful that Trump will stop making baseless claims about Springfield, DeWine said “Well, I hope he does.”

Baseless claims indeed. Eat the cats! Eat, eat the cats!

Who's Really Bugging Trump?

Here's another puzzling data point, from Politico on Wednesday:

Iranian hackers sent sensitive information stolen from the Trump campaign to President Joe Biden’s campaign earlier this summer, U.S. investigators said Wednesday.

The emails were sent in June and July to individuals “associated with the Biden campaign” and “contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the FBI and CISA said in a statement.

. . . It is unclear to what extent the then-Biden campaign read or made use of the information the Iranians sent.

The three agencies said the emails were unsolicited and campaign staff did not reply to them.

Although the account refers to Iranian "hackers", it doesn't say whether the hackers got the information from hacking the Trump campaign directly, or whether they obtained it indirectly, possibly from sources within the US government. We do know, again from Politico, that the Biden administration's Iran envoy, Rob Malley, had his security clearance suspended and was subsequently placed on unpaid leave in summer 2023. The FBI is investigating whether Malley

moved classified information onto his personal email, where it may have fallen into the hands of a foreign actor, according to a person briefed on the case and a letter from Republican lawmakers.

Investigators are trying to determine if any crimes were committed, according to the person briefed on the case and another person familiar with the matter. But it is not yet clear if the Department of Justice will bring any charges against Malley or what the scope of any charges might be. The people were granted anonymity to discuss a highly sensitive issue.

. . . Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Sen. Jim Risch of Idaho, the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote a letter this week [May 10] to Secretary of State Antony Blinken seeking more information.

In the letter, the pair wrote that they have come to “understand” that Malley “allegedly transferred classified documents to his personal email account and downloaded these documents to his personal cellphone.” The letter continues: “It is unclear to whom he intended to provide these documents, but it is believed that a hostile cyber actor was able to gain access to his email and/or phone and obtain the downloaded information.”

However, Malley has been on leave since last year, so he wouldn't have been involved in whatever means the Iranians used to transfer Trump campaign materials to the Biden campaign -- except that having sources within the US government transmit sensitive material to Iran, wittingly or unwittingly, via careless handling of e-mail has already demonstrably occurred. I can't discount Sundance's reasoning at Conservative Treehouse:

In the 2016/2017 version of the FBI/DOJ/DNI effort we eventually learned it was the FBI/DOJ/DNI who manufactured the “hacking stories” around Russia as an excuse to cover their illegal election surveillance operation over Donald Trump. This is no longer disputed amid the intellectually honest.

So, riddle me this…. Is there a reason to believe the 2024 version, where Iran is inserted to replace Russia, does not emanate from the same FBI/DOJ/DNI justification premise?

. . . You see, from the outset of the DOJ -now Special Counsel- case against Trump in the “classified documents” case, the DOJ-NSD framed every aspect of their accusations and indictment(s) around the issue of “Classified National Security.”

That approach is seemingly useful if the same Biden administration interests wanted to continue the use of Title-1 FISA surveillance warrants; a 2024 justification coincidentally facilitates hidden surveillance of yet another Trump presidential campaign in an identical manner as they did in 2016.

But wait… wha?

Yup, again if accurate, that would mean the entire construct of the Jack Smith special counsel case that Judge Aileen Cannon eventually threw out of her court, would be predicated on a hidden motive to keep Donald Trump under full (national security) surveillance.

What Sundance has been sayong is that Trump is likely the subject of a Title 1 FISA Surveillance Warrant that allows the government to target him with electronic surveillance, i e, to bug Mar-a-Lago, but of course, not just that.

Title I of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act governs the targeting of foreign powers or agents of foreign powers for electronic surveillance by the U.S. government. Agents of foreign powers can be either U.S. persons or non-U.S. persons. If the agent of a foreign power is a U.S. person, the government must show that the U.S. person is engaging in espionage, terrorism, or sabotage by or on behalf of a foreign power that involves a violation of a criminal statute.

. . . If the application is approved, the U.S. government can conduct electronic surveillance of the target for the period of time specified in the application. At the end of that time period, the government must stop surveilling the target unless it goes back to the Court and applies to renew the surveillance. For targeted U.S. citizens, FISA applications must be renewed by the FISC every 90 days with a separate finding of probable cause to continue surveillance.

I spent part of my career in computer security, and I know that hackers want to take the easiest path to their goal. It's possible to crack passwords through muiltiple attempts using strings like "12345", for instance, but why go to that trouble if you can find an easier way in? If you know someone who has what you want, and they're careless with their e-mail -- maybe intentionally "careless" -- why go to all the trouble of bugging Mar-a-Lago yourself?

In other words, whom did the hackers hack? Did they hack Trump directly, or did they hack (cough, cough) someone in the US deep state? It sounds to me as though Trump has his own idea, and he may well be right:

WOW, JUST OUT! THE FBI CAUGHT IRAN SPYING ON MY CAMPAIGN, AND GIVING ALL OF THE INFORMATION TO THE KAMALA HARRIS CAMPAIGN. THEREFORE SHE AND HER CAMPAIGN WERE ILLEGALLY SPYING ON ME. TO BE KNOWN AS THE IRAN, IRAN, IRAN CASE! WILL KAMALA RESIGN IN DISGRACE FROM POLITICS? WILL THE COMMUNIST LEFT PICK A NEW CANDIDATE TO REPLACE HER?

I think he's fully aware that he's being bugged under a FISA warrant, and that's how the information reached the Iranians. Trump is surrounded by savvy people. He may well have deliberately planted bogus information knowing it would be passed on, and he'd recognize it if it were. This is his way of sending that message to the deep state.

A Couple More Data Points Support Yesterday's Conspiracy Theories

Yesterday I raised two possible hypotheses that might explain the puzzling constellations of events that led a freelance whack job off the plane from Hawaii to find just the right spot at the golf course fence to set up a shot at Trump when nobody was supposed to know he was on the golf course at that time. The one I tend to favor is my own, that some deep state cabal knew of Trump's golf plans because they'd bugged Mar-a-Lago during the August 2022 raid -- in fact, its main aim was simply to gain access to the place, especially the office and conference areas, to plant the bugs, not to retrieve documents.

This tweet supports my theory:

Can I just point out again, yes again, that in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case; a case against Trump where the official position of the DOJ asserts a "vital national security interest;" there is almost virtually guaranteed to be a Title-1 FISA authorized warrant.... The… https://t.co/MsdO6CZc0S pic.twitter.com/ipoZpTTfsf

— TheLastRefuge (@TheLastRefuge2) September 19, 2024

The other hypothesis I mentioned yesterday is from Arizona Rep Eli Crane, that there's a mole in the Secret Service. Missouri Sen Josh Hawley raised questions on Jesse Watters's show last night that suggest there may have been a method to the weaponized incompetence the agency displayed at both Butler and the golf course:

Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley on Wednesday sent a letter to the Secret Service, demanding answers on allegations from a whistleblower about alleged "known vulnerabilities" at a golf course that led to a second assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

. . . Hawley claimed in the letter to acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe that a Secret Service whistleblower, identified as an agent who has protected Trump at the golf course in the past, alleged that the agency failed to address "known vulnerabilities" at the golf course, including areas that offer a clear line of sight of people playing on the course.

"[T]he whistleblower alleges that it has been Secret Service protocol to 'post up' agents at these vulnerable spots when Trump visits the course," the senator wrote. "That apparently did not happen on September 15. Instead, the gunman was permitted to remain along or near the fence line for some 12 hours."

The senator also stated that it was unclear if the Secret Service used drones or did a sweep of the golf course perimeter before the former president visited on Sunday. He then asked whether the allegations were true, and questioned why the suspect was not spotted by security earlier. This story has more detail on the whistleblower allegations:

According to a whistleblower, protocol requires them to put agents at the areas of vulnerability that exist around the course. They normally put people there; they've done it many times before.

Yet they didn't this time, as the suspect lay in wait.

Hawley said the whistleblowers told him, "That's strange. That's out of protocol."

"It's not even clear Secret Service swept the perimeter before Trump took to the course," Hawley said. If they had, they likely would have found the suspect.

Hawley said this was a breach of protocol, and the whistleblowers want to know why this happened. "The Secret Service deserves to give us answers."

Think about that a moment. It's protocol to check the perimeter. It's protocol to put people at those vulnerable spots. They know about the vulnerable spots. Yet somehow, on this occasion where there's a suspect lying in wait, they throw all the protocol out the window? And the suspect somehow knew that Trump would be there, despite it not being on his schedule.

How do you have that on top of failing to secure a roof with a direct line of sight to Trump in Butler?

These data points, and the possible explanations for what lies behind them, aren't necessarily in conflict. If the FBI had Mar-a-Lago bugged and was able to get non-public information on Trump's movements, if there was a deep state cabal involving the FBI and the Secret Service, they could then have passed instructions on to their patsy Routh based on inside knowledge both of Trump's movements and the specific vulnerabilities of the golf course fence. Sen Hawley asks,

Secret Service is stonewalling: it’s been over 2 months since the Butler assassination attempt

Secret Service has yet to hand over docs. Why? pic.twitter.com/f3pZFy5PBN

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 19, 2024

This post at The Last Refuge adds,

The U.S. Secret Service gave congressional investigators a briefing on the Trump assassination attempt by Ryan Routh at Trump National in Florida. . . .

[Florida Rep] Mike Waltz repeats how the FBI are keeping all of the pertinent details surrounding the assassination attempt concealed from the investigating committee under the auspices of an ongoing investigation. Waltz is calling for transparency in both the Pennsylvania attempt and the Florida attempt; however, despite the USSS providing information, anything from the FBI is not being shared.

Let's back up for a moment. The most sophisticated investigative agency in the world knows who the perp is, and he's in custody. They have his phone, which means they can track where he's been. They have his texts and e-mails. Given his travel schedule and location tracing, they have tapes of every time he stopped to buy a burger, every time he passed a traffic camera. Normally, law enforcement would be saying a great deal more -- persons of interest, maybe additional arrests.

So far nothing.

“There Is A Very Real Possibility That There Is a MOLE In The Secret Service”

Arizona Republican Rep Eli Crane said,

My advice to the President is to bolster your private security around you not only to fill holes in the gaps that the Secret Service continues to leave open but also to watch the watchers.

There is a very real possibility that there is a mole in the Secret Service team surrounding the President or at the highest levels of the Secret Service. So he needs somebody, like a group of individuals around him that are loyal to him.

He's not the only elected official who's uncomfortable with the organs of state security, Florida Gov Ron DeSantis said on the Jesse Watters show Monday night:

I don't think it's in the best interest of this country to say that agencies like the FBI and DOJ, which are trying to prosecute Trump in South Florida, they're on appeal at the 11th Circuit trying to reinstate an indictment that had been dismissed, that they're the best people to turn around and one, give us the truth about this defendant, but also to prosecute the case where they don't have as strong of jurisdictional claims.

On top of that, the Special Agent In Charge of the Miami FBI office, which is leading the investigation into the golf course assassination attempt, has a history of anti-Trump social media posts:

[A] whistleblower told the House Judiciary Committee that the FBI made Veltri scrub his anti-Trump social media posts before promoting him to lead the Miami Field Office, according to The Washington Times.

“It was well known that Veltri was adamantly and vocally anti-Trump,” the whistleblower said in a disclosure, reported by the Times.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate, and Executive Assistant Director of Human Resources Jennifer Moore were all allegedly involved in telling Veltri to whitewash his online posts. According to the Times, the whistleblower said those officials were worried about whether “information related to Veltri’s political bias can be removed from the public domain” rather than about his “bias against Trump.”

“Wray, Abbate and Moore wanted to ensure that Veltri appeared non-political, [so] Veltri was ordered to remove all of his Facebook and social media posts that were anti-Trump,” the whistleblower said.

The whistleblower also said, if an agent was deemed to be a “right-wing radical,” Veltri was in charge of efforts targeting those agents’ security clearances.

As I noted yesterday, Ryan Routh's activites had come to the attention of the FBI, the State Department, and presumably other intelligence agencies over the past five years due to his extensive travel to Poland, Ukraine, and Romania, as well as his attempts to recruit Afghans to fight in Ukraine. This is the sort of thing that raises red flags on any security-related background check, and it's hard for me to believe somebody within the organs of state security didn't have their eye on him.

There are multiple potential problems for the organs in these circumstances. At minimum, questions could come up over whether various reports -- for instance, that he was a felon-in-possession, or that he was possibly involved in human trafficking -- were taken seriously. That alone could place the organs in a bad light and threaten careers. But if, as I think is entirely possible, he was employed as some type of freelance informant by one of the organs while on his various quixotic missions, things would begin to look miuch worse.

If one of the organs had been covering his travel expenses, even if it had nothing to do with the golf course episode, it wouid be worse yet. A writer called Sam J notes on Twitchy, observing he told the court at his arraignment that his income was only $3000 a month:

How the Hell could someone living on $3000 a month be able to afford travel, weapons, and GoPro equipment? And he flew from Hawaii ... see what we mean? It makes zero sense. Then you add in all of his bizarre connections to Ukraine and strange history with law enforcement, media, and yes, even Washington D.C. and it just turns into a giant ball of tinfoil filled with conspiracy theories.

But let's leave all the conspiracy theories about the organs aside and simply theorize that, completely under the organs' radar, Routh was being paid by someone, Ukraine, Romania, Elbonia, whatever. And maybe it had absolutely nothing to do with the golf course business, they just wanted his expertise as a roofer. There would be cries from Congress simply over the fact that the organs missed this. There is simply no upside for the organs that the golf course business happened at all, but if they're involved either in giving money to the guy or deliberately ignoring reports about him, it's much, much worse.

And this leaves aside the other issues that are quite plausible -- that, as Rep Crane suggests, there could be a mole in the Secret Service, or as I suggested yesterday, the FBI bugged Mar-a-Lago during the August 2022 raid, or some other deep state cabal was behind Crooks, Routh, both, or someone else. I think we've alreay begun a process of slow-walking this second investigation, and it doesn't even need to be because any single thing needs to be covered up, because any serious scrutiny of the organs and how they function will be disastrous.

It intrigues me that they've got Routh's phone, they've presumably got his travel records, they've no doubt got his bank and financial records, there's been plenty of time to get any needed warrants, and this is a hot button investigation -- but nobody else seems to be a person of interest, much less arrested. Ronald Rowe, acting Secret Service head, is in West Palm Beach for the foreseeable future. And Jeffrey Veltri is running the investigation. So far, we don't have a motive for the suspect, but the G-men are on the case.

Yeah, right.

How Could Multiple People Not Be Involved In The "Golf Course Episode", And How Could The Organs Of State Security Not Already Have Known About Ryan Routh?

Throughout yesterday, experienced law enforcement and intelligence observers raised perfectly reasonable questions about Ryan Routh, the people he must have worked with, and the extensive knowledge the organs of state security must already have had of him, his contacts, and his activities.

For starters:

A veteran FBI agent said Monday that he would be “shocked” if intelligence agencies did not already have would-be Trump assassin Ryan Wesley Routh on their radar for his travel and apparent efforts to recruit foreign fighters for Ukraine.

“I asked about it in almost every case I had, especially in counterterrorism Division at the FBI when I was there, what did the other intelligence agencies know about this American citizen out on the battlefield and who was recruiting in Afghanistan?” Jeff Danik told the John Solomon Reports podcast Monday.

"These are target countries, high criteria intelligence collection points for—are legitimate collection points—for our CIA, our NSA and our five eyes partners,” he said.

. . , “So an American traipsing around in that battleground is going to perceive focus, I would be shocked if one of the intelligence agencies didn't have his devices compromised,” he said. “All that data and collection is going to be classified, of course, but my question is, does it even exist? Do we know who he was contacting, who is contacted with it?”

In fact, several stories have emerged that indicate Routh was in fact on various agencies' radar. First,

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Routh alarmed people after he traveled to Ukraine hoping to join the fight against Russia shortly after President Vladimir Putin's forces invaded in 2022.

One nurse, worried about Routh's threats of violence after she encountered him in Kyiv, said she reported the man to a Customs and Border Protection officer at Washington's Dulles airport in June 2022.

Chelsea Walsh told the officer that Routh was among the most dangerous Americans she met during her six-week visit to Ukraine, WSJ reported.

Sarah Adams, a former CIA officer who helped run a network that linked 50 aid groups to share information and coordinate humanitarian and volunteer efforts, said Routh was known as a "fraudster" and "kind of a whack job," the outlet said.

In early June, aid groups banned Routh from their Signal Messenger groups, and reported his activities to the State Department. Adams said the groups were concerned Routh might be engaging in human trafficking or immigration fraud.

But the FBI knew of Routh even before 2022:

In a press conference, Jeffrey Veltri, the FBI Special Agent in charge of the Miami field office that is investigating the attempted assassination against Trump, admitted the FBI received a “tip” on Routh in 2019.

Veltri stated, “I can also share with you that Routh was a subject of a previous closed 2019 tip to the FBI where it was alleged he was a felon in possession of a firearm.”

“The alleged complainant was interviewed and did not verify providing the initial information. The FBI passed that information on to local law enforcement in Honolulu,” added Veltri.

Next, Martin County Sheriff Will Snyder, whose deputies arrested Routh as he tried to escape up the I-95, raised other questions at a press conference:

Reporter: Does Ryan Routh have any ties to Martin County?

Snyder: “The answer to my knowledge, the answer is no. I think what we’re finding out is he’s not from this area…”

“Which, of course, raises the bigger question, how does a guy from not here get all the way to Trump International, realize that the president, former president of the United States, is golfing and is able to get a rifle in that vicinity?”

“I think that’s the question the FBI and the Secret Service are laser-focused on today… is this guy part of a conspiracy?”

“Is he a lone gunman?” Sheriff Snyder asked. He continued, “If he’s a lone gunman—–President Trump is that much safer because we have him. But if he’s part of a conspiracy, then this whole thing really takes on an ominous tone.”

Now we come to the questions Sheriff Snyder raised. For instance, Routh's behavior wasn't random or disorganized; it showed clear planning and purpose based on information that wasn't public:

Ryan Wesley Routh, the alleged would-be Trump assassin, set up a sniper’s nest near the former president’s golf course and hid there for nearly 12 hours before the apparent ambush attempt, federal prosecutors said Monday.

Routh’s cellphone pinged to the spot on the edge of Trump International West Palm Beach starting from 1:59 a.m. Sunday, the federal criminal complaint said.

. . . SKS-style rifles are not manufactured in Florida and the weapon was either brought in from another state or country, the complaint reads.

In addition, although Routh was from Hawaii and, as the sheriff noted, isn't local to West Palm Beach or Florida, he knew about a specific spot on the golf course perimeter where Trump could be surreptitiously observed:

The gunman who allegedly staked out former President Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course with an SKS rifle was able to exploit a security hole that the Secret Service has known about for years.

News photographers — including those hired by The Post — have had no problem repeatedly securing spots around the perimeter of the course to snap pictures of Trump playing golf or driving around in a golf cart.

They have even taken images — which require a clear line of sight to the 45th president — unnoticed through the bushes with telephoto lenses. Some have gotten as close as 75 yards — without so much as a sideways glance from the Secret Service.

. . . However, the location Routh chose to lie in wait in West Palm Beach wasn’t particularly favorable for photographers, owing to tricky angles and long distances.

“Routh could easily have picked a better spot, but maybe he was worried about being seen by a photographer,” the source added.

So Routh traveled from Hawaii to West Palm Beach and had with him a weapon from somewhere other than Florida, with the specific intent of assassinating Trump. Somehow he knew of a specific spot where this could be done, although he wasn't aware from any public source of when Trump might appear on the golf course. Nevertheless, he arrived at the spot in the very early morning fully 12 hours before Trump arrived at the fifth hole. This brings us to another big question:

Monday on Fox News’ “Mornings with Maria,” former FBI Assistant Director Chris Swecker told host Maria Bartiromo that 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, who allegedly tried to assassinate the former president at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach, Florida, on Sunday, might have used “inside information” from a “3rd party” to determine Trump’s whereabouts.

“I want to know how that person knew to be there, at that golf hole, at that time, that day,” Swecker said in a clip posted to the social media platform X.

. . . Whereas the Butler rally was a public event, announced in advance, Trump’s golf round on Sunday was not.

“He’s either surveilling Donald Trump or he received some inside information,” Swecker said of the alleged would-be assassin Routh. “That’s pretty sinister if that’s the case because that implicates a 3rd party either wittingly or unwittingly.”

A press conference yesterday featuring local and federal law enforcement, if anything, confused the situation. On one hand,

Analysis of Routh's cellphone location data "corroborates witness testimony of Routh's presence at the scene on Sunday," and [Miami FBI chief Jeffrey] Veltri said further analysis "will compile his movements in the days and months leading up to the 15th." He confirmed that Routh was in the vicinity of the golf course for 12 hours before the incident.

On the other hand,

Taking questions from the press, Veltri said that they are still investigating Routh's exact travel route to Florida from Hawaii and how he obtained the rifle. Veltri and Rowe said there is no information at this time indicating that Routh knew for sure that Trump would be at the golf course that day.

But it was also revealed at the press conference that Routh's backpack contained "a black plastic bag containing food". Short of somehow directly reading Routh's mind, wouldn't his presence at the golf course perimeter, armed, and with a black plastic bag containing food, be sufficient for a reasonable person (such as a juror) to infer that Routh knew Trump would be coming to the fifth and sixth holes of the golf course within about 12 hours?

In fact, another perfectly reasonable surmise from the circumstances we've been told is that Routh was able to get inside information on Trump's movements for September 15. Remember the story from November 2016, when National Security Agency chief Mike Rogers told Trump his transition headquarters in Trump Tower was bugged, and as a result, Trump moved the transition to his Bedminster golf club? Do you suppose the organs of state security might possibly be doing something similar now? For instance, when the FBI raided Mar-a-Lago in August 2022, might they have planted bugs as well as rifling through Melania's dresser drawers?

But of course, if the organs of state security had access to Trump's non-public schedule, someone within the organs would have had to pass this information on to Routh. Does anyone else feel uncomfortable about the FBI conducting the investigation here?