Julian Dorey Podcast - #227 - ACTIVE Secret Service Agent on Trump Assassination Conspiracy | Mark Brandenberg

Episode Date: August 16, 2024

(***TIMESTAMPS in description below) ~ Mark Brandenburg is an ACTIVE Secret Service Presidential Protection Agent. For the past 23 years, Mark has protected Sitting-Presidents, Former Presidents & World Leaders. From 2009 - 2014, he was assigned to President Barack Obama’s White House Detail. BUY MARK’S BOOK: https://www.amazon.com/Fence-Jumper-Mark-J-Brandenburg/dp/1646638964  EPISODE LINKS - Julian Dorey PODCAST MERCH: https://juliandorey.myshopify.com/  - Support our Show on PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/JulianDorey   - BUY Guest’s Books & Films IN MY AMAZON STORE: https://amzn.to/3RPu952   - Evy Poumpouras New “Agent X” Podcast: https://youtu.be/hBSSxTlXzTE?si=mbd7bRxGNJ2CesmA  - Tommy G Trump Attempt Investigation: https://youtu.be/WtCR3wqj4kY?si=p-VN2Y0OlV6HbfL5  MARK LINKS - INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/mbrandenburg34/?hl=en  FOLLOW JULIAN DOREY INSTAGRAM (Podcast): https://www.instagram.com/juliandoreypodcast/  INSTAGRAM (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/julianddorey/  X: https://twitter.com/julianddorey JULIAN YT CHANNELS - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Clips YT: https://www.youtube.com/@juliandoreyclips   - SUBSCRIBE to Julian Dorey Daily YT: https://www.youtube.com/@JulianDoreyDaily    - SUBSCRIBE to Best of JDP: https://www.youtube.com/@bestofJDP   Get $150 Off The Eight Sleep Pod Pro Mattress / Mattress Cover (USING CODE: “JULIANDOREY”): https://eight-sleep.ioym.net/trendifier ****TIMESTAMPS**** 0:00 - Intro 1:28 - Mark’s Background; Where he was when Trump attempt happened 10:11 - Sepp ‘01, Chicago Secret Service, Obama 16:40 - How Presidential Candidates qualify for Secret Service Protection 20:51 - Trump Assassination Attempt Coverage Begins 22:11 - AOC vs Kim Cheatle on Failed Trump Assassination Attempt (REACTION) 27:24 - Mark’s 1st Breakdown; Determining the perimeter; Conspiracy vs Complacency 41:40 - Police Bodycam at site; PD Responsibilities vs Secret Service, Crooks’ Rangefinder 55:38 - The Ginger Guy Fieri Witness; “Credible” analysts; Cheatle’s lack of transparency 1:06:21 - The Conspiracy Angle; JFK vs Trump 1:15:18 - Secret Service Chain of Command during Rally (Cheatle’s involvement); “Culture” 1:23:50 - DEI hiring at Secret Service; Female Agents’ Reaction Trump Assassination Attempt 1:30:36 - 2nd Shooter Scenario & taking Trump off stage 1:36:01 - Secret Service Director’s “Slope of the Roof” Disaster; Sniper’s Permission to Fire 1:44:52 - How the Trump investigation works (FBI vs Secret Service) 1:52:30 - Senator Ron Johnson’s Investigation (REACTION): Radios, “Man in Black,” etc. 2:08:41 - “Code words” & ID immediately post attempt; Tommy G Doc; Eli Crane Sniper Theory 2:16:16 - The internal Secret Service Conversations right now; Politics in Secret Service 2:22:12 - Mark protected Trump week after assassination 2:25:12 - Fear of more assassination attempts in 2024 election 2:30:02 - Why were Trump extra security requests denied? 2:33:47 - Secret Service & Private Security Combo for Trump? 2:37:44 - Mark’s... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

And also what happens is when you come up and have that testimony she had, the problem with that is then the conspiracy people, because you're leaving all this, you're leaving a vacuum of information and people. Oh, she didn't help with that. No. Yeah. And you've got to come out and you've got to tell people, you've got to be straight up with them. as logically as I possibly can, is that when you see the number of breakdowns that happen, it is impossible to not wonder how there is not some turd in the punch bowl there in the communications to let this happen. Because let me elaborate on this.

It is easy for me to see a situation where one person, and it could have been one person, and I'm not even saying they were with the Secret Service, woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day. And in the middle of the 12-person chain of command suddenly thought, yeah, this wouldn't be the worst thing ever. And just maybe didn't report the next thing down. I'm not even saying it was like this grand plan or something like that. Understand why people at home can watch the videos we're watching. See the breakdowns at a million different levels. See the arrogance with which Kim Cheadle answered quite—failed to answer questions, I should say.

And sit home and wonder, like, yeah, they tried to kill this guy. Mark Brandenburg, thanks so much for being here, sir. Julian, thanks for having me. I know we've been trying to do this for months. Uh-huh. Like six months, I think it is. I'm glad we waited. I'm glad, yeah.

I'm sure you are. But the, no, I'm glad to finally be here and see you guys in person. Big fan of the show. Thank you. And so, yeah, I'm, you know, and watching the show, I know kind of what the subject matter we're talking about. You know, I was just going to come here and tell you about my career and tell you about my book, Fence Jumper. We'll do that, too. Which we'll do. Don't worry.

Which we'll do. But obviously, we didn't plan on the events that were going to take place between the time that we were discussing this and what's happened now. Yeah, what the fuck happened? Can we just start there? Well, that's kind of the question of the hour and of the last month, really. And so I'm going to just start off. I mean, for people who don't know who I am, which is pretty much everybody. Please, yes.

Mark Brandenburg, I'm a United States Secret Service agent, currently am still an active Secret Service agent. I have been for 23 years. So just to kind of give you a background, born in Nashville, but raised in Texas, played football, Mansfield High School in Texas to meet girls. You either got to play country music or you got to play football. And I can't sing, so I played football, Mansfield High School in Texas to meet girls. You either got to play country music or you got to play football. And I can't sing, so I played football. Worked out well.

And played college up in Benedictine College. I've heard of that. Harrison Bucker? Yes. Do a commencement speech? Yeah. That was my college. That's why I've heard of it.

Yeah, that's why you've heard of it. It's not a very big college. So if they need a commencement speaker next year, I'm available. I've already put it out there. Oh, you got tough shoes to follow up there. That was a nice controversy. My commencement speech will be a little more whimsical, I can promise you that. I just have to watch my language. You don't have to do that here, by the way. No, yes. Thank God. And let me talk to the Secret Service Media Department.

Thank you for letting them be here, but it can be R-rated. We're going to be all right. I think they're used to my appearances a little bit now. And so, to that point, I'm here on my own time. I came here on my own accord. This is not

affiliated with the U.S. Secret Service. I do not speak for the United States Secret Service. Any inquiries about the incident on July 13th or anything else, you'll have to go through our CMR department, our media relations people. And you were not there. And I was not there. No, I was actually – so on July 13th, I was in the Charlotte airport flying back. I took my family to the Caribbean for a vacation, and we had a long layover in Charlotte. My phone starts blowing up.

It's my sister was the first one because they're seeing the live footage of what happened with Trump. And so I go over to this bar area, and it's packed because it's middle of July. Everybody's traveling, and I start packed because it's middle of July. Everybody's traveling. And I start seeing the footage at the bar. So, and not really, you know, for me, not really knowing, you know, I was almost in disbelief because when you see him react, I was like maybe somebody snuck in some sort of weird pellet gun or something. Because what are the odds of a round hitting in the ear um when he goes down and of course and the thing is i know uh some of the people that were that stormed that stage um and i'll discuss i'm not gonna get to that yeah and so i'll let them know you know so so it's you know i'm watching this at this bar uh

and of course everybody's around is mesmerized by it. So I ordered a double jack, I think. And also I'm concerned about my guys, and I saw them get out and stuff. But I really was at the time. Also, I can't hear the audio, so I don't hear the gunshots. Oh, right, because it's muted airport bar. And so you're just trying to figure out what's happening. Oh, right, because it's muted airport. The action was great and stuff. I was impressed by that. Going onto the stage. Yeah, the shift that was around there I thought gave a varsity-level reaction to it. And we'll go into it further, but that's hard to do.

So I was proud of them for that. But then once I started realizing just the extent of it, and I knew we had a major security breakdown, and anybody watching that, it became more obvious. Because I think everybody at first was kind of like in shock because we hadn't seen anything like that uh not in our lifetime i mean most people's lifetime i mean you have to go back to reagan really to think of anything quite of that nature um taking place right so anyway uh going back to um i don't speak for the secret

service but i do have you know talk about my 23 years, just kind of rewind a little bit. Yeah, yeah. Actually, that's really good. If we can get your background with them and where you stand right now, and then everyone hang in there. I'm going to bring it back to the Trump assassination so we can go step by step. That would be really good. Yeah, I had that at the forefront of my mind. But yeah, so after college, I became a police officer with the Olathe, Kansas Police Department, which is a large suburb of Kansas City.

I was there for five years. Really, I call it my – I call it kind of like my graduate school because I was kind of – I got done with school. I wanted to go into law enforcement with the idea of eventually going federal level. But when it was, you know, I was from a small town, went to a small college, being a street, a patrol officer, you know, kind of wakes you up going on domestic calls. You know, you go into situations when you're 22, 23 years old, you're dealing with domestic violence or something, and the people are your parents' age. And you got to figure out what the fuck to do, how to solve this. Strange, strange feeling. It's very strange, especially when you grow up in Texas. It's yes, ma'am, yes, sir. Very polite

and respectful of people older than yourself. And I had great, I was very lucky landing there because I had great field training officers. It's a great department, and it still is a great department. And so I was really fortunate for five years to do that. From there, I finally get – so we did a – how I got in the Secret Service was I was on the – briefly on the SWAT team right before I left. We did a search warrant for the U.S. Secret Service. So people who don't know, we don't just protect people. They also do financial crimes. Yes. You know, they started off investigating counterfeiting, but also now they do all

kinds of different financial crimes. I also want to shout out our mutual friend, Evie Pompouris, who made this possible today, because she's a good friend of yours. Yes. And she was in here for episode 201 and described all that stuff. It's really interesting the extent you guys do beyond just, you know just guys in the suit doing the protecting. Yeah, it's not just nice suits and sunglasses. Yeah, I saw that episode, and she was great,

and she's been a huge supporter of me and my endeavors. Yeah, she is great. You're going to be on it. She is the new Agent X podcast. You're going to be on that, I believe, like this week or something. It should be coming up. From what I understand, it should be coming up in a few weeks, two weeks, three weeks, something like that. I'm really excited about it. I'm going to be on it as well. It's going to be on that, I believe, like this week or something. It should be coming up. From what I understand, it should be coming up in a few weeks, two weeks, three weeks, something like that.

I'm really excited about it. I'm going to be on it as well. It's going to be you and me. Yes. And you know, she's so smart. She's such a good communicator, and she asks such good questions. Yes. Her first episode was great.

So anybody who watches this podcast, please watch Agent X with Evie Pampouris. It's really, really good. Yeah. Her bar is so high looking at all the guests she's having on, and then she had me onis. It's really really good. Yeah, the pod like her bar so high looking all the guests She's having on then she had me on I'm like, ooh. Yeah Deep step down Yeah, yeah, I felt the same way so yeah, it's like yeah God knows who else he's gonna have on there to make us look even Smaller. Yeah, but the you were talking about your PD five years five years

So I got hired went to Chicago field office I spent seven years there. Secret service. With the secret service. And that was doing investigations. Of course, you always get pulled for protection, like post-standing, things like that. Now, this was – when I got hired by the secret service, and this is interesting, is you go to training for six months. You go to Georgia, FLETC, which is the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

And then you go to outside the D.C. in Beltsville. When you're in Georgia, are you training with just Secret Service trainees or other – So all kinds of agencies go to FLETC. It's down in Glencoe, Georgia. It's kind of like a police academy. So for a guy who was a cop for five years, it was a little bit of a review because you're kind of going over normal law enforcement procedure and things like that. But the interesting part was the second day, which was a Tuesday, was 9-11. So as you can imagine, at the time, we're all brand new. And somebody comes into the classroom and is like – flew a an airplane into the world trade center and of course we're thinking oh like a cessna or something small we didn't think anything up it

really you know we were like no that's really fucked up and then somebody comes in a little bit later and says they're the world trade center and we all stormed out of the um classroom and they had these you know tvs mounted on the. And you can imagine like us, everything from different agencies were looking up at there and watching what's going on and everybody knew the gravity of what happened. Everybody on their mind had Osama bin Laden right away. Right. Hey guys, if you're listening on Spotify right now

and you're not following me, please take a second and hit that follow button and also leave a five-star review. Both things really help my show and I appreciate all of you who take the time to do it. Furthermore, if you're not following me on Instagram, you can get me at Julian Dory podcast or on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description to this episode. Thank you. And you know, one of the, it just so happened that one of the students in my class was a former NYPD. So you can imagine how broken up he was because, you know, he's thinking his former colleagues are in this, that could be victims of this horrible attack. And so they didn't have classes for several days, but we trained our asses off because you can imagine at this point, I'm 27 years old.

A lot of the other people are the same, you know, mid to late 20s, early 30s. And we were fired up. Oh, yeah. And everybody can remember, anybody who was there can remember how, you know, pissed off the whole country was. And we were ready to take the fight to them. And for us, you know, we weren't military or anything like that, but we were just ready to go.

And we're all brand new. So I can remember it vividly. And what's interesting is even though many of those people aren't on the job anymore, we're still friends because we still have that kind of connection from that really intense moments. So anyway, started at the Chicago field office there seven years, and then I go to the Presidential Protection Division. Do you mind if I back up on the Chicago thing thing for a second yes i can understand so when you first of all the secret service has

all kinds of field offices across the country chicago i would imagine is a big one it's a big city it is but like as you said you guys do a bunch of different things so when you're in the chicago field office and you're not on, say, presidential details, are you still being outsourced to do any kind of protection during those seven years, or are you just doing more like the financial investigations and stuff? You're doing mostly investigations. Now, because every field office is a little – and you're right. We have field offices all over the country. We even have overseas field offices that were not very big. But like if you're in New York field office, you're doing a lot of protection because so many people,

foreign dignitaries and all kinds of folks come to New York and Washington, D.C. You got the UN there and everything. Exactly. So there's all kinds of protection. In Chicago at that time, we did mostly investigations,

but you would get pulled to say post stand. Like I remember as a young agent, this was still, Bush was still in office. So I remember going down to Crawford. They would put us on an airplane. We fly down to Texas and stand post. And so we did a lot of that where we would travel, meaning standing post is just basically, if you have a security plan, they request a certain amount of post standards, you know, to man up different positions at that

site for the president, vice president, whomever. And so we got called to do that a lot. And so, you know, Chicago, we were tapped all the time doing that. So I got to do a lot of post-dating. But we didn't do a lot of advance work because in New York or Washington or Miami, those offices that have lots of visits, L.A., those agents are getting a lot more advance work, meaning they're doing the planning, whether it's a motorcade sites leads. So we didn't do a ton of that in Chicago. So, yeah, you're getting tapped for that. And it takes, you know, the protection takes precedent over investigations.

Obviously, if you're doing investigations on a credit card fraud, but you're like, hey, the president's going to Denver. We need you there to post. Right away, baby. Yeah. You tell the U.S. attorney, it's like, hey, I'll be right back. I promise. He's like, you know, fuck you.

I'm going to go to the FBI. They never leave me. But the – so you get a lot of that. But then, you know, while I was still in Chicago, there was a little-known state legislator that got into the Senate named Barack Obama. So we started doing more advanced work, let's say, after that because he started – when he was running for office, I was there when he first came onto the scene. And of course, I think his first appearance was at the DNC. Yeah, 2004. And he blew everybody away because he's's super intelligent good looking guy uh speaks really well um and he

was just like you could see the political talent like right away yeah someone said there was like a famous call one of the famous commentators was like i think we just saw the next president united states yeah yeah i mean anybody that follows politics could see the talent right away. And it didn't matter what side of the aisle you're on. So anyway, we're in Chicago. So we're like, now this guy, they picked him up really early. I mean, he's the first viable African-American candidate for presidency. And it doesn't seem as big, it is a big deal now, but it's even bigger than because it was just unheard of. I think up until then, it was probably Jesse Jackson was the only one to ever really ran to had any notoriety.

Yeah, I think you're right. So anyway, we picked up the Obamas early in that election cycle, when he was running initially, which I guess would have been 2007. Yeah, let me see. Because it was for 2008, so are you picking him up in the fall of 2007? Yeah, it would have been... So it was before...

He's running for election. He'd only been a senator, I think, a couple of years or something like that. So he was officially running. He and Hillary, maybe some other people are in the race. Yeah, I can't... I'm trying to think of the timing of it.

But it was basically the election year just like it is this year. So it would have been 2000 – let me see. Yeah, it was around 2008, right? 2007 probably. Now, actually, this is a good spot to ask about some of the procedures here and how this works because this has become relevant actually before Trump had the assassination attempt. We'll talk about some of the requests that were made there at some point. But Robert F. Kennedy has been a well-known viable candidate who's not going to win, but is a guy who has been running very much on the

national stage publicly since the beginning-ish of 2023. He really blew up in summer 2023 when he was on a lot of huge podcasts he was polling at one point in the fall last year at i believe 22 percent in one or two polls so like viable candidate and he's also the son of a guy who had his head blown off in public and the nephew of a guy who had his head blown off in public so you think like maybe we'd want to protect this guy. Yet he asked for all this Secret Service protection over and over and over again, and was denied over and over and over again, and wasn't given it until after Donald Trump had the assassination attempt on him a year after he was requesting it. So when you have in this case, a young senator back in 2007, before

Barack Obama was Barack Obama. How does that process go down for someone like that to request getting protection and actually get it beyond just like the president literally has to sign it? Like I'd imagine there's a lot of things that happen below that first. Yeah. And this is a question that gets asked quite a bit because, and I'll be honest with you, you know, I'm not in on these conversations obviously, but it feels like to me, sometimes it's more art than science when it comes to how they figure this out, because what they're looking at is, from my understanding, and once again, I'm not involved in this stuff, but it's not just, it's not just the Secret Service making those determinations, by the way.

It's not like the Secret Service goes, oh, yay, nay. It's, there's congressional folks involved. There's other agencies. And obviously the president of the United States is going to sign an executive order, which is what happened, I think, with RFK most recently. So I think with Obama back in the day, he with this, with getting this much notoriety and traction that early on played a role in it for obvious reasons, because the history of our country and, and, and, you know, you know, racism and some of the things that, you know, the big scourge that's, that's kind of followed us through our history. I think they were being very careful about it. Now with RFK, my guess would be if you were to ask somebody why he wasn't getting it earlier, it's because he wasn't maybe getting those crowds or things like that. Now, this is a complete conjecture on my part. I don't know what the,

it's also polling. It's like, how well are they doing? I mean, if you're a viable candidate, you know, if you're doing really well and you're really up there in the top of the of the food chain of the candidates that are running you're going to have a much better much higher likelihood obviously i think your point on barack on barack obama is well taken because of how big of a movement he was very quickly and also his background and all that. I agree. But he's a major case. Someone like Robert F. Kennedy, though, again, summer 2023, that dude was recognized everywhere. He was going everywhere. He was a major, major figure online.

So, again, and I don't know that you have the answer for it. I don't expect you to. But it's like, how do you not have that? And also, it would be very – they would not – unless it was in a very extreme circumstance, we would not pick somebody up that early. I mean, you're talking about the conventions where they get officially nominated aren't until the summer of 2024. Right. So Obama was picked up earlier, and I don't remember the exact timing when it happened. I just remember at the time it seemed early.

But at the time, he was literally the only, by then, was the only candidate on the Democratic side. Okay, that's good to know. So Hillary's out. There wasn't a huge pool of people. And Hillary already had protection because she's a former First Lady. Correct, yeah. So I don't remember the timing or exactly where he was in the poll, but he was clearly doing

very, very well. If they weren't at that time, if he wasn't ahead of her significantly, it was head to head. Okay. Guys, I want to be transparent about an editorial decision I made with this episode. What's going to happen next is I'm going to be skipping an hour ahead into the actual conversation that Mark and I had as we were sitting down for well over three and a half hours. The reason I'm doing this is because we ended up spending the next hour on Mark's whole career in the Secret Service. It was a great, fun, and lively conversation, but we weren't really talking about the Trump assassination attempt on July 13th. And so I

want to be respectful of your time as you guys click this video to hear his perspective on that. So we are going to get to that full two hour and 20 minute portion of the conversation, and I'm going to release the one hour that i'm taking out as a separate episode this weekend it will be available early on patreon for my patrons that link is in the description below before we get to the rest of this conversation that's going to cover mark's analysis of july 13th i do want to play a very small segment from what is now going to be the second episode that was smack dab in the middle of it that mark said addressing july 13th and then we're going to get right into it. So here's that clip to start.

What happened, and we'll get to it, I know, on July 13th is in fucking excusable, and there's one agency to be blamed, and that's the U.S. Secret Service. It's not the Butler Police Department. It's not anybody else. It's our responsibility solely. Now that we got that statement there on the record, let's get to the full conversation about Trump. Here we go. Let's get to the lead we buried here, which is why we're talking. Obviously, what just happened and everyone's still

litigating this publicly. It's been litigated a lot harder, even privately, I'm sure. But Alessi, I sent you a video on text actually of AOC during the hearing with Kim Cheadle. Can you just pull up that vid on – it was a tweet. I just want to make sure we have that because this is a good place to start because what – and pause it real quick because it's already starting. We've got to turn the volume on. But basically AOC asked the question that we were all wondering about, which has to do with the perimeter and how this was done. Because obviously the shot came from between 400 and 450 feet away, which doesn't sound like a lot to a lot of other people. But I want to go through the process there.

But let's play this real quick so we have it. Go ahead. You established earlier that the building upon which the shooter operated from was outside of that established perimeter, correct, for the Butler, Pennsylvania event? It was outside of our secure perimeter, yes. Now, that building was, I believe, 500. How far away was that building from the president? It was approximately 200 yards 200 yards now the individual uh used an ar-15 in order to uh act out his assassination attempt. AR-15 has a range of about 400 to 600 yards. My question is why does the Secret Service perimeter, why is the Secret Service protective perimeter shorter than one of the most popular semi-automatic weapons in the United States? There are a number of weapons out there with a number

of ranges. Again, an advance was completed. The determination of the perimeter, I'm not going to speak to specifics, but there are a number of factors that are taken into account when we determine our perimeter. Some of it has to do with terrain. Some of it has to do with buildings. Some of it has to do with assets and resources that are available. And so what I'm hearing is that a perimeter was not established outdoors in an outdoor venue that would prevent an AR-15, which is one of the most common weapons used in mass shootings, from being able to be within the range of Secret Service protection. A perimeter was established, and even though there were buildings that were outside of that perimeter, it wasn't just that building. There were a number of buildings in the area, and there was overwatch that was created to help mitigate some of those buildings.

Okay, that's good right there. So I talked to my friend i talked to a lot of people yeah after this and from different walks of life around that had to do with protection and stuff but one of my guys remi adeleke who was a navy seal for 12 years human guy worked in the middle east left and right he's like dude we used to have – like where he had to do security, we used to have events for – or be in charge of protection of things that are far from a president. It could be even some smaller dignitary over there and he said sometimes the perimeter would get up to 2,000 feet. So when you see the edge of that building, some of the information there I think was a little off. The edge of that building I believe was around 350 feet let's be conservative and say it was 400 right so feet not yards so you're

thinking like 150 yards yeah i think it was yeah in 150 170 something like that in that ballpark so my question is why is there not a standard perimeter for any outdoor venue that the Secret Service has? And what do you think – without going into what went wrong, we can litigate that in a minute. But what do you think the process there was to determine where they put the actual perimeter? Okay, and so I'm just – once again before, I'm going to preface this one more time. I'm not speaking for the U.S. Secret Service. I'm here in my own time, and the only information I have is what's been stated publicly. I'm not involved in this in the sense of anything regarding the investigation or what the official – and there is an investigation going on by the FBI. All I can do is the information that we have publicly, I can give you my take on it from 23

years, like we talked about up to this point of doing this. So this is just my opinion. Some of this will be my conjecture. And I'm going to try to stay away from things that are more specific. Now, I will say, and I've watched, obviously, I've watched all the hearings. I've been following this extremely closely, publicly, like everybody else. I just come at it from a different point of view just because of my experience on the job. And the other thing that's sensitive to me is like I know some of the people involved in this, some of the people that were on that shift I know very well. And let me just say before I get – I'm not going to answer you, but the people who support Trump, the leadership on President Trump's detail, I know well. I've known some of these guys for decades. There are some – I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, but I say they're some of the best Secret Service agents I've ever worked with in my fucking life.

And their experience – I've talked about my experience and, you know, it was ru-ha, my chest. I was like, great. These guys are better, and they're amazing and very, very smart, lots of experience. And we saw those guys immediately react once that shot was fired. These are husbands and wives and fathers and mothers, and they jumped on there in a heartbeat, putting themselves between that weapon and trying to save the protectee, even if it meant their lives were going to be at high, high risk. Because those – their vests aren't stopping that motherfucker. They're taking more rounds. So they put themselves out there, and I thought how they reacted was amazing.

Trump's detail is very well manned and very well run by some of the best agents I know. Now, talking about this, going back to your question, what I've seen is it looks like there's – these outdoor rallies are hard. Like I said earlier, you have obviously the high ground issues. You have these open spaces, high-speed ingress routes where it's like if somebody had a truck or something with bomb and just hauled ass. I mean you have all these issues to mitigate. That said, like in this – so in this situation – and I think that – I saw the assistant director row when he was testifying. If I'm recalling it correctly, he felt that that building should have been within the secure perimeter.

Yes, I believe that's correct. And he's – I believe he's – and he's been out there, and he's obviously very experienced, and he's making that determination. I agree. Now, the question becomes, okay, how far out is the perimeter on – and she's right to an extent that depending on the site, there will be different perimeters. Discover the exciting action of BetMGM Casino. Check out a wide variety of table games with a live dealer or enjoy over 3,000 games to choose from like Cash Eruption, UFC Gold Blitz.

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You can be a mailman to see that's a fucking huge problem that needs to be mitigated. And it clearly wasn't. And that's why this is an unquestionable failure, and we need to, as an agency, collectively fix this problem and improve and ensure this doesn't happen again, especially because the pace is very heavy. Now, in the situation there – yeah, is that – Yeah, unless he has a map up over here. So this is where – we'll just take a look at this real quick. The question also becomes, and here's what I found interesting when they were talking to, on Capitol Hill, when a lot of legislators were talking, were kind of interrogating our people, frankly. They were talking about how far you push it out, as if we have an infinite amount of resources. And that can be a problem, too.

So there will be times, like if there was a, I don't know, once again, I don't know what the plan was here. I don't know specifically what the, but I've done sites like this where, like the assistant director said, that should have been part of, like, if you had put that site out and included that, then nobody coming into that area, it could come in there unless you were magged. And obviously there's a different dynamic for that. So the crowd is obviously magged and screened. So it looks like So the crowd is obviously magged and screened. So it looks like what they did is they had that area screened, but obviously outside of there was not. So if you were at that building – and now the question becomes, and I don't know the answer to this, is who had access to that area near that building, for instance? Obviously, they had some un-magged people in that area, it looks like.

I don't know the – once again, I don't know the site dynamics or what the setup was, but obviously that became a, it appears obviously that that's clearly a failure. Now, then the question is how far do you push it out? Have you had a set standard? Have you said every time, I don't know, just off the top of my head, let's say every time you have an outdoor rally, you have to secure a kilometer radius. That's a lot. Yeah. And you're talking about that's so – it's really not doable.

I think if we can look at this map again real quick, I think what's really getting people in though is that it seems like the difference between 400 feet and 600 feet is not infinite resources. And when you have a high ground building with a perfect fucking shot. No, no, I agree with you. You know what I mean? No, I'm not disagreeing with you at all. I totally agree with you. This is inexcusable, and you can't excuse the inexcusable by definition. I don't, once again, I don't know what the entire site – now, the investigators now will have – obviously, everybody's being interviewed by the FBI that was involved in this.

And the investigators will come to their conclusions, and I don't know what the setup was. It's clearly – and I agree with you. The fact that that situation or that line of sight issue wasn't mitigated, you just can't come up with – and I'm not throwing anybody under the bus that that situation or that line of sight issue wasn't mitigated, you just can't come up with... And I'm not throwing anybody under the bus on that. I know the people... And to those conspiracy people and shit like that,

I know the people doing this. It's not a conspiracy. Unfortunately, it was a catastrophic mistake that God rest his soul, Corey Comparatore lost his life, and he was my age, had a family, and served his community, and two other men were gravely injured. And we almost lost, you know, President Trump. So there's no excusing this failure, and there's only one agency that's to blame, and that's the U.S. Secret Service. I think you gave an amazing visual earlier in this conversation that is perfectly relevant here to say, because again, we saw the people on camera who jumped on

him, but there's a lot of other people involved with this situation. And what you said earlier is that 11 guys can be on a football field and 10 guys can do their job perfectly. And if the 11th guy misses a block, we're fucked. And that's, to be fair to the Secret Service, when I look at the people who did jump on him, that appears to be more the case here. No. And nobody is – and look, we're not asking for sympathy, but I know the people at the Pittsburgh field office who were heading up the advance. There's nobody. I know some of the people there. There's nobody.

And I haven't talked to any of these folks, so this is not firsthand. But I put myself in their shoes really easily. As far as if I was in charge, something like this happened, I would be mortified, heartbroken, sick to my stomach. And I would never be able to. And so they're human beings, and I don't know where the ball was dropped here. I don't know what occurred or the old plan, but there's no question that this is not representative of what the Secret Service typically does,

and I don't know where the mistake was. And I hope it's my desire that as terrible as this incident was, that something good comes from it, meaning that we improve, that the FBI, their investigation, and whatever internal investigations we have, we figure out what the fuck is going on and how this could happen. In protection, the biggest, and I'm not saying it was complacency, but the biggest enemy is complacency.

And I told this when I was a shift leader on vice president. This is really about life, but also about basically in protection, if you become complacent, which is easy to do because you go, I used to tell my guys before we started the shift, I go, our job is to wait for lightning to strike. It's like we're, every day we're fucking coming in here. We're getting

our asses kicked. We're away from our families. We're tired, but we're waiting for lightning to strike. And we have to be prepared for that. That's why we get paid well. That's what the American public expects from us. And that's what our protectees deserve. So be ready. And I'm not saying it was complacency here. I don't know how this happened, but that's the biggest enemy. And maybe, hopefully, and I'm being optimistic about this, is if there is complacency or if people are getting complacent, if they're tired, that something like this shakes this fucking place really hard and we get our shit together. And nobody's to blame in the agency. The whole agency is to blame.

I'm to blame. Every fucking agent, every uniformed division officer, we're a family, and we're all in this together. And the only way we're going to fix it is everybody individually takes it upon themselves to train harder, stay in shape, and stay focused and avoid complacency, and then try to figure out how we can do this better. And if that means going outside the box, it means passing for somebody like me who's been doing it a long time, passing along my knowledge to younger agents. Whatever it fucking takes, you know, Armando is worthy of trust and confidence well guess what no one's confidence in our confidence no one's confident in us right now and because we are we came out messaging why

so shitty on this no one trusts us so we gotta win that back and to do that and we gotta do that for the american people who pay our salaries and expect us to do that the reason why it's a big story is because people they're like like, you're the Secret Service. How the fuck did you let this happen? And I don't have the answer for that. But anyway, that's just my little tirade. No, no. And I appreciate that.

And also, this job is like a vocation. It's more than a job. It's like because so much of your life is taken up by it. And so much sacrifice is done to do this and i'm not like tooting my horn or saying that you know but i just know you know i've had a wife for 23 years who's dealt with this stuff and she understands it but it's not just an another job and so we have to look at it that way and make sure we fix this problem because uh you know this is completely unacceptable anyway, going back to your question,

there's not really a set circumstance where we say, okay, this is exactly every time we're doing it this way. Here's what the book says. We're going this far out or that far out. In this situation, let's just say they had somebody on that rooftop or they had it mitigated in some way or they had a way to prevent people from getting up there. I don't know the whole dynamic of the site, but you would obviously in a much better situation. But like the acting director said, you really need to focus on and bring that into the bubble to take it completely out of play, where you keep people from coming in there. The problem I think you have sometimes is, and this is not not an excuse is you do have a finite amount of resources like sometimes i see the senators and some of the people grilling our folks i'm like they're like well can't you do this can't you do that i understand that but

they had the whole secret service inside the building which was like kind of a punchline joke because it's like yeah you literally put the fucking service in the building yeah you couldn't put someone on top yeah i mean alessi do you have that video of i texted to you of this shooter while trump was talking this because this is another one what i really want to get to is is how the comms are set up with outside organizations because to me that's where it looks like things went wrong here yeah i agree there was a video i sent yeah let's pull that up on the screen so screen. So this is a few minutes before while Trump is talking. You can see on the, like, look at this.

Look at this angle. It's fucking terrible. Play it right there. The fucking guy is crawling across the roof. You'll see him like flipping over. Go back to the beginning of the video, Lassie. And that looks like. All the way at the beginning. All the way at the beginning all the way at the beginning watch watch him moving yeah

like he's he's rolling around like a squirrel and he's right i mean it's you want to talk about perfect high ground it's right there so and look how close it looks too i mean that looks and they're making it look closer let's be fair oh is that right yes because because this is this is a shot right behind trump so it looks like it's more in the foreground yeah yeah he's not but like the size of him shows it's still close yeah it's really fucking because the size of him is like legit yeah i've seen that video so when when you see things like this there was also another video i think i if you can type on twitter lse i don't think i sent you this one type in pd trump roof or police body cam trump yeah type that in police body cam trump once you see this one because this really is the latest one yes yeah i think i have seen yeah it's on twitter type it in

but yeah yeah so go to i didn't send you this one so that's that's my fault but if you type in police body cam trump there's like 45 seconds where one of the police officers came around where the roof was below it go down a little bit right there i'm just looking at your screen where yeah yeah that one right there let's put that on the screen so what he's saying is that we were trying to tell the secret Service that someone was up there. Play this real quick. Oh, is this six minutes? I've seen this one.

I don't know which one you're talking about. Play it real fast. Go ahead. I don't think there's audio. Fuck. All right, get out of it. There should be a 45-second one. This is my bad.

I should have said this. No worries. Go down. Go down. Right there. No, no. Go down. Where the fuck is the... Go down. Go down. Right there. No, no. Go down. Where the fuck is the...

Go down. Go down. That one. That one. 29. I mean, I shot a lady's pretty shot in the stairs

with my son. Oh, wait. This is the officer who tried to climb up and see him. This isn't even the one. Hold on. I haven't seen

this oh shit yeah whoa okay so that was all right get out of that one so that was when the guy tried yeah they boosted them up one of the officers and he saw the uh the gunman up there they boosted him up, one of the officers, and he saw the gunman up there. He boosted him up to see it. And the gunman turned towards him and he got down. Tight, tight bent. Which I don't, I mean, the officer. Oh, I don't blame him on that. No, he's like sitting there trying to hoist himself up there. Yeah, there's, fuck, there's a, let's pause, we're going to pause real fast.

We're going to find this fucking video. Hold on. All right, we're back. That was entirely my fault. I forgot to send that to Alessi before, so we got it now. Sorry about that, everybody. But this is the video I was talking about, Mark.

I'm going to play this real quick with volume. Come in. You down? I don't know. 50-36, good. 50-36, 50-30. Start towards the farm, sugar. I fucking told them they need to post, I told him that Tuesday. I told him to post guys over here.

What? No, we're inside. Alpha 1, Alpha 1. Thank you. There's the water tower. I told them to post f***ing guys over here. I wasn't even concerned about it because I thought someone was on the roof. I thought that's how we... They counted out if we lose a guy walking back here.

They were inside. They were inside. In the building. Because it's... You need to go somewhere. Why were we? Because I thought we were going to post guys over here. I talked to the Secret Service guys. They're like, yeah, no problem.

We're going to post guys over here. All right, cut it there. So, Mark, how do they even determine? Because this does need to be said about Trump. You're talking about a guy who does more big public appearances than anyone in the history of this country so i i recognize it's hard the fucking guy even when he wasn't running for office did a rally every week right yeah yeah but how do they make the determination on i guess he said tuesday in that case before this happens on saturday that like okay i think it's beaver county pd you guys are in charge of this, and we, the Secret Service, are in charge of that.

How is that made each time? Yeah, and this also illustrates another thing. I'll explain that, but it shows a little bit, too, when we were talking about communication. The fact that they don't know or there's uncertainty also indicates that besides the radio comms, there may have been communication issues as far as making clear where the responsibilities are so typically the secret service agents typically on a site like this right you're going to have agents typically posted in places where the decisions are made right meaning okay and like maybe where the press comes in or where the or where the public gets magnet you know it gets smagged and comes in and gets screened

uh those type of things uh depending on the dynamics of the site because you're not going to put a local police officer who doesn't do that on a day-to-day basis uh in that position because that's not their job right so what they'll use and typically obviously the closer you get to the protectee the the you know obviously the the the closest perimeter the closest group is that shift that we talked about earlier, the people right around the protectee. As you go out, as you get further out, then you're starting to use either agents or local police officers out that – the further away you get from that inside. Think of it like an onion, the whole onion thing, like different layers. As you get further out, you'll use or utilize the local police typically. So when I first saw this actually, even before any of this stuff came out, the first thing I thought was looking at the site was that they would have assigned probably a local PD to that roof.

And I say that only from the standpoint – like I said, not deterring – not pointing blame at anybody or anything like that. But typically, you wouldn't use an agent in that situation in a typical site like that because your one job is stay on the roof or wherever the line of sight issue is, have somebody posted there so nobody comes up there. Because we don't want...

Obviously, this is the worst case scenario. A guy gets up there with a weapon. But it could be just somebody going up there, a very ambitious journalist going up there to take a picture. But you don't have to give a shit about somebody taking a picture. But we don't want to – like you saw that video you played earlier of a guy just fucking walking around on the roof. You don't want to shoot a photographer. Yes. You don't want to misidentify somebody thinking they're an assailant or anything like that.

So you need it posted and really it doesn't matter if it's an agent or an or an officer you see but like the guy that who who was saying hey i told the service to post this um he's right it should have been posted or somehow taken out of play like when like i said when the acting director said that that should have been inside the perimeter where he didn't allow anybody in there. What was the good of putting people inside? I can't explain it. I can't – I don't – once again, I don't know what the site was. Obviously, this is an abject failure.

I don't – so I can't really – once again, I can't explain why it was done the way it was. Now, I do think – and you hit on this a little bit, is obviously there are comms problems. That's made clear in a lot of the reports. And I know that during the hearings, they were talking about, when they talk about comms, they're talking about mostly radio communication, right? But also the other concern is,

is you wonder what, you know, that video there, the first thing I thought of is like this guy saying how I told the service to put this up there or whatever. And once again, this is a conjecture, but you wonder, are we communicating to the locals well enough so they know exactly what the responsibility? Meaning, did we say, were we acting under the belief that the locals were going to post that and they were acting under the belief that we were going to post it and then nobody fucking posted it?

I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. But it felt like when I hear that, that's obviously a communication thing. Of course. And you have to, when you're doing a site and things like that, make sure everybody knows what their role is. Like going back to the football analogy, if you're going to be a pull blocker or if we're running to the right, you better not pull to the left. It's like everybody's got to be on the same sheet of music. And in our job, you know, you cannot, you know, you can't have a bad day. And this is a very, very bad day.

It was very clear from this. And I don't know the answers to, and I hope that once again, going back, I hope that we improve from this and get better at this. And I hope if something good comes of it, because this has been so terrible, but I don't know why the ball was dropped there. I honestly cannot. And I kind of got the sense from acting director Rowe when he testified, he had the same kind of feeling. Like the way he talked about what was up there and saw it firsthand. Is it possible, you know, ultimately we can't point the finger at the local police but we can't do our job without the local yes yeah i i appreciate how you've been

very up front this entire episode i've reiterated several several times that the buck stops with you guys because you're the ones in charge yes the agency of planning this yeah i do think i need to be fair as well though again this should have never been allowed to happen but i think we do have to point some some blame on the pd here the more i look at this as well because alessi there's another video i sent you i think the caption says something like it was it was from cheetle's testimony she says something about 18 minutes and she confirmed. This was one of the things that she confirmed, which was good. But the police had reports 18 minutes before.

I want to play it. They had reports 18 minutes before that the shooter, the person who ended up, Thomas Crooks, was on the roof. Do we have it? There's a bunch here. Let me just pull up one. Yeah, it should say something about like, nope, nope. That's the Rep. Fallon one, not the Mace one. Go to Young Americans, that one. Hit that one. Yeah, that one. That's what I want. Play it. At 5.45 p.m., approximately 18 minutes before President Trump took the stage,

the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit noticed the shooter on the roof and photographed him. Is that a fact or not? That is the information that I have from the FBI's report, yes. You haven't been willing to share whether or when this was communicated to the Secret Service, so I'd like to get into the difference between suspicious activity and threatening activity. Is it suspicious or threatening if an individual is seen around the perimeter with a rangefinder? Is that just suspicious? That could be termed as suspicious. If that same individual with the rangefinder is found on a rooftop, is that still just suspicious or is that considered threatening? That could be termed still as suspicious.

My time is over. Okay, let's – yeah. Yeah. Do you agree with that? Well, this has been interesting. That's a no. The suspicious – when it comes to suspicious, here's the thing. And I don't know – every site, you're going to have suspicious people pretty much.

And a lot of times what happens is you'll have somebody that that kind of pings us and somebody brought to our attention um and you'll have like a protective intelligence like usually it's a local police officer teamed up with an agent playing close they'll go talk to the person you know and a lot of times it's just a weirdo um it's nothing obviously this turned out to be something um so having a suspicious person you know i've heard i've seen some pundits and some people talk about why they allow them on stage if there's this guy out there. Well, you let them on stage because they have somebody suspicious, but that's not going to be – just because a guy's acting – now, the rangefinder shit is fucked up. That's what I was going to say.

The rangefinder, I've never heard of that in my fucking life. I mean I've never been in a site where I've heard somebody with a rangefinder looking at the stage. Never. Uh, now you may, like I said, most of the time when you have a suspicious person,

it's because they're acting in an odd way or they're doing something. Yes. Um, sometimes those people even turn out to be what we call lookouts, which would maybe somebody on record with us. Many times they're harmless, but they like, there'll be some weirdo that keeps showing up at sites you know i mean they have some obsession or something like that

with the protectee and they haven't shown but they obviously that interest is you know get your antennas up and so we may know about that that happens sometimes this situation and the unfortunate part is they never located this this guy uh crooks uh before he was able to get on that roof with that weapon um and meaning law enforcement meaning law enforcement or yeah somebody because i know they were looked but from what reports were they were looking for this kid like he was acting strange somebody had taken a picture of him he had a range finder why that wasn't you know if if ideally what would have happened is like they have contacted him, held him a moment, and then maybe a Secret Service, like a protective intelligence person or somebody could talk to them. Cheadle just said in that testimony, she's saying they actually had him on the roof at that point, 18 minutes.

What you're talking about is in the buildup to that where he's around. Yeah, like he's around the building and they say suspicious. If you have somebody suspicious, there's nothing wrong with going up and talking to somebody. You're not violating anybody's rights. And a lot of times you'd be surprised if you ask them, hey, what's in the bag? Can I take a look? And they'll give you area – I mean, I'm just going by – Correct. Yeah, I'm going by the – from what we know. So he's outside of that, and that's where going back to if that had been pushed out and included that building, this would be a different situation is what it sounds like. Once again, this is all my opinion and my conjecture just based off what I know from this information. But, yeah, and so there there was communication was the biggest problem. But also with that situation, I don't know what was communicated back to, like I said, going off the testimony I heard on Capitol Hill, there were several people that were pinging, I want to say

five or something like that. There was other suspicious people that were communicated to the service. And he was one of those five. And on top of that, it was a really hot day, and there were several medical issues in the crowd. Not saying that that makes this okay, but there's a lot going on. And I feel like, and this is conjecture, I feel like somehow the kid got lost in the mix, this guy on the outside here. I don't know how. Once again, I can't explain how all this happened and that's why i feel like communication became a big issue and why it was i think it's been talked about here is how is that information being um how are

we sharing information how is the local pd getting that information to us how are we getting information to them those type of things and like i I said, even with the guy who was like, I told the Secret Service to post this. Leading up to that, if he truly thought that was the case and he thought that was covered and we thought it was covered and it wasn't covered, that's a huge – obviously, that's the biggest hole in the whole thing. I don't know – once again, this is conjecture. I don't know how it happened. But it's definitely something that needs to be. And, you know, down the road, I guarantee you, this incident is going to be used during every training. That's right.

Throughout for the rest of the year. We still train or we still look at scenarios that happened in the past during our history. Sure. And learn from them, whether it's the Reagan, maybe go back to Squeaky Fromm back in the 70s, or even going back to JFK. Squeaky Fromm? There was a gal, she was like, back in the 70s, they got a couple shots off at Gerald Ford. It was like, I don't know the backdrop of it, but there was a couple, Gerald Ford, a

couple times in the 70s, the 70s are crazy anyway. She just plopped off some rounds, I think, from a handgun, but didn't really get close, but it was still a fucked up situation. And she did it from a distance. I don't remember the whole background, but there was situations like that. And this incident's going to be used, you know, every class that comes in, every new agent's going to, they're going to use this. It's going to be, obviously, it's going to be heavily investigated. There's lots of video to see how this happened and learn from it. But yeah, I don't have the answers to, you know, there really is no good answers to all of this.

But it's clear and everybody knows it's clear and it's obvious when you see it that that roof has to be taken out of play. And for the life of me, I don't know why it wasn't. Alessi, can you pull up that Ginger guy fieri video this the the the initial witness we saw this guy looks like he literally looks like guy fieri with ginger hair but this was a bbc interview i want to watch this this was the very first thing to come out like right after this happened this dude was like having a fucking tailgate right behind where the building was so he wasn't in the rally he was definitely like a couple deep when he was doing this it was a little bit funny in some ways but what wasn't funny is like this dude saw this happening up close and then watched the guy almost get his head blown off and then someone died in

the crowd and whatever but i want to play this video because some of the things he says are very interesting from a communication standpoint in talking to a number of people as they've been coming out of this horrific event a lot of people very emotional a lot of people very upset as you can imagine a lot of people very very frightened greg was uh someone who was here you weren't inside the event nope but you were just outside tell us what you saw so so we had a party here all day you can see behind us at the brinkles farm and greenhouse here we had a party um and we all decided hey you know when we hear trump up there we're going to walk up through the field stand by the trees up there under the shade and watch and listen to the rally, right? We couldn't see him, but we could hear him. So we walked up, and probably five to seven minutes of Trump speaking,

I'm estimating here, I have no idea, you know, but we noticed a guy crawling, you know, bear crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away from us. So we're standing there, you know, we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof of the building beside us 50 50 feet away from us so we're standing there you know we're pointing we're pointing at the guy crawling up the roof and he had a gun right he had a rifle we could clearly see him with a rifle absolutely um we're pointing at him the police are down there running around on the ground we're like hey man there's a guy on the roof with a rifle and the police were like huh what you know like like they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, hey, right here on the roof.

We can see him from right here. We see him. You know, he's crawling. And next thing you know, I'm like, I'm thinking to myself, I'm like, why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage? I'm standing there pointing at him for, you know, two, three minutes. Secret Service is looking at us from the top of the barn. I'm pointing at that roof, just standing there like this.

And next thing you know, five shots ring out. So you're certain that the shots came from that guy on the roof? A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And he was up there for a couple of minutes. He was up there. You saw him up there for a couple of minutes. Absolutely. At least three to four minutes. And you were telling the police and the Secret Service?

We were telling the police. We were pointing at them for the Secret Service who were looking at us from the top of the barn. Still got a beer in his hand. They were looking at us all the time when we were standing by that tree. Could they see? Binoculars. Could they see? Probably not.

Because the roof, the way the slope went. BBC News, but I'm not going to stop drinking my beer. Why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here? I mean, this is not a big place. Did you see, I mean, obviously everyone, when the shooting started, everyone was very panicked. Did you see what happened to him at all? Oh, yeah, they blew his head off. Okay, sorry.

Secret Service blew his head off. Okay, just be careful because we don't know quite who's watching. You're pretty sure they shot the guy? Absolutely, 100%. Okay. Yep. You saw that happen yep yep okay yep and did you see them go up to him afterwards or they yeah they crawled up on the roof they had their guns pointed out and make sure he was dead he was dead and that was it it was over that's incredibly shocking the guy was on the roof right there you can see the white roof right there. You can't talk about the gun. No, other than he was in muted colors, tan-type clothing.

We saw the rifle flinging around as he was trying to crawl. I mean, we saw the rifle, 100%. I mean, do you know about guns? Do you know what kind of weapon it was? Oh, I absolutely know about guns, for sure. I mean, it was a rifle of some sort. I wouldn't know. I wasn't close enough to read the label on it. No no i mean it's a rifle of some sort i wouldn't know you know i wasn't close enough to read the label on it but it was it was a rifle of some sort

yeah absolutely so what what do you how do you process what you've just seen i i don't know what to say man i'll tell you is you know if i if i walked up close to there with anything that can secret servers considered a a problem i wouldn't be standing here talking to you right now okay pause i don't know why a guy who we're standing there pointing yeah so what's interesting to me is that they tell the pd the pd drops some ball here because there seems to be a lack of communication there. But like, if the PD knew, and I have no reason to believe they didn't know,

that the fucking, and the guy even admitted it in the body cam footage, that the fucking Secret Service is literally right inside those windows. How hard is it to knock on the window and be like, you know? And that's one of the questions I had is how typically you have like a, we call it a security room, but basically a command center where you have all the entities should be together. And

they talked about this, Assistant Director or Acting Director Rowe talked about this during his hearing is about, you know, you know, how we do communications. Typically you'll have representatives, you know, you know, the local police fire our people.

And so what should happen is like, Hey, we got a guy on the roof with a weapon and that's communicated there. And then our guy can relay that information immediately to the shift who obviously needs to know. And obviously didn't know if the shift had known. I mean, I, once again, I'm not there. I wasn't there, but i just know there's no fuck if they know a guy has a gun on the roof they're not letting him on the stage they're not even they're not even i mean there's just no fucking way and if he's on the stage and they hear that

definitively we have a subject on the roof three you know two o'clock or whatever the case is they're taking him off the stage immediately. So it's clear to me, at least, and once again, I wasn't there. I can't say there's 100% certainty. I'm conjecturing based on what information I have and how it would operate. And knowing the quality people that were working that, there's just no way. And so that's why I immediately felt like communication was the biggest hurdle, the biggest problem. And one of the things that really we have to address going forward is, I mean, even from now on, we have to put more emphasis on that, obviously. I don't know how it broke down here, but it's obviously something that's going to be emphasized.

And during the hearings, you saw a lot of even the legislators were talking extensively about the calm situation. Yes. Now, some of them, and you see this a lot even on other channels and stuff. You know, watching this, there are some people who go on these programs and know what the fuck they're talking about. And there's some people who have no fucking idea what they're talking about. And they're being outlandish. You can usually tell by their inflection. Like, they're trying to score points. They have that sound in their voice like they're trying outlandish. You can usually tell by their inflection. They're trying to score points.

They have that sound in their voice like they're trying to score points. Whereas if somebody is more sober and serious and talking about it, they're usually more credible in my view. And those tend to be the people that seem like they know what they're talking about. But the comm situation, they're talking about having the same radios for all entities. Well, you're talking about 170 officers, including Secret Service and all kinds of different jurisdictions. That's where it can be hard because you're not going to have everybody

on the same channel. It's not possible. It's just not possible to get everybody on the exact same channel in a temporary site. Now, once again, I'm not a technical guy. This is not my fucking line here. I just don't think there's a realistic way

of doing that. In fact, but the way we've done in the past has been effective. It's somehow just broke down here is what it looks like to me. I think that the conversation, people would still be up in arms. Like if there were an assassination attempt on, on the leading candidate for one of the parties, like it's going to happen. But if that building were 850 feet away, I think there would be a different tone of this conversation. one of the parties like it's going to happen but if that building were 850 feet away i think

there would be a different tone yeah this conversation and it was a sniper rifle instead of an an ar-15 yeah i do think it would be a different conversation no i think so too and you know and obviously and like i said earlier you know we're putting all the uh it's we're the ones that by law who have to protect these guys and gals, all the protectees. But yeah, I don't think that I'm not, I think that the local police, obviously they have some things we need to hear their side of things.

They, we need to find out what our side of things. So we figure out where, where the breakdown was because, you know, it would make sense to me. They had that. Our guys thought that was covered,

but I don't buy that by their PD. And if not, maybe I'm wrong. I have no idea. Um, sense to me they had that our guys thought that was covered but i don't buy that by their pd and if not maybe i'm wrong i have no idea um but i just can't imagine like you said if if that thing is a par three that's like i'm fucking hitting a nine iron yeah i'm taking pitch and yeah yeah well i'm older than you so i i need i need more clog but but the but the – so you – how it wasn't mitigated or how that wasn't covered, I just don't have an answer for. And I think that's what everybody's waiting for. And I think – and once again, and that's why – I'm not going to spike the football on former director Cheadle. She's served the country for 27 years.

I don't know her. Look, it wasn't great when she came out because what happens is... It was one of the worst testimonies I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, and I'm not going to disagree with that. And the problem also is we are... We're a law enforcement agency. We're a federal law enforcement agency, and

we answer to the people just like a police department does. If there is a police department that has like a... Somebody says, hey, he abused my rights, or they use excessive force or something, they got to answer to that in some way. They got to either show they did nothing wrong or they, but you can't just fucking hide and you can't pretend like it didn't happen. You got to come out. And that's why I thought the acting director, Roe, did a good job of coming out. And he basically said what should have been said from the get-go. This is on us. This is not on them.

We need to fix it. His quote was he was ashamed. And I think all of us felt that feeling of just disgust because, like I said, this is not pointing the finger at one agent or two agents. This is the whole service. All of us have to collectively own this. Myself included and going from here forward, take it upon ourselves to be better. And a lot of times that's just the individual making yourself a better agent, better prepared. And once again, get away from complacency and see what the problem was and really strongly address that issue.

And there's still – there's going to be questions and you're going to have, and also what happens is when you come up and have the testimony she had, the problem with that is then the conspiracy people, because you're leaving all this, you're leaving a vacuum of information and people are... Oh, she didn't help with that. No. And you've got to come out and you've got to tell people, you got to be straight up with them. And so, you know... It is, i have to say mark i i'm someone who gets yelled at a lot in comment sections for being the devil's advocate against a lot of conspiracies yeah they do exist yeah i think the internet runs way too rampant with how widespread they think

they are yeah and i push back on that where i don't see good evidence i'm going to push back every time what i will say about this one and and let me be very clear on how i explain this as logically as i possibly can is that when you see the number of breakdowns that happen yeah and when you hear some of the things that unfortunately i am not at liberty to discuss on camera that i have discussed with people who are close to the situation. It is impossible to not wonder how there is not some fucking turd in the punch bowl there in the communications to let this happen. Cause let me elaborate on this. I'm going to juxtapose two situations here. I'm going to juxtapose Kennedy against the Trump thing. Kennedy, there were a lot of people involved with that. They made sure they blew that guy's fucking head off six ways to Sunday. Okay?

So I'll just leave that one there. You can go look at the evidence. It's very clear what happened there. Read Devil's Chessboard by David Talbot. Anyway, when you look at this one, they missed. Right? it didn't go down successfully and there were a significant number of people on the scene who did their job and made sure that nothing else happened to him rather than kennedy was left there like a fucking open punch bowl for for a good like 20 seconds so it is easy for me to see

a situation where one person and it could have been one person and i'm not even saying they were with the secret service woke up on the wrong side of the bed that day and in the middle of the fucking 12 person chain of command suddenly thought yeah this wouldn't be the worst thing ever and just maybe didn't report the next thing down i'm not even saying it was like this grand plan or something yeah but do you understand why people at home can watch the videos we're watching see the breakdowns at a million different levels see the arrogance with which kim cheetle answered quite failed to answer questions i should say and sit home and wonder like yeah they tried to kill this guy no i don't look people are entitled there's obviously nowadays there's a lot of information i don't't think this is a case – I know how this stuff works, and I think people are open to their opinions.

And obviously there's a lot of video. There's a lot of information out there. And I agree. When the response is so poor, it does lend itself. It opens things up that people make their own interpretation of what happened. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by nature it's just but i usually think it's just human um human beings are you know the broken tip you know they make mistakes yeah the crooked timber of humanity we we're fuck-ups right and myself included and people screw up and they make

mistakes i think that's more likely the case where people are fallible and fucked up here now if people have theories and believe that there was something more to it, like I said, people are entitled to their beliefs. I guess it's different, you know, when you know the people and you've worked with these people for a long time, like, even when it comes to, like, people

have conspiracies about government and stuff like that, if you live in Washington long enough, you realize more things happen by fucking accident or just stupidity than or incompetence than it does by some nefarious cabal. I think compared to the internet, you're right on that. I agree with you. I think that everyone makes every fucking thing what you posited is more plausible. It's more plausible in these type of situations, I think, to have a small group or one or two people because the bigger the ring, the more likely somebody is going to speak out or cover their own back or whatever.

The information will come out from somebody who's involved in the conspiracy, right? So I think something is more likely, a smaller, the smaller the group, the more likely it is to keep it in-house, if you will, and not let it leak out. I don't think, in this case, I don't think that's what happened. It's, you know, there's no excuse of what, how it happened. There's no excuse for, from the Secret Service's side that can make it okay. Obviously, everybody wishes they could go back there with hindsight and get the comms right, mitigate that situation. Like everybody

else, I think that's why, and fairly, we're getting completely waylaid in the press, and we're getting crushed by everybody, and we deserve it because it's just so blatantly obvious that that shouldn't have happened. And that's why I think initially what should have happened is just come out and just own it. Like, and you don't have to give people, people aren't expecting us to say, hey,

we have the answers right now, but they're expecting us to at least go, you know, if my kid fucks up, I expect him to admit it that he fucked up and he's gonna fix it. Well, just cause you're an adult and you're in charge of something, well, you've been taught that since you were in kindergarten. Own it and fix it. And it's awful what happened. But we have to come out of this a better agency. This has got to be a situation where now everybody's eyes are on it. And the reason why people are upset is because they did hold us to a standard. And they thought we were maintaining that standard, even with some of the mistakes we've had over the years.

And when you think about it, every year, you know, there's literally, there'll be 10,000 sites done every year, right? We're talking about small, low-level, president, vice president, former presidents, all those people, there's 10,000 sites a year. That almost seems low. Yeah, it probably is low. I mean, I'm sure like right now, there's probably, if somebody in headquarters is probably listening to this going, that's fucking way more than that, Brandon. It's 15, you asshole! You stupid fucking, these fucking operational guys.

You're not a good plant! Come on! Yeah, you're not a good plant. God damn, we sent you there, you're not fucking doing it right. You're supposed to send us the memory then eat the paper now the um so uh so you do thousands of sites a year we've been protecting people since 1901 one mistake is one too many we all know that in that time this is gonna be way up there obviously you got the jfk got reagan you got incidents with ford and now you got and you got incidents with Ford and now you got the Trump situation here. And so, but once again, you're only, people don't give a shit if you do it right and it's successful and you got by there.

Because what people are concerned with now is, is this normal? Is this what the Secret Service is doing all the time? Or they've just been lucky at this point? And that's fair for the public to ask that. And it's fair for pundits to ask that. The answer I think is an emphatic no. This is not representative of what we do, but the fact is this happened, and we have to – like I said, I know I'm a broken record.

We have to get better and improve and ensure that we maintain the public's confidence and our protectees' confidence. And that's been – one nice thing has been is I know the trump family has come out and supported verbally at least supported the secret service they've been very good and i know we have a good relationship with their with that family and they could have been like you know they could have gone they didn't have to do that they could they could i i think probably i'm guessing but i don't know i'm guessing privately they're probably upset about the communication part of it but it's very clear that they're grateful for the people who jumped on it like once look the mistake i think you said this to me on on on the phone when we were talking right after this happened but

you're like once a bullet flies it's already a failure you already know once you get on that roof with a weapon we failed and i said this before in previous podcasts it's just like the reagan thing it's like yeah reagan survived but the minute that hinkley pulled that weapon out failure we we lost that's an l regardless of whether he gets hit regardless because the best protection is prevention and that's what we expect to do and that's why the public is going is asking us collectively what the fuck's going on guys because they know that too and especially something as glaring as this and there's no excuses to be made but uh yeah it's what you've already failed once you do that because it really is the advanced work and the

planning and all that that's where that's where it's won and lost once again the football analogy you gotta have a game plan that's right and you gotta execute the game plan um but once it got there what i'm saying is that the trump family saw what they did jumping on them and got them out of there and they're grateful for that and i i think that's great and you've been clear on that and i appreciate you being clear on that because you don't want to throw people under the bus especially who responded to the situation yeah correctly as well but like there's there's certain things in the chain of commands with situations like this that this classified that you can't get into. But just on a broad level, when someone looks at a director of an agency, right?

Like when I look at the director of CIA, I always wonder, you know, all the fucking missions going on in the world at one time. He's one person. She's one person. How do you get read in on that so now let's on all of them right yeah like now let's go to the director of the secret service obviously she doesn't go to every event that happens there's a million events happening every day yeah but she's also got a job to run an entire agency that as you laid out earlier includes

investigations all different other kinds of things so she's one person she's going to be reported to on a lot of important things but she's not necessarily like the way i understand it if donald trump is doing a fucking rally in butler pa on a saturday afternoon she's not sitting at the command center on a desk on a bluetooth you know saying like all right falcon says says yes to that of course that doesn't work so in some respects there's only so much control she can have once the situation's underway but are there people and again if you can't answer this no problem but like are there people who are specifically designated at a highly senior level to always be the person in the command center like like the nfl has the dudes in new New York to review the plays.

They're always there for that. Is there someone like that in any type of public type of event that a person, a high-level protectee is at? No. Not the way you described it. It's not because, once again, like I said, every visit, every site's different. And every division, so it's compartmental. You have the Presidential Protective Division, the Vice President Protective Division, the Donald Trump Protective Division, all these different divisions that are running the protection in that particular division. So, yeah, you can't micromanage it from the top. And you're absolutely right. It's incumbent upon each individual division to run itself to a degree while getting help, assets and requests and different things from headquarters.

And once again, especially if we get more intelligence that there is a bigger threat against somebody or other different things happen, addressing that as it goes. But I think to me, and this is just my personal opinion, is I think the main thing you have to have is culture. A winning football team has a great culture, like the Patriots during their heyday when they were rolling over everybody. And that's the thing I think we need to work on. What's our attitude? Let's get back to basics. Let's get back to what we are here for um you feel like the culture had fallen off the i don't i don't know what the here's the thing we've we've had there's no question without law enforcement wide there's we need there's need more police officers we need and we need more secret service agents we fall under that too and we have a different because of the demands of the job it's harder to retain people here

it's just a fact it's always been that way attrition is always an issue because it's just a fucking demanding job and that's this is i'm not breaking any news here um but when i say culture i don't think the culture i mean you've seen the whistleblowers and stuff like that i'm not a whistle by the way i'm not one of the fucking whistleblowers let's make that fucking clear but you've seen the whistleblowers and people talk about uh um shit look at that you're fucking cheating you're in you see the people talking about some of the issues they see within the service i don't i personally don't think it's like what some of them say but that's how you fix things it's like let's focus on what matters. Let's focus on protection.

Let's focus on creating and training the best agents we can have. And let's refocus our attention on that and make sure that – and do what we can. Because I think as far as like getting more agents and more – getting our workforce bolstered but with numbers what that does is also relieve alleviates the pressure on the agents because the less age you know the job has to get done whether you do with 100 people or 500 people it's getting none right but just those if you only have 100 people guess what they're going to get their asses kicked yeah so you've got to relieve some of that pressure i think and also going back to complacency that's how you avoid complacency is you have you allow people to have a life outside of it with family and the things that matter.

So when they come back to work, they're focused, ready to go, in shape. They have some time to decompress a little bit. Yeah, one of the – a friend of mine, Jim DiIorio, who's been on the show a bunch, he was West Point Special forces for like a decade and then he was almost 25 years fbi and got very high level at fbi by the end and when he left he left shortly after comey had left right and one of the things he talks about is also culture and how when comey got there this was a guy from the outside. He wasn't a guy who had come up through the ranks. Like Jim always talks about Louis Freeh, who from the lawyer side of it came up through the ranks of the FBI and everything and how much people respected him for that and how

good the culture was. And he said he felt like when Comey got there. Jim Comey, in my opinion, was a narcissistic and is a narcissistic egotist. You know, that's what he is. People are going to think what they're going to think. But they don't need to hear it from that boob. That's as simple as I can say it. That big, lanky, you know, dope. Did anyone at the FBI like him? No.

He started out, first couple of months, he started out and we were like, maybe. He was calling agents on their cell phone, thanking them for casework. That was good. Then it just fell apart. And it's because he tried to put a stamp on it. That's what I think. The narcissistic behavior just bothered me. His own universe.

I mean, there was shit in the book. I'm not going to go page by page, but there was shit in the book i'm not gonna go page by page but there was stuff in his book that it was just false material so you know substantively and materialistically wrong you know he he almost wasn't in a good position for success because he didn't he had come from you know Justice Department and stuff. He came from outside the agency. How important do you think it is to get someone who's really like, kind of, you know, maybe someone like you who's been in the agency for years and years and years and understands, worked at the lowest levels all the way up to the highest levels? What's interesting is every director, and we used to call them chiefs, I think, before the 1950s,

but every Secret Service director has, except for one, General Alice, who was appointed by John Kelly, he was the only one that wasn't an agent. So throughout the history of the Secret Service, they do come up. Like Acting Director Rowe, he's been in the service, I think, 25 years or something.

He's done it all, and he's done that stuff. And there is truth to that. I think it important um i think director alice did a great job but and he and he was really he was a great leader because he came from the marine corps and and he was a great leader as well but i think that's important because it does lend credibility to it because they've been they've stood post they've done all the shit work that the rest of us you know the unglamorous stuff this you know stuff, not the cool stuff, but the stuff that people don't see. But I don't know – and I can't put a finger on it. But when I say culture, what I'm saying is we need to – you have to establish something.

Maybe get your swagger back, and we get back on track because, I mean, this is indicative. This doesn't happen. If we were operating exactly the way we should be, this kind of shit shouldn't happen. So it did happen. So I don't know how to address it. To be honest with you, that's why I would be a terrible director. Well, to be clear, I'm asking this question because now there's so much anger at the Secret Service. There's only an acting director right now, and there's going to be a change here. And what I'm wondering is if, because everyone in the government from both sides of the aisle is pissed

off they're gonna get someone not that the culture doesn't need improvement right now obviously it does but they're gonna get someone you know bring in some military guy or something and maybe actually not solve the problem because it's more of a it feels more of like hey what you guys all fucked up so now we're in charge you know what i mean yeah yeah i don't know yeah that's way above my pay grade but i don't know where it goes um yeah i honestly don't know exactly where it goes i just uh you know it's like sometimes i'm gonna try to avoid saying anything specific but but sometimes – Oh, really? Well, we'll see. I'll just put it this way.

Sometimes they're putting policies in, let's say, about hiring initiatives and shit like that. And look, I'm all for a diverse workforce, but I'm mostly for not having president shot. So I don't give a fuck who we hire. I don't give a shit if you're a woman. I don't give a shit if you're a guy, black, white, Asian. I don't give a shit what your sexual preference is. If you can do the job, you can meet the standard, come aboard, USAjobs.gov, if you want to join. But there's been times where we put emphasis on hiring stuff.

And I'm sorry. And like I said, some of the best agents I've ever worked with are female agents. They're fantastic. We have a mutual friend who was a great one. Yes. Yes, we do. Evie was one of the best that's ever done it. And I know – and she is typical of a lot of the women on the job.

The problem is most – we're a law enforcement enforcement agency, most applicants are going to be guys. You know what I mean? So there's been – at one time, they were like, we want to hire a certain amount of – these are immutable characteristics. I don't agree with – I'm going to get fucking crushed on this one. But I don't agree with emphasizing immutable characteristics. I want to know you. Are you solid? i agree are you disciplined are you smart are you motivated are you in shape okay let's fucking go then come aboard and join the team when you start saying immutable characteristics oh we gotta hit this number for this or hit this number for that that's fine if

you hit the number but when you make it a stated goal i just find that to be counterproductive yeah because that's like saying okay uh i want our nursing department to be 30 men stupid it's stupid the vast majority of applicants are women so what are you going to do are you going to choose a guy over uh because over a better qualified it's now once again this is going to get me in a bunch of hot water no it's not most most people understand but uh but the uh you know it's just something that and that's why i talk about culture let's emphasize what's important let's let's go back let's emphasize being uh the best protective agency on the planet and and by doing that the only way you can do that's by putting together a great team and looking for the best fucking people yeah i don't want to put you in a

bad spot on something so i'm going to editorialize myself on something else you do not have to say anything to this but you've emphasized a lot of the bravery of the people who jumped on trump and as far as the pig pile part of it goes it looks like they did a pretty good job on that i have a question on the back end of that we'll get to but you know there were a couple agents there who happen to be women who i'm just gonna say it looked like a fucking reno 911 episode and obviously it's a scary situation i fully understand that i'm not in that situation i felt bad for them being in that situation because it looked to me like maybe they were a part of those hires trying to hit a percentage point rather than hitting who's best for this job. Because the bottom line is you guys do an incredibly – you signed your life away to do an incredibly brave thing, which is I'm going to take a bullet for these people.

That's not something I've signed up to do. So all the respect in the world to you. But when you actually get into the lightning strike situation, you're supposed to be up to do. So all the respect in the world to you. But like when you actually get into the lightning strike situation, you're supposed to be prepared to do that. And it felt like it's not that, it's not like, oh, they didn't want to do that. That's not what I'm saying.

But like there were some reaction times that weren't quite there. There was some body language that was not quite ready. And there was a little bit of like a mess and it seemed to come from the end of like what Kim Cheadle talked about that you're referring to when she came in. Like, oh, I want to make 30 percent of the workforce women. Hire the best person. And that's what every single pipe hitter I talked to after this event from all different parts of the military and some agency guys like they're like hire the best people you know and i think it actually i think it gives one of the first things i thought about is i think it gives people like evy yeah uh it completely incorrectly a wrong

name because now you're judging just a or b yeah you know man or woman oh you were a woman agent so you must have not been able to do the job she was fucking amazing at the job yeah you know so it's not represented and like i said and she's typical of the brave women agents on the job and it's a fucking very tough job i'll tell you what the best advances i've ever i see all the time are by female agents they're fucking on top of shit um and yeah they're absolutely vital to the success of the service. When I talk about that stuff is I just – I don't like emphasizing immutable characteristics. I mean I'm just not a fan of that. And yeah, so I'm not going to comment on the reactions of some of the agents that were there and things like that. I've seen people's reactions to it and comments to it.

Once again, I wasn't there I think one of the things that's hard also about the Secret Service is unlike when I you know I one of the reasons I like when we hire people that came from the military or from like a prior law enforcement I was a police officer it's because you've been I like the idea of having people coming here who have been tested yes in some level the problem with the seat not a problem but just a reality of the Secret Service is we train hard for this stuff, but it's not like this shit's – thank God it's not happening every day. If we're doing our job right, it doesn't happen. That's right.

And so when we get tested or something like that, it might be the first time some people react to a situation like that. That's right. And I think there's no question our people reacted. I mean, think about this. That's never happened before, meaning we've never had a shift have a protectee shot and have to storm the fucking dais, get him down and get him to the cars and get him out. That's never happened. But you train for it all the time then when it happens and I know a few of the people that were on that stage who made that and they fucking reacted great

and they put their lives on the line and they should be and I don't want to harp on that but I was very proud of them as much as using the acting director's term ashamed that this happened what was encouraging is that shift reaction what's encouraging is how

they is how they responded the cars were ready to go they were out of there like i said they're doing improvements need to be made absolutely but but you have to um you have to you have to get the acknowledgement where where it's deserved i guess yeah i think there was also the the thing we've been burying on this just from a procedural standpoint that I wanted to learn more about was once they were getting them off stage, how that's supposed to work. So when they came on, they got to them. They were on top of them. Like, good minute goes by. Like, they had them covered.

You can hear it on the mics. They wait for confirm that the shooter's down. Two questions. down two questions number one how do you know or do you think they knew at that point that it was safe to assume there wasn't a second shooter and number two you and i talked about this on the phone donald trump's a big fucking he's a big guy he's like six three like 250 whatever it is so like you can't blame an agent for being 510 or something yeah but when they stood him up yes it's one of the most badass moments i've ever seen in american history like his reaction it was incredibly courageous but like

you know he it's almost like are you supposed to just fucking tackle him and be like no that's not happening we we gotta get you the fuck out of here like what do you do there well the so second shooter and that yeah so what happens okay if you do there? So second shooter and that. Those are the two questions. So what happens, okay, if you do that in training, guess what happens in training? The guy playing the protectee ducks down and nicely goes to the car. He doesn't do that shit. He doesn't raise his fucking hand and stand up as if he's going for a fucking rebound.

Admittedly, that photo is iconic. It was immediately iconic, obviously. It's unbelievable. No, but when you're training normally, you're getting the... Ideally, what you would want to happen is your protectee would want to stay alive as much as you want to keep him alive, ideally.

So he would have ducked down, made himself as small as a big man like him can make himself. And we could cover him better. You see the guys, I'm, you know, I think they're doing what they can. And,

and, and speaking of brave female agents, I don't know, I don't know the agent's name, but there was a female on the shift there. I thought reacted superbly like the other agents on the shift. I know what one you're talking about. Yes.

And I've, I've heard really, really good things about her as an agent and just from people that, cause, and so she's a great example of that is, that is a hire that you have to hire and you don't need it. That's the reason why you don't need to set a fucking 30% standard because you have women like that out there and there's a lot of them and we can

bring them on. Hey, fuck, if we get the 30%, I'm all for it as long as they can do the job. That's all I give a fuck about. That's right. Secondly, as far as the second shooter, you don't know.

But once again, this goes back to, I think, I thought they did a really, really good job. So they get them. The first thing they do, they're going right to the protectee, and they're covering the protectee. The first thing is um you know also remember they don't know at this point it happened it just fucking happened they don't know if he's fucking they're going to come up there and his head's blown off or that you know

they probably don't even know what they have yet that's right they're getting there and their first thing is just to cover him and make sure i'm sure there's no doubt in my mind they're probably checking for to assess his yeah they opened yeah if you see him when he get up, they had obviously opened his shirt. And like I said, I know the guys that supervise it. And I'm not fucking blowing smoke. They're some of the best. They're in shape. They're fucking smart.

And they're dedicated to the job. And those guys and gals did their job commendably. Obviously, you'd rather have them off the X faster. There's no question. Ideally. But realistically, the first time this has happened, they covered him. They made sure he was covered, and they got up to the cars. Now, you don't know.

The thing is, you don't know there's a second shooter, obviously. Now, you know the crowd immediately in front. They've been magged and screened. All right? So you feel pretty – and our UD guys do, and girls do, a really good job of of that um of screening folks so your concern at that point is probably more distant like it's where the threat came from initially they're getting word that he's down so obviously if you're if they do that pig pile as you call it and then and then somebody they're still taking rounds is there a proper term for that no it is not really

now they're just covering they're covering them but like let's just say for argument's sake there's more rounds are coming in obviously they're going to know that real fast and that thing's going to get expedited much quicker i'm sure in their assessment of it in in mind you in real time in the middle of all this shit this has never happened in the history of the service and they made a really good decision they covered them and gone out of there. And I've heard people Monday morning quarterbacking a little bit about, oh, they got there faster. You can critique this to tell. I think what they did was amazing and is more indicative of the type of people we have on this job than anything. Those are the people who represent the U.S. Secret Service best,

and that's more indicative of the type of people we get. Once again, all we need is more of them. And if we can get... And those people out there, those Americans, there's young people out there that want to do a job like this, USAjobs.gov. And I can attest just to doing it for 23 years,

it is a great job. It's a demanding job,. It is a great job. It's a demanding job, but it's a great career. And you're going to do things that most human beings don't get to do. So, you know, we have a black eye right now. We deserve it. And we're going to come out of it, though. I think we're going to come out of it stronger.

We have to have that attitude. You can't hang your head low. You have to fucking dig in and fix the situation. Yeah, and obviously Kim Cheadle is not your boss anymore, so we can have a little Kansas City barbecue out here with some of the testimony for sure. But one of the funniest things unintentionally that she said was before her testimony, she went and did some interview with abc and it actually made me question my sanity when i heard this but she mentioned that that the reason they didn't put anyone on that roof and instead put them inside the building was because they were concerned about the slope of the roof yeah now when i heard that i'm no sniper i know a lot of snipers though i was like i like went to check myself and i said

wait am i just a complete and utter moron or is that the dumbest thing i've ever heard in my life so i went to a group text do do do do do put four pipe hitters on there three of whom are like expert snipers and i said is it me or is that the dumbest thing i've ever heard they said no it's not you that's the dumbest thing we've ever heard yeah including the fact that behind the president you can see where the two sniper teams were right there on a fucking 45 degree yeah pretty close to rupe so what what was the like what was the thought process there on her saying that and have you ever heard of that being a reason in your life no i've never heard of that um and i made this yeah i mean if you want to make us it made us look even worse

like now we're just gonna this is a true fucking story though a week after that i had to fly on plane for work um and you know we fly armed so we usually you know we do their paperwork and shit i go up to the uh the tele captain who i am you know usually i'll go hey guys the secret service the captain turns around and he goes, be careful of those slope. I am not fucking shitting you. You should have told you to get out from the slope cockpit. I go, just get us there safely, captain. You can shit on me.

I laughed only because I know the type. He's probably a former military Air Force pilot and he's got the same fucked up sense of humor. But that's a true fucking story. I'm like, okay, I'm going to hear this for the next fucking year from you guys oh my god but anyway so so yeah that was not the that was not encouraging and also in going to we haven't talked about like the counter snipers are fantastic um and i've heard a lot of people talk about uh i mean the guy the guy that took the shot um you know it's hard being a being a police sniper is hard anyway because you have to identify you can't just it's not like you're in afghanistan

and everybody's a bad guy and you just he's gonna you gotta be really fucking certain about that shot before you take it whether whether that's a once i said earlier like a journalist is a fucking a maga guy who's just excited as shit that got up there. I mean, you gotta know there's a threat. You can't just start shooting people. And once, and if you shoot them out,

unfortunately the guy got the shots off first and that's probably, I'm guessing how they identified them. I don't know what, once again, I don't know what led up to all that though, but, uh, um,

obviously it's unfortunate. Like I said earlier that we got to that point, but the reality is he's still, you know, once has never happened before and you gotta once that does happen you gotta perform and he did so question yeah go okay he was able to kill crooks quickly okay which suggests and has been supported and evidence has been presented and confirmed that he had the scope on him for a while, which now I'm going to get outside of what we know, and this gets to wandering speculation. But Sniper has a scope on a guy. I know how scopes work.

You can see them like they're close up. He can see the fucking guy has a gun so i would imagine based on the turnaround time of him shooting the guy as well that somewhere i don't know if it was a minute i don't know if it was three minutes i don't know if it was five minutes i don't really give a fuck some point before those shots are fired that sniper probably asked permission on his comms for a confirmed guy with a gun in the direction of the president to shoot and was told that he could not so if the end and again there's some speculation there for sure yeah but if that's the

case and I hear you you don't want to accidentally shoot someone who's not a threat because we all know that would you'd never hear the end of that if someone would go to prison for that yeah I understand that there's a real fear in this country now with like guys not wanting to pull the trigger in the wrong spot well yeah but if that's the case what do you need to be able to say confirm go because like i would think guy on the roof with a gun well i we don't know once again we don't i want to speculate on what the sniper saw i'm not a counter sniper. I only bring up the, the identifying the threat only because I've seen people on television

who are military snipers who they haven't, you know, sometimes they're talking about it, but not all of them, but I've just seen a couple. I don't even know their names. And it sounded like

they were talking about from their point of view from the military and obviously the military and a civilian law enforcement is very different. All types of use of force. I mean,

the use of forming the use of force that cops have to and what sucks about being a cop is you you rarely get the first shot off um so in in this situation i don't know what led to that but he does not have to wait for confirmation and they if they see a threat that our kind of doesn't have to he does not now our counter snipers if they see a threat they do do not have the way. They don't. There's this green light thing or this thing that people think that you have – but once again, it comes down to like any use of force you would have for a law enforcement. You got to know that they're – and like I said, I don't know what – I'm not going to speculate on what he saw or I can only know how – the end result was exactly – and he performed very, very well. I don't know what led to that. I don't know what information he had. I don't know how his, the end result was exactly, and he performed very, very well. I don't know what led to that.

I don't know what information he had. I don't know anything. You know what I mean? I know basically what everybody else knows. But no, you, as a counter sniper, they don't have to wait for a green light, so to speak. I've heard that speculated about if they see a threat and they can neutralize a threat, they don't need to wait for it. But once again, I saw that acting director Rowe

gave a demonstration where he showed some photos where they were showing what kind of sight picture or what kind of look they had if you were laying down on the other side of that sloped roof that became so infamous. And it wasn't much. It would be hard to identify.

So once again, this is all speculation. I don't know what the guy saw. That's interesting, though, that insight. No, he doesn't have to wait for a thumbs up or authorization from somebody. Well, let me ask a question in there because you kind of talked about this a little bit in there a minute ago. But how is the determination made ahead of a of an event for the overall sniper teams right so

any snipers that are there how many of them or if not all of them are going to be secret service versus support from locals because i would think i know how well trained the secret service snipers are they're they literally trained with like the reapers nick nick irving like he talked about that on twitter one of the best snipers of all time but like sometimes you might your role it seems to me like you'd be rolling the dice with local pd like sometimes you might get an amazing sniper other times you might get a guy who has no idea what they're doing so how do they make that determination? And obviously, not being a counter-sniper,

I don't want to speak for them. It depends on, like, you'll see, like with the president, you'll see our guys teamed up with our own guys. I don't know. I don't want to speculate on when they have our guys teamed up with a local in those situations. I don't really want to put that out there anyway. It's been a while, and I don't want to misspeak um but but once again it goes back to that's the other thing is uh you know we have a finite amount of resources and that's that's that's where it can be really hard and

the amount of work that like counter-assault team members or the counter or the counter-sniper guys we only have so many of these people and we got a debut so you can imagine how you know they're traveling all the time because especially now with the threats being what they are um the guys who were on the two roofs right there yeah there were two teams of two yeah it looked like it looked like to me yeah those were secret service yes yeah that's what i wanted yeah those are i believe i'm 100 certain because i can't remember if it was like if we had our CS guys teamed up with locals, you know, where our guys would have the long guns, the locals. Because remember, also, they're serving as an overwatch in the sense that they also can give you information, you know. A lot of times the counter-snipers will provide information to the rest of the group regarding something that's not a threat, but might be, you know, they may see something that needs to be addressed.

You know, like there's somebody over in this area here i don't see anything and then we can maybe have somebody go out and talk to them you know that kind of stuff can happen where it's they can see something that's not like hey i'm gonna take this person out because there's nothing like that but it might be something worth addressing now now once the once the shots go out though the trump is taken out of the situation the shooter's killed this is where the investigation starts though yeah so take me there from a secret service perspective the fbi is not on scene yet or whatever what are the first things you're doing it's a crime scene it's not a crime scene it has to be preserved uh so that's what and then one of the first jobs of the secret service when

if the situation like this is, obviously things are chaotic. You've got three people who have been shot, the crowd and stuff. I can imagine what – now obviously the protectee, Trump, is gone and getting into the hospital to make sure that he's okay. At that point, as far as the investigation, the FBI has authority, obviously, over investigations of this nature. Like there was an attack on the president. It'd be the same way. And our job is the post standards that are there and the people that were securing the site before, now it's a crime scene, and they've got to secure that scene with the help of the local police. And you can imagine in my head, mean what a chaotic situation and i'm sure

the fbi i mean that's the thing they're going to be you know and that's why i'm hoping this investigation does bear fruit um and and even it's going to be it's going to be hard to hear it's going to be hard to know if i just hope it's clear what the breakdown was i hope that we have some clear answers um that's the only thing i'm hoping up forward so that we can because if you get some clear answers we can address it can you understand why people out there listening right now are already cynically saying we're not going to get answers on something like 100 100 absolutely i mean it doesn't fucking help their name is a secret service for god's sakes that's a bad but i mean that's but that's that's from her history

but uh uh it it's not that we're keeping secrets, but it doesn't fucking help. But the – yeah, the – I can understand people's – look, they held us on a high pedestal. They held us – they hold us in high regard and think that – expect us to perform at the level, and we didn't meet that level. And all you can do is own it and move on from there and uh and i'm hoping that we do that uh in a way that uh we look back on this and we say okay this will be a delineation point where we say okay we we we let ourselves get to a point where we weren't holding our we weren't at the level that we should have been. Yes. This happened, and now we're going to take it to the next fucking level.

Yeah. But it's going to take that kind of attitude. And like I said, I'm hoping that we continue to bring on and beef up our service with good people, our qualified people, so that we can move forward and the agency still has the future that has the future that that honors the you know the time since 1865 that we've been you know serving this country and we need to honor everybody that's ever been in the secret service by getting better and improving why and how was the investigation moved within four hours at least and might have been less than that but four or five hours to the jurisdiction of the fbi with the Secret Service completely deferring to that because my thought would be the Secret Service, this is their crime scene. It's their type of work where this was involved, and you guys are an investigative unit yourselves.

Why and how is that decision made? It's federal law. So it's actually in the law that the FBI has jurisdiction over this. And I think that's correct because obviously having a protective agency – let's face it. The FBI is much larger. They're the premier investigative agency in the country. It should be their jurisdiction, and it is by law. And also they're – you're talking about earning the public's trust again.

If we were investigating this, you know what I'm saying? It's like if the Secret Service is investigating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, everybody would be like, well, of course they are. It's like they're not going to believe shit. That's a fair point. Yeah, so it's like you can't – like once again, I know the people and some of the people involved in this. When you do that, I couldn't be completely – I haven't been completely fucking objective here. I've been doing this 23 years. Yeah.

These people mean a lot to me, and this job means a lot to me. And can I look at this completely fucking objectively? No. Can I try to, which I've tried to do while talking to you? Of course. And I try to be frank and honest. I really appreciate your… No, no, I try to be frank and honest anytime I'm talking to somebody in this,

even in something as difficult as this. But I think moving forward, we'll just – hopefully we'll see what happens. Yeah. So that makes sense that they wouldn't – It'd be a conflict. Yeah, you said it's federal law, but it's – It's also – and that's why they do it that way. It's going to be a conflict of interest in the sense that you couldn't ask – we're a very small agency.

There's not many of us, so we all – Are you allowed to say how many there are? Is that public info? Yeah, I think you can find it. I can't remember what the numbers are, but the typical rule of thumb – and I don't know what the numbers are now, is agents-wise. Now, you have a uniformed division, and I'm talking about just gun carriers, not all the other – it's not very big. Everybody says somewhere around 3,000 to 3,500, something around there, of agents. Okay.

Whereas the FBI, I think it's 20 or 30 or 1,000. Yeah, I can't – it's a much larger agency. And like I said, they're the primary investigative agency in the country. It's like that old CIA headline from the New York Times. You've seen that? The CIA investigated itself on the crack epidemic and found no wrongdoing. Yeah, exactly. I would have never guessed! Yeah, if you just put a nuclear bomb of cynicism into the country, that would fucking do it.

But I did find it odd. I don't know if you did as well. What? That at the press conference, it was about five hours later. It was maybe 11. He got – he was shot at like 6.15 or something like that. And there was a press conference at maybe like 11 11 30 at night it was only an fbi representative there with i think some local law enforcement people there was i remember that there was no secret service representative isn't that kind of odd that they

didn't have someone there yeah i i don't know i don't know that all the circumstances behind because the thing is also is um the supervisors that would have been on the ground it's a small it's pittsburgh district the supervisors on the ground my guess is just hours after that they were completely busy with more urgent matters it's because as far as like being able to it could it would have been a better look probably but i think you know with what had happened what had occurred that historic event i'm sure they were just seriously swamped like with all kinds of shit going on and uh but so yeah it would have been a better look so yeah i suppose yeah it feels like they messed up the

looks department yeah from that standpoint i'm sure people that's probably a fair critique um but at the same time i guarantee having you know in that if you're like a boss in that district or if you're a supervisor or something in uh on the trump detail you have about 400 000 things going on right then i mean you're talking about five hours after an assassination attempt or whatever the case was so i i would give them a personally it would give them a pass but uh but yeah i see what you're saying so we we've i really appreciate you letting me go through each angle of this and you give it you give them some amazing analysis today by the way i appreciate it i think that's awesome and i hope people out there can appreciate that as well

especially like you've been with the agency for so long but before we get to some of the post assassination stuff where you know you guys i mean you've really beefed up security around the guy and everything which i know you have some insight on i do want to play this video from it's the one with maria bartiromo and i think it's senator ron johnson because he's the senator who's like taking control of on the legislative side to try to investigate this i just want to play this and get some reaction to it from you to see if there's anything we missed as well in this conversation. I know I've been trying to fill in all the blanks for everyone out there who inevitably is going to say, you didn't talk about this. But let's play this video real quick, Alessi, and then, yeah, get the response. Go ahead.

Epic failure of security. Can you walk us through what you'd like to see and your preliminary findings of your investigation, which has now become bipartisan? Is that correct? Correct. I spoke with the chairman Blumenthal, the chairman of the permanent subcommittee investigation. I'm the ranking member. He completely agrees with me that we must start doing transcribed interviews with all the witnesses now while memories are fresh. So that's that's really good news from my standpoint. My staff immediately started reaching out to local law enforcement. We've gathered a fair amount of information. Again, we're just scratching the surface. But a couple of things that we found out, for example,

the Secret Service did not even attend the 9 o'clock security meeting with local law enforcement. Pretty well put in charge the butler county law enforcement to coordinate things is that normal if it's what he's saying is accurate no um so i've heard this too i've watched some of this uh as well and i don't yeah i mean typically when we're having meetings for this obviously obviously we're running – the Secret Service is usually running the meetings. But we obviously – one of the first things you do anytime you're doing a protective advance is you meet with the local police, obviously. I mean that's like the meeting number one. And a lot of those meetings, a big part of it is like you may not even know exactly how the visit is going to go yet as far as like what are the what's the mechanics that the staff is going to set up you know as far as the rally or

whatever's going on but you're getting with the you're getting with the police and at least partnering up so it's like okay you're transportation you're doing this site you're doing uh special ops uh guys and so yeah typically that's what happens and what you're doing is you you start working together once again we can't do this job without the local police. And so that's how you kind of start off. Now, I heard this stuff. I don't know how true it is. I mean, I don't know what – Yeah, I think you said that was a report they're seeing.

Yeah, they're hearing reports like that. And look, the senators and the congresspeople – look, the legislative branch's job is to oversee the executive branch. So they're doing their job. There's times – I'll be honest with you. There's times I've watched that – some of the legislators I feel like are really fair and really trying to find out what's wrong. Oh, sure. And there's some that what you expect are grandstanding, and then it gets misrepresented. That's right.

I actually – and I'm not kissing the boss's ass, but I thought the acting director wrote a fine job of getting some of the information out there. They were asking stuff he knew he couldn't fucking answer and they knew that too. And of course what happens is that on the 6 o'clock news or whatever, they're just showing those few clips and misrepresenting how the entire hearing went. I will say he did

in my opinion a much better job than she did. And I recognize you can't answer everything. I do recognize that. Yeah, and he knew that. But I think – but at the same time, Congress is doing their job as far as – look, this is a major fuck-up, and they're doing their job to try to find out what happened. But yeah, that would be – obviously, at a police meeting, you're not leaving it – we're

the ones implementing the plan, And that's, once again, these meetings, when I talk about communication, when you're doing an advance, you've got to make sure everybody knows what the responsibilities are. Let's keep it going. Law enforcement wasn't even on the same channel.

So that was, just to be clear, Senator, that was a 9 a.m. meeting on July 13th, the day of the shooting. Correct. Secret Service wasn't there. Secret Service was there for site visits, weren't even there. It kind of turned over some of the outer perimeter stuff to local law enforcement. They weren't even on the same security channel.

So the sniper and SWAT teams weren't on the same channel as the patrol officers, and they weren't on the same channel as the Secret Service. Is that normal? With all due respect to the senator, that is normal. I go back to the communications. Actually, once again, Assistant Director Rowe, in his testimony, said this. We team up with the local PD, withs by having a command center, right? They're going to be on different channels. There's no way – we have a system that, for obvious reasons, is hard for people to tap in.

But if you go all over the country, a local – anybody that was a police officer, it's like if you go all over the country, let's say, and do a site, you're going to have different comm systems. There's not like this one blanket system for every law enforcement entity in the country. So when you go there and you have days to set up a site or to set up a visit, you try to facilitate comms,

but you're not going to all be on the same radio. First of all, you'll be walking all over the fuck, all over each other, if you had every entity on one radio system. Secondly, it's just frankly – and once again, I'm not a tech guy. It's just not feasible. But that's the reason why we have to put an emphasis on that. Now, maybe there's a tech guy or there's somebody that has a better way. And I'm sure the Secret Service is going to explore every option of that because this is so clearly part of the problem that happened on the 13th.

So if there's a better way, there's a better way. But, yeah, there's different – you're going to have different – and it doesn't – it's not unusual. If, once again, let's say the police radio back in, hey, to the command center, we have a suspicious subject at this location or whatever. The Secret Service guys can go – because I also heard that a lot of people were doing texting. They weren't putting stuff on the radio at all. Is there – but is – so your answer makes a lot of sense to me because, again, we can take this stuff out of context. But is there – like let's keep it simple. Let's call it two channels.

Probably more, but let's call it two channels yeah probably more but let's call it two channels police secret service is it not feasible for there to be a designated person from the police and a designated person from the secret service at any given event where the designated person is on the opposite channel so they can hear what the other ones are doing and go back to their channel we do and we they and depending depending on the we do that as well. There's a lot of times we'll have like for instance in a motorcade or something, I'll have a police radio I'll be with the police, they'll have a police radio, I'll have our radio

we can hear their comms they can hear our comms but they're on different frequencies and different radio systems. And that's what I'm talking about about relaying and messages so you have all these different entities if everybody was on the same radio channel you'd be walking all over each other so um whereas like you know but let's say the cs team

see something they radio back to the command center or whatever hey uh we see something out here now they can radio out to somebody, maybe there's near a post somewhere, like post whatever number you see, and they would maybe give a description. That's how it should work. And you're relaying that information. But people are on different frequencies because it's

just not feasible. I think, like I said, the acting director said there was 170 total. He was asked how many law enforcement total. I think he said around 170. So you have 170 police agents, all different entities. To me, like I said, I'm open to being wrong on this. I don't know how you do that.

And mind you, we're doing this day after day after day after day. So it's not like we're sitting here for four months working on this site. We're talking about days. That's right. So now you're going to set this fucking infrastructure and do all this and get all the radios out to 170 officers and everybody's going to be on the same comms. First of all, not everybody could be on the same channel anyway. Now, when I was on shift or I was on a detail, you can be on one channel and then scan others. So what I would do a lot of times, I would scan the uniformed division guys because they're on the outside perimeter of, say, the White House.

And so if something were to happen, my thinking was, they're like, oh, shots fired at wherever. I'll hear it before it even gets relayed. You know what I mean? That was the idea. So you can do those type of things. But it's definitely something we need to look at and address. And like I said, I'm not the person to do that but that's how you that's how those come and that's why we see sometimes there's a

i saw that too where there's a disconnect um where they they think it's done one way um and look the way we've done it in the past has been effective if there's a better way i'm sure there is maybe and we need to be open to any suggestion um and and i think i know there's people that are looking into that because it's no doubt that that was one of the key components of this failure so that's that's a great answer i appreciate all that let's let's keep it going relay things uh you know one of the things we found out is that uh you know we've got a more detailed timeline uh this picture is now on the Internet, but a picture was – a photo was taken by the local sniper team in the AGR building at 514 of Crooks. So, again, we had pictures of this guy.

Why was he intercepted? There's so many unanswered questions here. The pictures were taken at 514, and he was shot at 611. Correct. Okay. And, again, we've got a more, so I'm going to be issuing a preliminary report. It's again, it's preliminary. It's just scratching the surface. We're primarily going to release that report to solicit more eyewitness testimony. If you took video, save it, you know, make a backup copy, copy, you know, we can glean things in terms of audio and in terms of, you know, where the shots came from, you know, can glean things in terms of audio and in terms of you know where the

shots came from you know was it one rifle was it more than one i've seen some pretty interesting video on the internet by experts that certainly calls into question what the fbi is telling us about a single shooter again we're only just beginning this but it is so important that people who saw things that have information, they preserve it. They memorialize what they saw because memories change over time. They can be influenced. So, again, it's good news. On a bipartisan basis, Chairman Blumenthal and I are dedicated to taking transcribed interviews with law enforcement and public, just members of the general public that were at that rally, no matter how insignificant your piece of information might be,

it might lend to provide the full story of what happened, because the American public needs to understand what happened here. So I know that, well, I tweeted out yesterday the fact that you're doing this bipartisan investigation, and I put on your email, you have an email that you want people to send information to. And I know that you'll tweet that later. But I got to get to this. After the shooter was taken down by Secret Service, the local law enforcement, and I know this from some of your preliminary comments, your preliminary findings, started taking pictures of the dead body, right? Can you tell us what happened then? Correct. So that sniper team that was in the AGR building,

they're the first ones that went up on the roof. They were the first to encounter the dead assassin at that point in time. Later on, other people joined them, and somebody told them to send the pictures they had taken to an ATF agent, which I think is very strange. And we called up that ATF agent. That individual said that he was with ATF agent, which I think is very strange. And we called up that ATF agent, that individual said that he was with ATF, and now he's gone dark. We've also reached out to the Secret Service agents in charge on the ground. All we're getting there is the runaround. So we are getting

information from local law enforcement, and we appreciate that. But unfortunately, federal law enforcement agents, they're just saying, well, go through your congressional liaison. Again, that's going to be unacceptable. Pause that right there real quick. So a couple questions here. Number one, let's start with the ATF guy. What's that? Why is that?

What's the ATF doing? I have no idea. Unless – I have no idea. I'm just speculating. Unless he's there, like – they brought him as a poststander, which would be unusual normally it's like hsi and they've talked about this though they've said this openly in the hearing that sometimes i'll post standards they'll bring from outside agencies just because of manpower okay um other than that i don't know why the atf will be there i mean there may be a legit reason i just don't know what it is um yeah unless he was brought in to the stand post which

is like i said kind of unusual typically they, they'll bring him from like HSI. I think it's because it's within Homeland Security. Right. Whereas ATF, I think they're Justice. I think they're DOJ, but I could be wrong. Second question, and I think this is where I think I see it more from the perspective of the Secret Service. He just said right there, we've been reaching out to agents on the ground and getting the runaround. Yeah.

Technically, because it's an active investigation, fbi is now in charge of it and the secret service is an organization that's at the middle of the investigation i would imagine and i don't know if you can confirm or deny this that there's probably simple organizational precautions taken from a legal standpoint that says hey you, don't answer questions yet because it's public. Yeah. And if I was involved, look, look, I'm sitting here talking to you and give you my take on some things. But if you're in a situation like that where you were involved in the incident, yeah, I'd be. And also it's a senator talking, so he could be full of shit, too. He could make it sound like I'm on top of this shit.

We've asked all of them. With all due respect to the senator. With all due respect, fuck off. Boy, I'm really digging a hole. Okay, I'm going to get a congressional subpoena next. Fuck. I can't wait to title this episode.

Alright, let's keep it going, Alessi. Go ahead. I wish I could rely and have faith in the FBI and the Secret Service to do a truthful accounting of this. But that's not been my experience with the Russian collusion hoax. And for years, dealing with federal law enforcement, we need completely separate and independent investigations. And it has to start now. So are you questioning whether or not there was a second shooter? Is that what you're questioning, or if the shooter had a different gun?

You know, I saw an extremely convincing video online. I know it's all over the place. You know, there were three distinct shots early on, followed by another five, more staccato, more rapidly fired. And then the final one, which we believe took the shooter out. How do you explain that? I don't know. I'm not an expert, but the individual putting that video out says it's clearly shows that there are at least three different weapons fired that day. Again, I don't know, but we can't trust the FBI and the Secret Service to do an honest and open and transparent investigation. That's just a very sad fact. So we've got to rely on other sources independent to really find out what the truth of the matter was on Saturday, July 13th. So let me go back to what happened

after the guy, the shooter is dead. You just mentioned somebody goes up. So this is the guy in the suit who walks up the ladder, goes to the roof and tells the local the locals send those pictures to this cell phone. Who was that person? Well, again, I'm not sure that was the guy. I think another county law enforcement gave the the number to the other county law enforcement, the snipers, to send the text. Some guy in a suit walks up the ladder. They believe you seek service. I'm not sure where they gave credentials, but that's part of it. Again, Maria, this is so preliminary.

I'm issuing this. I'm providing this information in a much more detailed timeline to prompt others to come forward. We need to complete this picture. We have a lot of puzzle pieces to fill in here. So here's my question there. It's a crime scene at this point.

It's chaos. There's fucking 13,000 people down there. The first people to get to him are not Secret Service, right? It's cops and then SWAT unit guys, whatever. What's the protocol? Like, you and the police department on site, y'all don't know each other. You just started working with each other

the Tuesday before, right? Not everyone knows each other's names or faces. What's the protocol at that point for proper identification of who you are minus just like holding up a badge? Like is there some sort of like code word that you guys may have in place or something like that to be able to say like, okay, yeah, that person's on Team America here? Yeah, I'm not going to go into a lot of that specifics on that but yeah i mean i to your point but the thing is we just goes back to the partnership thing is yeah if you're coming up on there like i know i think i know what video he's talking about like that that agent would have been teamed up with somebody who would have been familiar okay and once again we're a small agency

so we we know each other pretty well it'd be hard to impersonate or get involved and act like, oh, I'm a Secret Service guy because if we're small enough, it'd be easy to go, who the fuck are you? Even if you're a cop that hasn't seen any Secret Service people before? If you're, well, I'm trying, what are you asking? Like the guys who were over the body

were from the police department side of things. They don't know who the fuck you are. You know what I mean? Well, I think – yeah, that's true. I mean you have to show them your credentials or something like that if they didn't – I mean you have your pen – your lapel pen on. But if they didn't know for certain, you just have to identify yourself with their credentials. If you didn't have a partner with you, what happens a lot of times with uh on these visits is uh you know of course the chaos then who knows what the situation was like i'm like to your

you were saying earlier i mean it's going to be complete chaos so they they were probably a whirlwind um but yeah i mean as far as identification a lot of times we're teamed up with officers and they can go hey this is you know i'm with and they you know you've been working with them for several days. But yeah. Because I'm just – let me think ridiculous for a minute. I don't think this happened. There would have been too much plan way ahead and executed perfectly in my opinion for something like this to happen. But hypothetically, you have to plan for all possible things. Couldn't someone have a pretty convincing fake badge, wear a suit with a fake lapel and walk up there and say, Secret Service, whatever, real quick and not be from that? identifiable whatever specifically for a situation like that in the same way that you guys have code

words for each person you protect shouldn't there be some sort of like i don't know morse code password or something well i'm not gonna get into some of the other identifying stuff i mean so when we're at the site there's other ways of making identification i just don't want to disclose it okay so so what so let me take the size secret Service here then if that's the case. I trust you. Then perhaps that person was properly identified, and it's just simply like he's not talking because it's an open investigation. I think I know what the – I think I know what – yeah, I think that the – that he was talking a little out of turn. I don't think – because as you can tell even during that interview He was going off of

Everything from shit he saw online too And I like how he's like, you know The line the best line of that was when he's like I don't think that we can trust the FBI or the Secret Service to make A best thing so we're gonna let Congress do We trust Congress But not That was the best part. She's completely serious. Nobody else picked up on that?

Yeah. No, but the – yeah. So I mean look, it's just a mess. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, I think I know the video he's talking about, and it was one of our guys that was on the roof. I presume he was a protective intelligence person but i don't know if that's the case you know there was and by the way a buddy of mine tommy g i believe we're recording this like a day before he's going to put it out

and i'm putting this out right away too but i believe it would have just come out my buddy tommy g just did a documentary at the site and he did it with Danny Hall. He's been on my podcast episode 216 and 217, Special Forces Legend, Sniper Legend. He did it with Andy Bustamante to kind of take the other side of the issue, I guess, the CRA side, if you will. And then Andy, I think in addition to him, there was another guy who I don't know that was brought in from the Secret Service side. But everyone go check that out because that'll give a breakdown. But one of the things I've seen, because I haven't seen that yet, but one of the things I've seen with experts going to the scene was the guy, the House of Reps guy, Eli Crane, who was like an ex-sniper in the forces. He went there and there's been a lot

of questions around like, oh, was there a a second shooter you just heard some speculation in the video and that's kind of what it is yeah but he got up they let him go up on the roof and everything which i thought was productive you know as an expert and a guy who's in congress for transparency reasons and he took a video from up there but he's like that water tower yeah now that's farther away that is we're now we're at that what we were talking about earlier like eight 800 foot type perimeter now we're now we're far but he's like i'm a sniper that's where i'd be that former seal congressman yeah i saw yeah i saw him on the i saw him on tv do you think that's do you think that that's possible that maybe there was a second shooter and and maybe they were there honestly i don't think it's possible i the i saw him talking about the water tower i knowing what i know of

the counter snipers in a way that this i thought our acting director was asked this as well um you know our counter snipers are typically looking from what the angle is from the where the the podium if you will where the protectee is going to be speaking. And they're looking at the threats from that area. So they tend to look from there. I mean, as opposed to going up on the water tower where, yeah, you're way higher. I don't know how much better coverage you're going to get. I'm not a sniper.

Look, the congressman is a former Navy SEAL sniper. I will defer to his expertise. I'll talk trash on the senator. I'm not going to talk trash on the congressman the snipe sniper uh hero so i'll refrain from that so he's probably right i mean maybe there's something to that maybe there's a different way of doing things i'm not a sniper i know how our snipers typically operate and it's not like in the acting director kind of explain that how how we do that um which you know uh you know maybe it's something that

people will look at later on maybe it's something that too like i say i think there's there's something to be gleaned from this where maybe thinking you know learning the lessons but thinking outside the box will be necessary i mean obviously when you have something this big happen yeah i think you're foolish if um if you don't really reflect and really take everything in and really be willing to put anything on the table as far as a way to make it better and to keep an open mind and to listen to people from outside. It's really easy when you've been doing the same thing for so long, to be doing protection for so long, to think you have all the answers because we've always done it this way. We need to think differently. But once again, it goes back to getting the manpower, getting the assets.

And I think being open to any solution, looking to people from the military. Because we have – we were talking about you have a lot of people with a lot of knowledge. What can we do to do this better? Right. So – What have the conversations been like internally? I mean, you're a longtime guy there. Yeah.

Obviously, there's a lot of amazing agents who are out there right now doing a great job. But it's, you've been talking about it all day. It's a tough time. Yeah. And there's a lot of, you know, you have an acting director right now. You don't have the official director. Like, obviously, you've hit on it again and again. Like, we want to see improvement. we want to learn from this and whatever but is is it do you think morale is is really low

right now do you think this is this certainly doesn't help i mean yeah i think overall and like i'm not you can really tell when you're on the details like the president's detail the bigger details uh where the morale is at better but obviously this is a big hit and mentally for everybody but it's like um and it can't but i find it the same way with me it's like you can't help but when every time you turn on tv and you're just in the secret service getting crushed oh yeah um you can't you help you as a human being you can and you i think you saw that in the acting director's testimony you could see the passion he had behind it too. It was clear.

This is not – it's hard not to take this stuff to some degree personally. But morale needs to get better. And like I said, the best thing we can do is to continue improving and re-earning the public's trust and our protectees', uh, re meeting the expectations that everybody expects of us. And also at the same time, getting the workforce that we need to do that to a level where the agents, um, and all the other personnel can still have a life outside of this. Cause I mean, we know every four years, you're going to have a presidential election. Like right now, the pace is crazy and it's only like, and it's only going to get crazier. But we need to reassess, and if we can fix those things, the morale – to me, how I feel about it is if you do those things, the morale will fix itself.

I think the biggest killer of morale is – and you know how this goes. You could ask 20 different agents and get 20 different answers on what the cause is. But usually if you can have a balance where you can still have a life and you're not always doing this, not only will you have more effective agents because they'll be happier, but they'll also be rested. And being able to do the job effectively without just going one trip to another, one trip to another, missing baseball games, missing this, missing that, fucking wife's pissed off at you. It's like an anarchist snowball. So I think morale is not great right now. I don't think it's in a tank like some people might think it would be

because of this. That's good. Because I think they're busy. And when you meet guys or the times I've been on the road and I've seen folks, I think people are keeping a perspective on it. Now, don't get me wrong. There's a lot of people. If you look at the whistleblower comments that you've seen, some of them, there's clearly a lot of people who are not happy with management.

And Dan Bongino, the former agent who does – Well, he says a lot. He says a lot. There was actually a short – I don't know Dan, but when I was on Puritan's DT, he says a lot. He says a lot. There was actually a short cross... I don't know Dan, but when I was on Pure Hottest DT, he was a very senior guy. So there was some crossover. But he says a lot of stuff. He was legit. He knew what he was talking about. Oh, yeah. I will say

some of his analysis right afterwards, you can think of what you wanted of the guy if you just grew him politically, but some of his analysis was superb. Yeah, he's a smart guy, and yeah, he has his style and stuff like that. But I mean, I know he's been a big detractor on a lot of the management stuff, and he has contacts within the service, no doubt, a lot of contacts.

And so he's a good guy to listen to when it comes to that. Now, he might be more extreme than where I'm at, but once again, he may know something I don't know. But I think we'll see what happens. I think morale is – it's not great, but it's not condition critical either, I don't think. I mean you guys are though at the core of it. You are human beings. You're not just these functioning robots with sunglasses that go, must protect the president.

Exactly, and the thing is you're always under the microscope. You're always going to be under the microscope. It's just the nature of it. We're around the president and vice – we're around these important people, and we should be held to that high standard. You shouldn't – we should embrace that. Hey, let's hold us to the highest standard and let's try to meet that standard. It's going to be hard to do, but we can do it. We just got to get the right attitude and press on. Do you – like in your long career, you guys again being real human beings, are there like a lot of conversations that happen that discuss – I'm talking among Secret Service agents, just around the water cooler, not on the job, but just as humans talking at the bar or whatever it may be. Do you guys talk about politics a lot? No. I mean we're around – You're around it so much I would think. Yeah.

I mean when I'm with my buddies or like you said, having a beer, playing around the golf, politics never comes up. And people ask it all the time. Like what's interesting is, especially nowadays with all the partisanship is one of the biggest, the most common questions when they find out what I do for a living is, how do you, what is it like to protect somebody that, you know, that you completely disagree with them politically? You know, you have to come, because obviously we have political stances where, you know, we read, we were in the midst of it, but you keep it to yourself. I remember my wife, when I was new to the job, I'd go, don't you dare put a sticker on our car or anything on our lawn regarding showing any bias or anything. But people ask that, and you don't even think about it. It never crosses your mind where they stand politically and stuff.

At least it never has for me i would almost think you got to be cynical about it oh yeah you're like oh i see how this shit works like it's actually that cynicism comes out in this wonderful book yeah yeah i'm gonna get to that i want to make sure we cover the the thing what happened right after because you were at the middle of this you and i talked about this on the phone but you know obviously righteously so with the rnc happening that week trump decides the day after the assassination fuck it we're doing it live we're doing it as as planned so you guys are like well let's get the best security on this he looked like he was surrounded by yeah you know insane security but you were called into that as a senior guy at Secret Service.

So what was your – Well, I just came – I didn't do anything with the RNC. I went to his – I went to Grand Rapids afterward because I was – it was mostly because I felt like – Oh, I'm sorry. I misunderstood this. Yeah, RNC. So he went to the RNC, and dude, the thing about the RNC and the DNC is they're planned years. They're planned literally way ahead of time.

So that's about as secure a site. And I know a lot of people who did those events, and they're super squared away. So those places were locked down so well and were already planned so far ahead of time that that wasn't a concern. I told you I went to Grand Rap rapids which was the next rally he did oh that's right no yeah that's what yeah so that's what it was and frankly i raised my hand for that because it was one of those deals where and look i don't have to do that you know being a senior guy i don't have to do the grunt work that uh but you know um you know when all this was happening and stuff and everybody's so busy i you, you know, it was just one of those deals. They needed somebody. I said, Hey,

I'll go. And what were you doing? I'm not going to tell. I was just a post standard. I'll just, I don't, it's not something you do very often as a, as a supervisor anymore, but it was kind of one of those deals where all the things that had happened and you, and you, they need it. Plus it's like, you try to, when you're out in the field, like I am nowadays, you try to help out in some of that protection.

You know, you see it because right now it's all hands on deck, as you can imagine. So it doesn't matter what you, where you are in the pecking order or anything like that. If there's a place where you can fill in, I think everybody wants to fill in and do what they can. So I think that's pretty much service-wide. It's like, I think you're seeing a lot of agents, you know, raising their hand going, Hey, if you need somebody, you know, there's a, there's a visit to Sioux city or there's a visit to Dallas or a visit to wherever. I think people are volunteering. Cause I feel like everybody, at least I think they have the same feeling I had when he saw it. It's like, you immediately want to chip in. It's just the instinctive thing. You can't help, especially if you're this close to it. It's like,

I don't care if I'm just working the radio, whatever you need me to do, just tell me where to go. And I think that's the whole service. It feels that way. And it's that kind of attitude that's going to get us back. Is that, okay, let's pull together and let's fix this. And, you know, don't shy away from the responsibility. Just go ahead and go full on. Even if it's not your job to do it, feel free to raise your hand and say, Hey, fucking,

if you need a rest, you need a break, I'll take your spot and let's cover this. And then that's, what's going to happen. Cause people are, it's going to be very, very busy.

I mean, I'm not even sure what we got left, you know, 80 days or something. I'm not even sure. That's what I'm saying. We're down to like 70 or something like that. And we're in,

you know, it's a nasty campaign. That's just the nature of what these things are these days but you know there's people who are because of the veracity of of the decibels that the campaign is at there's there's a lot of people in the country who are concerned that trump or kamala could have attempts made on their life or whatever it's at a red it's at a you know code red to state right now how confident are you that we're not gonna see that we're not gonna see another one I'm confident and then to your point I think you're

right I mean there's it's not lost on us that hey you're right when these things happen there's gonna be people to crime mimic what this guy did they're going it's going to happen they're gonna try it and that's there's going to be people that are trying to mimic what this guy did. It's going to happen. They're going to try it. And that's why you have to be ready to go. And we have to make sure that we unfuck this and lock this down like nothing else because they're coming. And we have to be ready for it. And that was the first thing.

One of the first things I thought of was, too, was those people out there, mental illness or whatever the case is, or just want to make a name for themselves, they're going to say, well, if this kid can do that, then I can get him next time, or I can get whatever the case is. And then we have to be aware of that. So yeah, it is amped up at the highest level. And that's why going back to the agents and the uniformed division officers in the Secret Service, I think that's why you're seeing them step up, raise their hand and say, okay, wherever you need me, send me. And we just got to push through. And I think everybody, if they're like me, I think they realize we're in a critical situation here where we got to prove ourselves again. And that's why you feel it. But there's no question that there's going to be other attempts.

But once again, just like this situation on the 13th, if we did it the correct way, if we had done the way we normally do it, this wouldn't have happened. And we just got to keep doing it. But we got to do that, and I think we got to just amp up everything. We got to have to add the assets. And when you do that, obviously, that puts more strain on the workforce, but we're just going to have to do it. There's just no other way of doing it. And just know that let's get to the election. And then once we get to the election, we'll see what the results are and go from there and see what needs to be done. Do you think that there is, like we had talked earlier about some of the times where you

might say no or be like, oh, we can't do that. And you went through the processes with some specific examples if a protectee asked for certain things and the planning that has to go into it. But given the nature of where things stand, do you think that even if it's in the middle of a campaign, there are certain things that either candidate may want to do from a public standpoint where the Secret Service might actually say like, sorry, we're not doing that? I'll put it this way. We got to be really, we got to be really open to that. I mean, if I was, I'll put myself in their shoes. I didn't, it depends on if I was in their shoes under the way things

are now, I would be far more inclined to do that. But you have to be just professionally honest, and you have to be able to explain why you feel strongly about that. Because you can't start saying no to everything, of course. But you have to be able to

if you really feel strongly that that puts them at a risk that's too much risk to justify doing something. You just have to be honest with them. I wouldn't be surprised at all if that would happen more often now just because of the atmosphere we're in. Like I said, with the concerns of copycats and things like that, it's like – definitely. But I think, once again, theats and things like that. It's like, I definitely, but I think once again, the protectees also saw that they still have trusted us and, and, and they've expressed their trust in us. And we just have to keep proving that that trust is worthwhile and that

trust is justified. And so, but yeah, if I put myself in that situation as a detail leader, there's no question. I mean, everything heightened up and um if you feel uncomfortable or and i would i wouldn't hesitate this to tell a protectee hey uh sir or ma'am um i understand you want to do this here's our concerns um i honestly i don't think that we have you know i don't i couldn't recommend making this movement or give us an X amount of time and we can make this happen. I mean you have to be more open to that, but there's a gazillion different reasons or different ways of going about that depending on what the scenario is. Yeah, and you were also saying a couple minutes ago like, oh, when we get through the election, we'll see the results and then figure out where things are, which will also include that someone won't win. Now, what's interesting about this one is unlike say 2012 where Mitt Romney wasn't ever president or vice president before that.

Like Mitt Romney had a day where the Secret Service – he had lost and then the Secret Service didn't protect him anymore because he had only been a candidate. Whereas when you're VP, you keep it. you're a former president you keep it but the depending on like if you're a former president you don't have the same level of protection that the active president does for obvious reasons so depending on on that the reason i ask is because donald trump while he was a running candidate was still a former president so he wasn't in office but it was clear throughout coming into the spring of this year that he was obviously going to be the candidate for the republican party and there were questions about he had requested more secret service coverage and had

been denied some of this seemed a little bit like you know reported to me versus like what actually happened like why why would the secret service turn down more protection for a former president who is now you know let's say 50 50 going to be the next president yeah and i can't speak to it only because i'd be it would be that would be super rank speculation on my part i just don't know um do i think it's plausible that that that was requested yes and there's there's there's and they said this in the testimony, there's ways they go through OPO, the Office of Protective Operations, to request assets and things like that. I simply don't know what those processes were, but you're correct in the sense

of, I mean, Trump is a very unusual, we've never seen a former president with this kind of notoriety running. First of all, this is the first time that a former president has run for office not as an incumbent since like 1892. Yeah. And he's, like we were saying earlier, he's more recognizable than Pope, and he's super divisive personality. It's like half the people love him, half the people hate him. So he's a very unique protectee from that standpoint.

And so obviously that's gotta be factored in because he just, and then in a couple, like, you know, the situation we're in as a country where it's gotten so partisan, where, I mean, it's like fucking Sunni Shia anymore. It's gotten insane how... It's a disease. No, it's insane. People are finding meaning in – not they're finding meaning in religion or they're not finding meaning in their family. They're finding meaning in politics. Oh my god, yeah. And if you're putting your faith in a politician, they will always fucking disappoint you.

Quiet. Take that from the guy who's been around. So it's like, yeah, I don't – so it's a very – so you're in this kind of cauldron where, yeah, it's very volatile and really anything's on the table and you just got to be prepared for it. And that's why, you know, I think, you know, we'll see how it all shakes out, but I wouldn't be surprised to see in the future, you know, assuming we can get to that level. It's one of those deals where we may have to rethink how we do protection for everybody. Because to your point, let's say just hypothetical. Trump wins a second term, and he goes through the office. Now he's out.

By then, he'll be in his 80s, but he's a pretty vibrant guy. He's not going to go away even after his turn. And if he loses this, but protection, I'm talking from a protection standpoint, he's a guy that you just are going to have to, that you almost have to, you got to look at something, you can't treat him, he's different. This is not Dwight Eisenhower going off golfing at the end of his career. It's going to be a different thing. And like always, it's always something we're adjusting to. So.

Yeah. Now, we've covered pretty much everything today, but one thing I think we got off at one point that I didn't bring us back to that I think is an important educational opportunity for me and everyone else out there is the private versus public security so in 2015 when trump was coming up i remember he had that tall nypd guy who had been his personal security guy for a long time and if i remember correctly when the secret service protection started in maybe march february march 2016 that guy stayed on and worked in conjunction with the secret service yeah and helped protect him now fast forward to now trump's been president literally it wasn't just a candidate now he's president and something happened and the secret service is an agency that is quite literally

set up to protect the president and be in charge of that and have jurisdiction if there has been speculation though that like someone like trump might bring in want to bring in private security on top of that is that legal like is he allowed to do that and if so how would that relationship and maybe you can use past examples that you've worked on with it. How does that relationship work where you have privately paid guys and then you guys who are supposed to be in charge from like a jurisdiction standpoint over the protect? Well, it would be completely unprecedented. That's never, to my knowledge, and I can't imagine that's ever happened before because I can't imagine that's ever happened before. But if something like that were to happen, my guess would be – I personally don't see that happening. I don't see that scenario working itself out because, I mean, for one, those guys aren't going to be armed.

His private security, I wouldn't let them armed. So you have that decision to let them be armed or not? Well, I mean, the thing is that they're not law enforcement officers. If they can – I don't know. This is a hypothetical because I've never heard of a situation like that. But if I'm in a detail, if I'm in charge of a detail and it's a former president, he's like, oh, I'm hiring these private security guys to come with us. You can give them a rape whistle? I'm like, yeah, I don't know.

I mean that's such an unusual thing. But my first thing is – it's one thing to have police officers this stuff there but if i'm having a private security they could be the most um you know they could be the i don't know i would rather have people that you know if you have your own people that you train with and you're familiar with how they operate and then you have this group coming in that may operate completely differently you don't know them they don't know you they're armed uh they may be doing things different than you do i don't think anybody's gonna want that i would talk i would talk the boss out of that big time but i've never heard of the situation i've never heard of that that's an interesting hypothetical because the only person i could see i could imagine i don't know if there's any other i'm

sure that's never been done before but i wouldn't know um yeah i wouldn't uh be interesting if you had like an eric prince come in there yeah he was like a deep ex yeah obviously into that kind of thing and you're like sorry sir your people can't be on yeah that's what i mean it's like it puts us in the door or just go to the press like hey you can just sign off and we won't protect you you can have your form maybe this whistle wave your arms emphatically no i i don't know i've never heard of that situation before so that would be an interesting hypothetical i don't know that would be uh but but once again i think you know fortunately our protectees even after this instead of have faith in us so that's good but just so you know hopefully yeah but that would be really awkward it'd be like

like uh it'd be like uh inviting your girlfriend to go out to dinner with your wife. It's like, dude. It's like – can you imagine how the tension between the agent and the private guy, especially if the private guy was like a SEAL or some shit? In some cultures, that's okay. Yeah, it wouldn't go over well. Well, Mark, you've answered so many difficult questions today i can't tell you how much i appreciate this and i want people people have been looking at the book all day right here but you are a novelist as well i am you've written

something that i might say is maybe based off inspired by some people that you've known within the secret service yeah so it's based off my experience it's a humorous political thriller it's fence jumper obviously link in description link and just yes yes exactly and uh so it's the the feedback it came out last year the feedback's been really good it was i got it cleared through the secret service um so basically it's about a secret service agent suspended for a sex scandal in south america yeah so then that did never happen yeah no and then a democratic a guy running for office running for the presidency had his wife kidnapped so he looks like a political uh victim she escapes the secret service agent guy finds her he's suspended and they start investigating it got russian agents

in it it's uh it's carl hyacin meets like jack carr kind of thing i'm a big carl hyacinth fan so there's a lot of humor a lot of political satire there is a president in here you'll probably recognize um but the feedback's been really really good you can find it on the amazon uh it's probably the best place to go just type in finch jepper book um mark brainerberg obviously and uh i'm about 200 pages into the sequel, which I'm hoping will come out next year. All right, let's pump that one. Tentatively called Webcam Girl. So it continues with the same thing.

Yeah, exactly. No, the feedback's been good. Actually, what's funny is I was on Hugh Hewitt's show, The Conservative Commentator. He read it and enjoyed it. And then former Trump NSA, Robert O'Brien, he read the book and he described it as, as he was perfect he did it on twitter he goes he described it as uh veep meets house of cards oh i like that it was great well i told him i told uh i told the

ambassador o'brien i said that's the best fucking description i've ever heard like why didn't i think of that he's way smarter than me though so that's why he came up with it but so we'll see uh um yeah so if he becomes you know if he's in the next cabinet or something like that i'll try to see if hey uh ambassador can you comment on webcam girl yeah yeah hey you want to read web well i was a little worried too because he said either we i i've known him a little bit but what's's interesting is I didn't know what his sense of humor was like because this is rated R. This is not for the children's section.

Anyway, so he read it and really enjoyed it. And I remember his wife saying, my wife said I kept laughing. I was keeping her up because I was laughing. So I was like, that's a solid endorsement. And also he knows Washington, D.C. well, so I make fun of Washington a a lot i like that and so uh i think people will enjoy if you like uh thriller books and you like carl heisen or jack carter like this all righty sir well we got fence jumper link down in the description so everybody go check it out but mark this has been amazing you did a really

good job i'm sure don't read the comment section'm sure there's going to be a lot of people with opinions. I've learned – I don't do a lot of these, but I learned that – I think my first podcast I did, like one night on Friday night, I was grilling outside. I had a couple drinks. I was like, oh, let's see what the comments say. That was the biggest mistake of my life. Just stay away from that, but I really appreciate the candor on this. No, I think I appreciate you guys. No, I appreciate you guys having me in and um um once again if you want to be a secret service agent usa jobs.gov we're hiring all right brother all right thank you sir everybody else you know what it is give it a thought get back

to me peace thank you guys for watching the episode before you leave please be sure to hit that subscribe button and smash that like button on the video it's a huge help and also if you're over on instagram be sure to follow the show at Julian Dory podcast, or also on my personal page at Julian D. Dory. Both links are in the description below. Finally, if you'd like to catch up on our latest episodes, use the Julian Dory podcast playlist link in the description below. Thank you.