Judging Freedom - SPECIAL: w/ Larry Johnson: Trump Assassination Attempt: Incompetence or Complicity?

Episode Date: July 17, 2024

SPECIAL: w/ Larry Johnson: Trump Assassination Attempt: Incompetence or Complicity?See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Wednesday, July 17th, 2024. Larry Johnson joins us now. Larry, it's a pleasure no matter what we're talking about. Thank you very much for joining us. I always let you beckon call. Thank you, dear friend.

You are, of course, a renowned expert on rifles and ballistics. And, of course, you have a lot of sources and friends in the government and out. And you've been able to provide us with great information. I do want to start with an apology, and that is we ran an X, what used to be called a tweet, of what the person who created it claimed was him as an officer intended to guard the president asking for permission to shoot the shooter and permission denied. And it turns out that that was false and phony. We thought it was real and serious at the time we put it up. It came to me from a source that is credible, but that source was duped. You and I discussed it as if it was real. We apologize. We both

acknowledge that it's since been widely debunked and was not real. Nevertheless, there are many, many questions about what happened, how it can, with the scenario of how all this came about. Was the shooter at the scene before the president was there? Was he there a day or two before? Do we know of his whereabouts or his preparation, Larry? I have seen no report that that happened. But there's no way that without visiting the site beforehand that he would have been able to do what he did. There had to be some, you know, he had to go out there before. And also what's noteworthy is he was carrying a

range finder. You know, you've played golf and when you're out in the middle of the fairway and you look through the range finder telling you how far it is to the yardstick, he was carrying that. So that's another indicator that he was not, you know, a complete novice with his firearms. And let me just correct you on one thing. You say I'm a renowned expert. I just know which end of the gun the bullet comes out of, okay? Larry, you're a certified instructor and you instruct some pretty important people. So to me, to me, you're renowned, but I appreciate your humility. Thank you. Thank you, my dear friend. Is it true that he was seen by members of the audience who were there to hear the president who made known their alarm at seeing a human being on a roof with some sort of a black device in his hands? I don't know if they even could determine that it was a rifle. He was seen multiple times over a 30-minute period. This highlights what was one of the probably the biggest breakdowns. And there's a company, it's called Fieldcraft. I know its owner,

a good guy named Mike Glover, former SF guy. We had some dealings on another project related to Benghazi more than 10 years ago. So I know Mike and he's solid. And one of the guys that works for him is just retired from a SWAT team and knows the Secret Service people who were involved with this. They gave him the real story about what happened. Number one, the Secret Service did not do advance work on those buildings that were out there. They should have. They didn't. Number two goes to your question. They did not have a single point of communications where a police officer that would have been out

there witnessing that could call back to the, what they call the tactical operations center and say, hey, we've got a, we've got a problem here. And to have a coordination, coordinated communications plan. They didn't have that. They didn't have any way of identifying friend or foe. And one of the ways police do that is they have what's called a color of the day. And we've seen this in Ukraine, in the war in Ukraine, both on the Russian side and Ukrainian side, where the security apparatus will have a color on, an identifying mark. That way, you know who's supposed to be there, and then anybody that's not wearing that color is not supposed to be there, and you take action against them. Did snipers see him and think he might have been one of them? That's speculation at this point. What we do know now, according to the buddy at Fieldcraft, there was a second counter sniper team that was located

on a roof of the building that was to Trump's left. Now, the picture that everybody has seen of the guys on the sloped roof with a tripod, they are to Trump's right. And I'm saying, I'm Donald Trump facing downrange. The sniper team, everybody's seen the picture of is up here to his right. These other guys are to the left. Let me just stop here a second. So this is from NBC News, which took this photograph and created this graphic. Right. The stage where Trump was shot, where we see to the left of that stage, the little sort of pinkish square box right at the head of the arrow. Is that where Trump himself was? Yeah, that's where Trump was.

And then you see those three buildings behind the gray one in the middle, the two white ones. There were two counter sniper teams on each of those white roof buildings, the one on the left, one on the right. It was the guys on the right that made the shot. The guys on the left, again, as I went back and looked at the video, you see the guy looks up, and then he comes down to a scope, and then he jerks, jerks the shot. I always thought, boy, maybe he got lucky. But you look to the guy next to him, he's also sort of scrambling. They thought that they were being shot at,

and that is what they've told to some of the – so they were actually ducking and covering. But it was the guys on the other side who did it. You know, the other thing that's that has come out that's so important about this is that Trump's normal Secret Service detail had been pulled off that job because they were tired and they needed a break. And so they brought in basically a new group of people who really hadn't worked with Trump before. They were not as experienced. And was that just, you know, an inconvenient decision or was that something darker?

But the reality is the Secret Service personnel who were there on the ground doing the work, they're not at fault because they, quote, didn't do their job. This was the fault lies at the administrative decision making level from the start where they should have done the proper advance work. Because what they did is they said, well, OK, those buildings out there will let the state or local police handle that, which is what they did is they said, well, okay, those buildings out there, we'll let the state or local police handle that, which is what they did. But again, they didn't put in place a plan for communication that if there was a problem out there, how it would be communicated back to the talk in a way that once there had been an identified suspicious activity like this, the biggest failure is that the Secret Service agent in charge there on the ground should have said, Donald Trump is not going on stage until we resolve this. Correct. Now, let me ask you some rather basic questions, only because the viewing audience might not know this. So we have a variety of level of law enforcement there. We have Secret Service. We have Pennsylvania State Police.

Within the Secret Service, there's a number of different levels. There's snipers and there's plainclothed. Right, right. And then we have local police. Who is in charge? It's got to be the Secret Service. No, the Secret Service. They should be in charge.

So the failure to communicate, the failure of some snipers to say, that guy looks like one of us, but I know he's not. That's the Secret Service's failure for failing to identify to the state police and local snipers who the snipers were and where they were located. Do I have that right? Right. Yes. Yeah. Because apparently there was no integrated, unified communication system so that the problems

that they were identifying out there on that perimeter were immediately conveyed to, let's call him the site commander, the Secret Service agent in charge of the overall operation, you know, it would have been his call to say, hey, stand down. The president's not going on stage. That didn't happen. That should have happened. And now we've had videos posted that show clearly they had at least 90 seconds warning that there was a problem. And one of only two possibilities, either the information did not get communicated, which was because there was no communication system in place to make it happen, or it got communicated and there was a decision-making failure. But this was a failure across the board, and it was not so much a failure of the personnel on the ground,

you know, the average Secret Service agent. It was a failure of leadership. It was a failure of the person who is in charge of that overall operation. But more importantly, it goes back to the failure in Washington, D.C. To not- Talk to me about, I want to zero in on your expertise, issues with a scope. I know from my own experience, which is a mere fraction of yours, that looking through a scope is like looking through a straw. Your field of vision is heightened, it's magnified, but it's radically

diminished from what you would see with your naked eye. Am I right? Yeah, no, you're correct. And that was the problem for the counter sniper team, that once you identify a target, then if you can take your eye off and you've got to come back, you've got to make sure that you do not move the scope at all, because just a minor movement will eliminate the target. But what we do know is the shooter was not using a scope. He was using, it has now been identified as an EOTech optic. I think I tried to email you guys a copy of that. He was using, it has now been identified as an EOTech optic. I think I tried to email you guys a copy of that. What it is, is it's not magnified. And it has a round in the glass.

You're looking through a glass. But in the middle of it, there'll be a round reticle, like a green circle or a red circle. And there are ways that that can be adjusted up and down, right or left. Is this a device that you attach to the weapon? Yeah, it's attached. It sits right on top of the rifle rail. There's a picture of it. So that's what the shooter would look through. And if you look carefully right in the middle of that, you can faintly see the circle

that's in the middle of that screen. So he would have painted, I'm using a term maybe improperly, he would have placed that red circle on Donald Trump's head. Yes. And then he would have squeezed the trigger. Correct. Correct. And so it's not magnified. So, you know, depending on the quality of his, you know, look, the kid wore glasses. So it's not like he wasn't like some eagle-eyed person with impeccable vision. So whenever you're trying to look at something 150 yards out, including through a glass without magnification,

sometimes it's difficult to see a target. I know just with shooting with iron sights, I can easily line up a shot at 10 yards. How many shots did he get off? I heard three or four. Some have said eight. I don't believe there were eight because just in terms of what was recorded, you didn't hear eight shots. And a number of the shots that we hear were fired by the Secret Service,

not by him. But, you know, he at least had three. It may have been a few more. But once that first shot went off, then his subsequent shots were killed. And they hit other people in the crowd, as we know. Right, right. We're going to put up the weapon. Now, this is not the very weapon used.

But it's like it. It's a model. This is the type of weapon. And this image is from the manufacturer. Am I right? Correct. Yeah. DPMS Panther Arms, which I understand is now owned by Palmetto State Armory.

So, you know, this is this is just the conventional what they call an AR platform. AR doesn't stand for automatic rifle. It's armor light. But this was the type of weapon that was developed in the 1960s by a guy named Eugene Stoner. And so it was used in Vietnam. That's where it really sort of came into prominence. It's that magazine that's attached. It holds 30 rounds, and it shoots a cartridge that's a 5.56. Do you have with you a cartridge? Yeah, so that's a 5.56. So you look at it, it's a little over 2 1⁄2 inches long.

The bullet size is, you know, you can see it's not, you know, not real big. Compare that. So that's the type of bullet, you know, the bullets this part, the shell casing is the other. So that's what the shooter used. Yeah, that's what the shooter used when whizzing by Donald Trump's head, hit his ear. This is the kind of round, this is a 308. The snipers would have used a 308 or a

300 Win Mag. Again, roughly the same size, but you can see the difference in size. The larger one is what the state police and the Secret Service snipers used to kill him. Without getting too graphic, how was he killed?

Where did they hit him? In his head? Yeah, they hit him in the head. So he died instantaneously and obviously stopped shooting at that point. Yeah, and when you listen to the recording, I mean, it's, you know, unlike a Hollywood gunfight that goes on for minutes, this was done within five seconds. So, I mean, from the time he started shooting to the time the counter sniper team responded,

it was, you know, five, six seconds max. If the sniper team had seen him on the roof with the weapon before he fired it, what should they have done? Called command and control or take him out? It depends on the rules of engagement. I mean, you decide ahead of time that, you know, if it was me, I would have said we were going to establish a perimeter. We're going to know who's friend, who's foe. We'll be able to easily identify them. If they don't have that on, the armband on, the right color. And so if you see somebody in that perimeter with a gun,

the first thing we're going to do is we're going to keep the president off the stage and secure, see if that individual can be secured. And otherwise, you know, shoot him. But, you know, they had some options where they didn't have to shoot him first. As long as they remove Trump from the scene, that's what they're there for, to protect Donald Trump. And, you know, look, the role, the job of a Secret Service agent is the worst job in the world. You're a bullet catcher.

That's what you're there for. Right. So you've got to admire the courage of those men who did rush the stage and the woman where, you know, they knew they failed. They had no knowledge of whether or not that shooting was going to continue. And so they could have easily been shot themselves. Well, they basically tackled him to get him down and then put their own bodies on him until they were told the shooter is down. Right.

And then they removed him from the scene. Do I have that correct? Correct. Yeah, they call it body bunkering. And there's been some criticism body bunkering, you know, so, uh, and there's been some criticism of them that, you know, cause under standard procedure is you keep the guy, you keep Donald Trump down. And if he wants to put his shoes on too bad, you can buy him.

He's rich enough. He can buy some new shoes, keep him down, keep him covered until you get him into a secure place. But, you know, Trump being Trump, man, popped up and, you know, to his credit, he wasn't, you know, some people might have been emotionally scarred and crying and frightened and hunkered down. He stood up and put his hand up and yelled, fight, fight, fight. And, you know, some have criticized the agents for, you know, that was a breaking protocol. If you were going through Secret Service training and your protectee was allowed to do that, you'd probably get a black mark and maybe not pass the qualification.

But, you know, this was real life and it is what it is. Is there any evidence of complicity on the part of anybody else with the shooter? Not yet. Personally, I don't think he acted alone. Why do you think he did not act alone, Larry? Being able to identify the site from where he would be able to carry out the shooting, that implies that there had to be some prior surveillance. The, if you will, the encouragement to do this, because the timing of this, Judge, this is the other thing we have to look at.

We've got a number of, we can call them coincidences. So coincidence number one, oh, they decide that Trump's regular Secret Service team shouldn't be on scene, so they're going to put in a completely new team. And the guy in charge has been described as relatively inexperienced, which it was demonstrated by how the scene was managed that day. So you put in somebody that is relatively inexperienced with a high probability, can make mistakes. And this takes place two days before the Republican National Convention.

If Trump had not turned his head, Trump would have been dead. And then the Republican National Convention would have been a food fight, to put it kindly, and maybe have put them in a situation where they couldn't even figure out who their nominee was going to be. So that timing and the utter failure on several levels in terms of the management of this issue, that this was not bad decision-making by the guys and gals on the ground. This was bad decision-making at those levels above,

which raises questions, why? Why then? Why now? Maybe it is coincidence. I'm just not a big believer in coincidence. Okay. It is odd. Now we have some what we call B-rolls. So this is video without sound. This is Trump visiting the company store. Not where the gun was bought, but the company outlet, the manufacturer's outlet of where the gun was manufactured. Yeah, Palmetto State Arms in South Carolina. Right, right.

It may have changed ownership between now and then. We don't because we believe that the shooter's father bought this weapon 10 or 11 years ago. Right. But here he is demonstrating his Second Amendment bona fides. This is, you know, a year ago. He's in a gun store, and it happens to be the company store of the company that manufactured the gun somewhere along the line, which was eventually used to harm him. I suppose this is just a historical footnote and a bizarre

coincidence. Yeah. Yeah. The rifle itself, I mean, a lot of other manufacturers have that type of rifle. It's now called an M4

platform. The older version is M16, AR-15. You've got Palmetto State makes its own variety of it, Daniel Defense, Sig Sauer, you know, you just go down the list. But the point is that it comes with a 30-round magazine. You can be chambered with what they call the NATO round, the 5.56, and that just means it carries a higher pressure, higher velocity downrange. But it's not a sniper rifle. It can shoot people at some distance,

but it's not the kind of rifle that the Delta Force or the SEAL Team 6 or the FBI Hostage Rescue Team or your average police SWAT team uses to shoot somebody who represents a threat at a distance. Did the shooter manifest any sense of professionalism? I wouldn't call it so much professionalism, but he thought, he did think it through. He thought through, well, I need to get a ladder to get up there. He thought about bringing the range finder to make sure he knew roughly the distance that he was shooting. And so he was not somebody who was completely unskilled without any experience. But by the same token, I don't think he was not even what you'd call a competitive shooter that had been active.

Because there are some teenagers. I know one girl here in Florida. She's the state champion in Florida shooting a.22 rifle, same skill. And boy, she can shoot. She's only 16, and she can shoot lights out. So the youth of the individual doesn't matter, but it's just the kind of experience. And it sounds like he didn't have extensive experience,

but he had enough to know what he was doing. What do you want to know from the Secret Service? If Jim Comer, who's the chair of the House Oversight Committee, which is investigating this, said, Larry Johnson, give us some questions for us to ask the Secret Service. What would your questions be, Larry? Why wasn't the advance work properly done? Who made that decision? Number two, why didn't they have an integrated communications plan in place?

Number three, why didn't they have identification procedures in place so that they would know friend from foe that day? And fourth, why didn't they have that rooftop covered? Because, you know, it wasn't like there were dozens of buildings around. This is pretty simple. And it now turns out that that SWAT team that we've seen in the iconic photographs, the ones to the right of Trump up on the sloped roof, apparently there was a tree that obscured part of their vision of where the shooter was. So that's why the team that was on the building to the left of Trump, they actually did have a clear vision, clear line of sight. But and the final question is, why wasn't Donald Trump pulled from the stage once these questions of once there were questions raised about who is this guy climbing up on this roof? Why? That's very simple. And we've already caught the Secret Service director cheating, lying, or displaying gross incompetence when she said, oh, the counter sniper team, they were on the roof. You can't have a steep roof. And yet they were on a steeper roof than what the shooter was on.

I mean, it's just, you know, it's ludicrous. Meaning what? They were afraid to do their job because they thought they were going to steeper roof than what the shooter was on. I mean, it's just, you know, it's ludicrous. Meaning what? They were afraid to do their job because they thought they were going to fall off the roof? No, they were saying that they couldn't see the sniper because he was on a steeper roof. I mean, it's just. Larry, these are great questions. These are profound questions.

And I know the audience appreciates them because I can see the size of the audience watching and their comments. As you learn more, listen, I'm 5,000 miles away from the U.S. right now, supposedly on vacation, but this is very important. As you learn more, please let us know, and we'll resume these segments so that the fans of the show who value your work and your knowledge can hear what you have learned. Great. Well, I will do so, Judge, but I want to make sure you get your daily dose of pasta while you're over there. I just got in from the sun. It's almost the sun down here now. Thank you, Larry. God bless you. All the best, my dear friend. All right, Judge. Thank you.

Sure. I do think that next week we're going to have Pepe Escobar here on what has been the reaction in Beijing and in Moscow to the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump. We'll let you know when that's going to come up. And of course, as you heard, as we get more information, more data from Larry, we'll put it up here for you. Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom. Thanks for watching!