Crime Fix with Angenette Levy - Sniper Rips Trump's Secret Service for Assassination Attempt
Episode Date: July 17, 2024Snipers were in position at the Butler, Pennsylvania Trump rally where the a would-be assassin turned his gun on the former president last Saturday. The snipers were captured by cell phone ca...meras and professional photographers before and as the shots were fired. Questions have been raised about the snipers response and whether the shooter should have been spotted and taken out sooner. Law&Crime's Angenette Levy talks with a former sniper about the videos, the response and what questions remain in this episode of Crime Fix — a daily show covering the biggest stories in crime.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Download the FREE Upside App at https://upside.app.link/crimefix to get an extra 25 cents back for every gallon on your first tank of gas.Host:Angenette Levy https://twitter.com/Angenette5CRIME FIX PRODUCTION:Head of Social Media, YouTube - Bobby SzokeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinVideo Editing - Daniel CamachoGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@LawandCrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this law and crimes series ad free right now.
Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify.
They see something that said, take a look at what happened.
Snipers were on a roof nearby as a would be assassin fired at former President Trump.
Videos of the snipers online have people chiming in
on the incident and the response. A former military and police sniper is here with his
take on what happened and what it's like to protect a president. Welcome to Crime Fix.
I'm Anjanette Levy. When a 20 year old man climbed onto a roof last Saturday with an
AR-15 in Butler County, Pennsylvania, he was able to do so with Secret Service,
local law enforcement, and trained snipers nearby.
Thomas Crooks, who's been described as a loner
by former high school classmates,
was seen on the roof before firing his shots.
He's got a gun!
He's got a gun!
He's got a gun!
He's got top of the roof.
Don't go over there.
He's on the roof, buddy. Crooks fired several shots hitting former
President Trump as he spoke to a crowd at one of his signature rallies.
To our country, probably 20 million people. And you know, that's a little bit old, that
chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that's sad, take a look at what happened.
Snipers were on a roof nearby, but not the roof where Crooks was able to set up his gun.
And you know, that's a little bit old, that chart's a couple of months old.
And if you want to really see something that's said, take a look at what happened.
You can see the snipers react after they hear the shots.
A sniper's bullets killed Crooks.
Sadly, firefighter Corey Comparatore was killed.
He was at the rally with his family.
Corey was a girl dad.
Corey was a firefighter.
Corey went to church every Sunday.
Corey loved his community. And most especially, Corey loved his family.
Corey was an avid supporter of the former president and was so excited to be there last night with him in the community.
I asked Corey's wife if it would be okay for me to share that we spoke.
She said yes.
She also asked that I share with all of you that Corey died a hero.
That Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally.
Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.
Two other men were wounded, David Dutch and Jim Copenhaver. They are being treated in the hospital.
Crooks was able to get onto the roof of the building where local police were staged inside. He was about 400 feet from the stage with a direct line of sight to the stage where Mr. Trump was speaking.
The director of the Secret Service, Kim Cheadle, spoke to ABC News exclusively, calling the
shooting unacceptable and saying it should never happen again.
Cheadle also told ABC News that she was still gathering details, but confirmed
that Crooks was identified as suspicious before he fired the shots, calling the timeframe
a very short period of time. Cheadle offered this explanation for why agents weren't on
the roof of the building.
That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there's
a safety factor that would be
considered there that we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof. And so, you know,
the decision was made to secure the building from inside. And Cheadle has taken a lot of ribbing for
that comment on social media. The roof where the snipers who shot Crooks were positioned
were on a sloped roof. All of this raises a lot of questions.
We're seeing snippets of the snipers online,
and as the shots were fired,
it looks like they are in position.
So what happened?
Why wasn't Crooks taken out sooner
before he fired the shots?
I have a great app to tell you about
that will help give you cash back
when you buy gas and food.
It's called Upside.
It gives you real money back here's how
it works download upside and look at the offers when you find one claim it and then pay with your
debit or credit card i use upside to get cash back on gas and i got more than five bucks back on one
tank of gas you cannot beat that to find out how much you could earn click the link in the
description or scan the QR code
on your screen and use the promo code crime fix to get an extra 25 cents back on every gallon on
your first tank of gas I want to bring in a former sniper his name is Jimmy Jimmy what were your
first thoughts when you heard about this and saw the videos I I was just surprised that it had happened. My son actually told me
right before his birthday, his birthday was the next day. And when I heard about it,
it wasn't surprising to a point of it actually happened. I was really happy that he was alive,
though. When you saw the videos in the picture, you with social media everybody can comment now on everything
people have opinions so when you've seen the videos of the snipers on the roof and it almost
looks like they see something and then you hear the shots what what do you think is going on when
you look at that video as they're kind of they they're looking into the scope of their guns, but you hear the pop, pop, pop.
So I'll start from the beginning of, because I've done that actual detail.
I've done that for Biden, actually, when he was the vice president, I did that detail.
And I was a sniper on a roof and essentially what you do while you're up there is you have a whole
week of planning where you go out there like a week before and you do what's called in the Marine
Corps we call them field cards so you go out there and you say this area could be a threat
you calculate what your your ballistics would be in that particular event should something
happen in this area.
So you're ready to have your gun ready in that area.
Then you'll say maybe over here, you know, 600 yards away, there could be something going
on here.
Basically you put points in the area that say, hey, if something happens here, this is where I'm going to be looking.
Now, from the videos that I've seen, people started seeing this guy climbing the roof, right?
Right.
And so they start, hey, there's a guy climbing the roof over here and whatnot.
So on that detail, you never have your rifle up.
You're always looking through binos.
Once you pull your rifle up and you are looking in an area,
you have determined that there is a credible something going on,
whether it be a threat, whether it not be.
You know something is going on there, though.
Because once you pull up that gun in the Secret Service, the guys that are on the ground, if they once you pull up that gun in the secret service the
guys that are on the ground if they see you pull up your gun they understand that something bad
is going on so the fact that they were already behind their gun they understood that something
was happening now did they see that guy i can't tell i can't tell. I haven't been on that roof. I did go on to Google Earth,
and from the distance that I determined from Google Earth was 200 yards, about 200 yards,
like 190. So the distance wouldn't have been a problem for those guys. The issue would have been
the dead space on the peak of the roof.
So if you're looking at a roof, you can only see one side of it, right?
On the other side, you can't see anything.
And from the videos that I saw where the people that were yelling, you could see this guy,
he crawls a little bit and he looks up.
So those guys may have seen him like we call it turkey peeking.
So you'd crawl it on and you look look up like this, and you come back down so that you can't be seen.
In that event, those guys, you know, if they're not seeing some kind of threat,
like the guys pointed a gun at him, or anything like that, they're not going to shoot at him.
You know, they just see a guy on the roof. You know what
I mean?
So you're saying by the time that those guys because there
was other video of them looking through, you know, some type of
binoculars or whatever. So is that typical position for a
sniper, you're kind of surveying your your kind of your heads
kind of on a swivel. So you're kind of just keeping an eye out
at all times. And I'm assuming you're kind of your head's kind of on a swivel so you're kind of just keeping an eye out at all times and I'm assuming you're also communicating with other
people on the ground through some type of communication system yes yes so when
you're in the binos essentially what you're doing is you're looking at say
what say what that is because you're sitting by nose is that binoculars or
yeah but not by nose or binoculars? Yes. Okay. Yes. And
you can actually see them in the videos where they're behind the
rifles, you can see them on the ground. And like you said, I
think it was about seven minutes before everything happened. You
can actually see those guys and they are, you know, in their
binoculars looking looking for threats.
So by the time they get down on their guns, or you know, in their binoculars looking, looking for threats. So by the time they get down on their guns or, you know, behind their guns and they're
looking through the scope, you're saying they've already determined that there's some
type of credible threat there and they're lining up to take the shot because it's not
just like in the movies.
I mean, I feel like when you see them in the movies, they are there when at least in a
military type of situation,
they're actually kind of setting up and it's, this isn't like a
willy nilly thing, you have to actually set the shot. Make sure
you've got it on your target because you're shooting to kill
you're not shooting to miss.
Correct. Yeah, there. We don't shoot to miss we don't shoot to
wound it is when you're shooting that rifle, it is shooting to kill.
And those guys, as they pulled up, it's the data that's on the rifle.
And you can actually see on their rifle in the video, they have a range finder.
It's a little box looking thing on top of the rifle. And that's a range finder. It's a laser, sends out a laser,
the laser comes back and says that's 200 yards or whatever it might be. Some scopes will actually
set that data for you. But I don't think that was the type of rifle that they had.
It's just a quick adjustment that those guys needed. And I mean, that would have been half a second.
Those guys had their scope set to eliminate a threat.
They did eliminate the threat.
And there's been a lot of criticism that people weren't moving quickly enough.
And I'm not sure we have enough information now to, an assessment? How are you feeling about that? Do
you feel like we have enough information to say whether or not people were moving quickly enough
or not? I mean, the head of the Secret Service has already said that the shooting was unacceptable,
and there have been questions about whether or not there was enough manpower deployed.
For the shooting to be unacceptable, I don't understand
how that could be the case. I mean, someone literally shot the former president in the ear.
The fact that he even got a shot off is, to me, unacceptable. Now, I'm not going to judge those
guys that were on that roof. I will tell you right now, I already looked up the temperature. It was 91 degrees that day. And being on that roof is
horrible. Even, even for that bad guy, as he's crawling, I guarantee you, he was burning
because those roofs, those metal roofs on the top up there, you get very, very hot.
Um, now as far as those guys waiting to take a shot, I can't judge those guys in that aspect because I don't know their policies.
One.
Two, I wasn't on the roof, and I haven't seen – I haven't been on that roof.
So I wouldn't even know if they could see the guy. know i already talked about the dead space in the roof you know they could have seen
the crowd freaking out pointing saying hey there's somebody over there so they get behind the rifle
and they're just waiting um because even taking a shot if he would have came like on the side of
the roof he could have taken shots and they wouldn't have seen him. You know, and from what I've watched, there's two rounds, pop, pop, that
the guy shoots at him. The second round appears to hit the former president in the ear and he
puts his hand up and gets down. Then here, anywhere from three to four more shots, and then about two seconds later, you hear the sniper shoot, and it appears to be two rounds.
The succession of which those two rounds went off, it sounded because they have bolt guns, right?
Those do not shoot very fast.
You're not going to go pow, pow, pow, pow, pow. It'll be pow, pow, pow, right?
So it appears that both the snipers may have shot. I can't say that for sure, but that may have been the case.
The head of the Secret Service also told ABC News, Kim Cheadle, she was talking with Pierre Thomas of ABC News and was asked about
there not being snipers on the roof where Thomas Crooks was able to set up his gun.
And she said something about possibly there being a safety issue with a sloped roof.
Snipers are well-trained. And I would assume no matter where you've been trained to be a sniper, whether it's the military or local law enforcement, that you are trained to shoot from a variety of locations.
Because if you're a sniper, you're going to be in situations potentially where the conditions are not ideal.
Yeah, and the matter of the position would have been up to the snipers themselves.
They were on a sloped roof.
So that makes sense.
They literally were on a sloped roof.
So if that's a matter of concern for you, why did you have them on a sloped roof?
And it's up to those guys.
And I guarantee you, as a sniper, you do not care about the position.
Now, yes, you want to sit there for eight hours,
you're probably going to pick something a little more comfortable, but that's not the case.
Jimmy, since you've been on this detail before, do you feel that there should have been snipers
on that roof where Crooks was? I mean, there was local law enforcement, you know, according to the
reporting, stationed inside the building where crooks had
climbed on top of the roof and apparently there was a law enforcement officer who who got up there
saw him ducked because he thought he was going to take fire and then fell off the roof
so it seems to me i mean that's it's like 400 feet away with a straight shot to the former president
it seems to me that you should have somebody up there, whether they're local law enforcement or federal.
Yeah, the fact that that building wasn't secured to a point where someone could crawl on top of it, that makes no sense to me. The facility of where I did it, we were also at an airport and every building had either
a deputy or a secret service. Secret service when I was there, and this was for Vice President Biden
at the time, they were mainly with him. Everything else was secured by local law enforcement.
But we had every building had a deputy standing there, ready to secure the area, ready to
respond.
The fact that this guy was able to climb a roof, that is a total failure in my eyes.
Well, Jimmy, is there anything else you'd like to add about this?
It sounds to me like you think that we need some more answers and some changes need to be made. Yeah. You know,
the FBI is investigating. I would definitely like to know what they have to say and what they find
out. Now, I don't want these guys, the snipers that took that shot i'm not here to judge them i i don't want any ill will
towards those guys um because we don't know we don't know what they were seeing in the scope
and until they come out and say it or it comes out in the investigation we don't know still a
lot of questions and we're only a couple of days out from this really a few days jimmy thank you
so much for joining me. I appreciate it.
Yes, ma'am.
And that's it for this episode of Crime Fix.
I'm Anjanette Levy.
Thanks so much for being with me.
I'll see you back here next time.