Law&Crime Sidebar - Top 6 Suspicious Factors of Donald Trump Assassination Attempt

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Donald J. Trump was swarmed by Secret Service officials after being shot in the ear during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday. Snipers took out the would-be assassin seconds after he failed to kill the former POTUS. The shooting has led to many questions among spectators who are demanding answers on how Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to take shots at Trump. Law&Crime’s Jesse Weber breaks down the top five suspicious factors related to the Trump assassination attempt with former FBI agent Bobby Chacon.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:If you’re ever injured in an accident, you can check out Morgan & Morgan. You can submit a claim in 8 clicks or less without having to leave your couch. To start your claim, visit: https://www.forthepeople.com/LCSidebarHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger and Christina FalconeScript Writing & Producing - Savannah WilliamsonGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Thomas Crooks. We have more questions than answers right now surrounding the horrifying shooting of former President Donald Trump and others at a rally in Pennsylvania. From the motivation of the identified shooter to how this even happened, we're going to break down these issues with retired FBI agent and attorney, Bobby Chacon. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. Take a look at the... So that arrow is the lowest amount of illegal immigration ever in recorded history into our country. And then the worst president in the history of our country took over. And look what happened to our country, probably 20 million people. And you know, that's a little bit old, that chart. That chart's a couple of months old. And if you want to really see something that said, take a look at what happened.

Go ahead. Hold on, you're ready. I'm ready. Who? Who? Who? No. I got my shoes.

We still. We still have a lot of unanswered questions in the aftermath on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump from this past Saturday, and we want to talk about it. This is a horrific shooting that left the Republican nominee for president with a damaged ear. Two people critically injured, 57-year-old David Dutch, 74-year-old James Copenhagen, although now they are in stable condition. And sadly, this also led to the death of firefighter, 50-year-old Corey Compitour, who is apparently shielding his family from the gunfire when he was killed. It's just heartbreaking to think about what happened here.

In authorities, they have identified the shooter, 20-year-old. Thomas Matthew Crooks, a Pennsylvania resident, as we reported on our previous sidebar on the shooting. Reporting indicates Crooks was a loner, had been bullied in school. He had tried but failed to make his school's rifle team because apparently he was a bad shot. The FBI currently leading up this investigation, looking into this shooting. And at this point, reporting indicates the shooter had used an AR-style weapon, a 556 rifle. Reporting indicates that the firearm was purchased legally by Crook's father, although it's not clear how he was actually able to gain access to the gun. The shooter was positioned about 130 to 150 yards away on a nearby roof, this seemingly

on the outside perimeter of that rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooting took place about six minutes into Trump's speech, and after the shooting, law enforcement discovered rudimentary explosives in Crook's car that was parked near the rally. This included an apparent IED. They also discovered bomb-making materials in his home as well. And apparently, Crooks. also had a remote control detonator on his body as well. So it makes you think about how much more destructive and lethal this event could have been. But we have so many unanswered questions about what led up to this shooting, how it happened. And so with that, I want to bring on right now, retired FBI agent and attorney Bobby Chaconne to talk more about it.

Bobby, thanks so much for coming on. First, let me just say, tell our audience why it's so important that the FBI, is taking the lead on this investigation. Well, first of all, the FBI has a lead on all investigations involving assassinations or attempted assassinations of presidents or any other federal official. That's the FBI's jurisdiction. That's what we do. Here, we're talking about two kind of separate investigations that people shouldn't confuse. One is of the shooter, his actions, how he got to do it.

The other is the internal secret service or government, more government-wide investigation into the security lapses. Those are two separate investigations. Secret Service has left to their own internal audit about how this happened. The FBI is just looking at the shooter, his motivations, and how he was able to carry it out up until the point he pulled that trigger. So those are two separate issues. They kind of do overlap and merge a little bit, but the FBI is always in charge of any investigation of violence towards government officials. Hey, everybody, we're going to get back to this historic story in just a minute, but I want to thank our incredible sponsor here on Sidebar, who helps make this show happen. Morgan and Morgan, America's largest injury law firm.

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You only pay them if you win. So if you're injured, you can easily start. a claim at for the people.com slash L.C. Sidebar. And before we get into the first question that I'm going to ask is about the motivation here or the parent motivation, the FBI has resources that another agency doesn't? Well, I think so. I mean, the largest company agency in terms of a budget and, well, the CIA has a bigger budget, but I'm talking about manpower, the number of agents and the budget we have for investigations. Sure, we're the largest federal agency to do that. Other

you know, DEA focused on drugs, ATF on guns, but we cover everything. So the FBI does have that broader jurisdiction and therefore broader resources. Let me ask you the most basic question when we talk about unanswered questions. Why, if it's true that he is the shooter, Mr. Crooks, why would he purportedly do this? And how important is determining motive here? Because I think that's an important point, right? How important is it to understand the motivation surrounding it? And what could the possible motivation be here?

Well, I mean, Jesse, look, without any political assassination or attempted assassination that this is, you know, there's an implied motivation. He wanted Donald Trump dead because he didn't want Donald Trump to become the next president. I think that that's kind of an implied thing. I mean, he might have hated Donald Trump for other reasons, but it's hard to see that he took this action for any other reason other than he wanted to stop Donald Trump from becoming the next president. I mean, he might have been, he might have had an agreement with Trump for other past actions that Trump, Trump may have taken while he was president the first time. But this is a political assassination. And normally, those things have that implied motive of you want to stop this person's political ambitions. Well, this is why it's strange because CNN is reporting that investigators have kind of hit a roadblock.

They've been looking at his phone. They've been looking at his computer searches. They've searched the home. They've interviewed friends, family, and they can't piece together a definitive motive. There's reportedly nothing out of the ordinary. They find an interest in coding and gaming, but they can't seem to find any kind of political ideation, any religious motivation, nothing, no clue that would lead anybody to suspect he was about to do this.

Do you find that very unusual to see that? It is. It is very, because like I said, along with the implied motivation of a political assassination or attempted assassination, you do normally find. a lot of political ideology in the person's lifestyle and his background and his conversations with people and as associations with people and organizations. And so normally they are ideologues

and they are hell bent on carrying out an act of violence in political act of violence. It's normally very apparent from looking at their background. And here they're not finding that. So, you know, there's that, like I said, there's an implied motivation, but it could be, you know, he was just out for fame. But oftentimes we also see

of that in his background you know he wanted to become famous because you know he because killing Trump obviously would make him famous or you know because we had like you know different motivations when when Hinkley shot Reagan it was because his fascination with Jody Foster it would and thought he would maybe famous the person that killed John Lennon actually was a big John Lennon fan so there's sometimes these people have these ideas in their head that this act I'm gonna carry out this act and then I would be viewed as this other person or in this way so you know that's more of a mental health

expert question like could it and what is in his background might indicate that but yeah you're right I mean a political motivated attack normally had some kind of he would be more active politically either online or in person and which is not finding that right now and it could be that he also potentially had a grudge against other people at the rally because if you take it obviously the number of shots that were fired the people who were injured someone who was killed and if the explosives in the car which he could potentially have detonated and harmed a lot more people. It's difficult to know who the exact target was or why.

But here's the thing. If you were to watch him before this, you'd say something was up with this guy. Why? Because CNN is also reporting that Crooks had visited a shooting range the day before the rally. Apparently, he was a member there, then goes to a Home Depot where he purchases a ladder, then goes to a local gun store in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, buys 50 rounds of ammunition. Apparently drives to the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, parks the car,

uses the ladder to get to the roof of the adjacent American Glass Research Building sets up and opens fire. So Bobby, when we talk about what his motivation was and we see law enforcement trying to set up a timeline here, what do you take away from that? Well, the young man was very determined. Clearly, he's determined to carry out this attack with all of these steps he's taking what we call pre-event planning and pre-event activity, which begs the question on why we're not, why we're not seeing more rhetoric, more associations in his background that would have led somebody to believe that he was going to do this, because he's a pretty determined individual as your description rightly spells out. And so someone that determined is so motivated. It's hard

not to think that, you know, you wouldn't see some motivation of that in other parts of his life, either online or talking to friends or mentioning something to family members. If he was able to keep all of this rage and carrying a gun to a rooftop and shooting into a crowd and taking practice, practicing the day before. I mean, you are determined there's a lot of rage there. And to have that rage not manifest itself in prior behavior or prior acts or prior discussions is really unusual. At the time of this recording, Bobby, no evidence about how he knew how to make explosive devices. That's not an easy thing. And again, if they haven't found searches, online, where he, you know, talk about how to make these devices.

I find that weird, too. Yeah, that's the first thing I would think of. Look at a search history. Is he searching Google for how to make an IED or something like that now? I mean, our guys are digging into it. Our forensic examiners are good at that. So, you know, if he was able to use, you know, this was a young man. He knows computers.

He's of the age that he grew up with them. And so, you know, if he was using some kind of, you know, dark web to hide his search histories and stuff, our guys usually find that stuff. And so hopefully something like that happens because I don't know where, I mean, unless you somehow got a whole of a bomb-making manual and I don't know how you do that either. Obviously stuff's readily available on the internet,

which leads a trail. If you're not finding that trail, I don't know how a 20-year-old young man without prior military training or any kind of training would know to get those things and how to even crudely assemble them. Again, at the time of this recording, we haven't seen evidence

of how we figured out how to do that unless he searched it somewhere else, not on his own devices. But you mentioned there's two parts of this, right? So there's two parts of it. There's what do we know about the shooter, the suspected shooter, and what do we know about the shooting itself and why it happened? That's the second part, and that's what I want to talk about. Because there are a lot of questions, and there are a lot of questions that have been put on the Secret Service.

The spotlight has been put on the Secret Service. There's an investigation not just by the FBI, Congress, Department of Homeland Security. And the first question is, how is this American Glass research, building where crooks purportedly shot from why was it not secured bobby it had a line of sight to where trump would be speaking isn't there an advance team to check this out done that and they were probably there on the ground i don't know a week or 10 days in advance as the usual um and they would have anybody you know that does threat assessments would have seen that as a vulnerability that high ground um with the rec line of sight not that far at distance you don't

have to be an expert marksman to hit somebody with a rifle from that distance. And so it's really the million dollar question is how, first of all, how the perimeter wasn't set out further, why that building wasn't part of the inner perimeter, that anybody getting to that building would have to go through security checks through the magnetometers of. That's the first thing. Why wasn't that included in the outer perimeter? It was a very tight perimeter. And the second is, even if it's outside the perimeter, and make no mistake, Secret Service, and I've worked with them on different events, they come in and they take, I mean, what they say, goes when you have a former president or a current president, they are, you know, they don't

play well with others. They pretty much set the rules. And if they told local police officers, look, that's outside the perimeter, but we want your guys on top of that because they, you know, they lend resources. Then the cops would have had somebody on top of that. Now, what we heard from the chief service director, I think, in an interview, was that they had people inside the building. They were securing, you don't, you don't secure a building from the inside, not a, not a short building like that. And this is not the Texas school book depository. So you can't secure it from the inside. I mean, the benefit of that building to any adversary

is the high ground, is the roof. And so you had to have people up there. The fact that it was slope, the service service step or even said it was slope, so there was a safety factor. It wasn't slope that much, number one. Number two, friends of mine who are snipers, they're trained to get themselves into very uncomfortable situations

and stay there for long periods of time. And by the way, the secret service snipers were on a slope roof that day. So that is the question. But here's the thing I don't understand. Wouldn't the shooter have had to have known beforehand where the best position to set up was to kill Donald Trump and had to assume that that building wouldn't be secure? Otherwise, he'd be going in, there's no way I'd be able to set up there. I'm sure it's going to be blocked off.

I'm sure there's going to be people out there. It was almost as if he knew that was where to set up. Yeah, that's a question that I had. And I hope the obviously the investigation is probably looking into that, whether or not he did even more pre-event surveillance. Was he there when they were doing the survey? Was he there the day or two before so he could see where the perimeter was being set up? And he knew that building was outside the security perimeter. So yes, and the fact that he brought a ladder leads me to believe that he knew somebody might not be up there.

And that's disturbing to me because that stuff should all, that's why it should be inside the security perimeter. That's why that stuff should be remained kind of secretive. Now, also I've heard reports that people saw him kind of acting strange outside the magnetometer. So I wonder if he actually had the thought of, you know, maybe I could get in. Maybe I could sneak in. Let's see what kind of security is thinking. Maybe I can get into the perimeter. And when he realized he couldn't, then went back and retrieved the ladder.

And maybe this was kind of a backup plan. I don't know. Interesting. I'll get to that in a second. I want to go back to this building in terms of who's securing it because we're getting kind of this. Everybody's pointing the finger at one another because local, was it local law enforcement who was supposed to secure it?

It was it Secret Service. And I say that because Secret Service spokesperson, Anthony Guglemie, said that it, was the Butler Township Police Department and the Butler County Sheriff's Office job to secure that building. But the Butler County DA, Richard Goldinger, told NBC News, they had meetings in the week prior. The Secret Service ran the show. They were the ones who designed who did what. In the command hierarchy, they were top. They were number one. To me, the whole thing is under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service, and they will delineate from there. So who was in charge of securing the building? Bobby, was it Secret Service or local law enforcement?

Well, like he said, and I agree with them, Secret Service is in charge of the entire security apparatus. And they coordinate stuff. So, in other words, if they wanted somebody on that roof and they didn't have the manpower, they would have assigned, okay, Butler County or whoever, or state police, whoever, you've got to be on that roof. And they would be part of the plan. And what normally you do is before the protectee even arrives on scene, you go down your checklist. Is this done? Is that done? Hey, there's nobody on that roof.

This person's supposed to be on the roof. Where are they? That's Secret Service. They should be going down their checklist and going, okay, that roof needs to be secured. It's part of the plan. I don't see anybody up there. You have to go. It's like a pilot going through a checklist pre-flight.

You go through your checklist and you go down all the vulnerabilities. That roof needs to be covered. There's nobody up there. Where are they? Protectee is not coming out until the person's on their roof. Now, who is supposed to be on there? I don't know. But Secret Service certainly was in charge of making sure whoever that was was up there before the

protectee comes out. And even if it's outside the perimeter, shouldn't they keep a, careful eye on that building throughout, right? I mean, the idea of even if it's outside the perimeter, you know, you don't have to go through a magnetometer necessarily to get in there, shouldn't that be a place where you station at least one person or you have your snipers keep a central eye on it. I'm sure they're looking past 130, 150 yards, but if that's a building so close, shouldn't that have been, remain a focus? There should be somebody up there, whether it was state police, Butler County or Secret Service, Secret Service was in charge of making sure

somebody who was up there no matter who was supposed to be up there and and I would like to look at their operational plan and see who they disposed they assigned to be up there and then prior to the protectee coming on stage why the checklist wasn't looked at and said there's somebody missing up on that roof we need to get somebody on that roof we're not bringing them out until that's done now I think that when you look at the video of the counter sniper the who took the shot they're looking in the direction of that building and I'm pretty sure that's because they're hearing radio traffic saying somebody's on

the roof because there was some chaotic situation over there you You saw the video, people saying, a woman saying he's on the roof, he's got a gun. I'm sure that was put over calm. When you look at that roof, it sloped away. And I don't think the counter-sniper guys could actually see the shooter yet. He was crawling up. He was on his belly. And then what happened was an officer confronted him and they were treated.

He turned around with his rifle towards the officer. What that did was make the guy move quicker. Then he popped up really fast over that peak and started shooting. That's when the, I own the sniper's person. Because you see them looking there. And they're probably saying, I see the roof. I don't see anybody. I see the roof. I don't see anybody. That's because he's behind that slight roof. And then he pops up and then he starts firing and then they fire back. Just to amplify that a little bit and explain what we're talking about

because the next question is, you know, Crooks was apparently spotted there. There were reports that he was acting strange near security. There were other accounts that people saw him with the rifle beforehand. There were others who said they saw him scaling the building, that they alerted law enforcement. In fact, it was being reported that Secret Service was alerted. to watch him. And the Butler County Sheriff, Michael Sloop, told CBS News that police were looking for crooks, and they confirmed that an officer scaled the roof, quote, all I know is the officer had both hands on the roof to get up on the roof, never made it because the shooter had turned towards the officer and rightfully and smartly the officer let go. I would have done

the same thing. Absolutely. I mean, people think the officers are supermen like you hold on the roof with one hand while you're hanging on for dear life and you pull a gun out. It doesn't work that way. So, Bobby, what's your take on that, on that new development that, you know, people had apparently seen him. Law enforcement had seen him. He allegedly points the gun and a member of law enforcement. Was this just rapidly happening too quickly? And, you know, there might have been an alert that someone's there, but like you said, they couldn't figure out where he was. That's the part that I think people find very strange. It is very strange. And that should all be taken into account in the operational planning of this thing. And I've been involved.

I was the special events coordinated for the FBI in Los Angeles. We coordinated security for the FBI at the Oscars, the Golden Globes and Rose Bowl, things like that, with LAPD, with Secret Service sometimes. And so what happens, what should have happened is, and it, you know, hopefully they're on the same radio. We had this after 9-11, the interoperability of radios between fire and police and federal and stuff. And so normally the minute somebody sees somebody inside, not even close to the perimeter with a gun, the call is out, gun, gun, gun, and then the protectee gets taken out. So if that would a call would have made, if that officer would have been able to get somebody's on the roof with a gun, then you take the, before any shots of fire, before you even see the guy, take the protectee out, get him to a safe place, resolve what that is, and maybe you put him back up on stage, maybe you don't. But soon as somebody saw somebody with a gun that wasn't a calendar for, it wasn't state police, wasn't local, whatever, you didn't know who this person was with a gun, all the radio should have went off, get the protectee safe, and then address whatever that was.

That wasn't done here. I don't know if it wasn't done because the timing and like you said, it happened very quickly right after that. I don't know what the, but we need to, you know, see the radio transmission logs, which are all recorded. We need to match that up with the video, so much video. And you're going to be able to get almost a second by second analysis of who knew what, when and why the word didn't go out to get him off the stage the minute they saw somebody with a gun. Bobby, I have one more question for you. We're actually going to dedicate, I think, a separate sidebar to this. And it's about how Crooks had the weapon, right? So this AR-style rifle apparently, as I mentioned, was purchased by his father, and it was reportedly more than 20 firearms that were registered to his father. They were kept at the family's home.

We're trying to understand how he got access to it. And also, I guess the side question is whether or not his father could be legally responsible for what happened. In a similar vein, as we've talked about with the Crumbly case, what are your initial pressures on the syndicate? Again, I think we're going to explore this on another sidebar, but what are your thoughts on it? Yeah, I mean, that's a lot of guns. You know, the problem with me is not that people have the guns. It's not they don't know how to secure them or they're not willing to secure them. I know guns safe are expensive and things like that, but I have guns in my house.

They're always secured. You have to keep your weapons secured. Now, the father, apparently, I thought maybe I had this weapon for a number of years, and the kid had access to it. There's a lot of hunting in that area. The kid belongs to a gun range. He might have been able to legally buy his own guns. I don't know.

So maybe the father lent him guns to go to the range, and he's done that for a number of years so the father had no idea you know the kid goes to the range all the time maybe maybe that's part of his hobby people do sometimes have have that hobby and and so maybe there wasn't and like you said we talked about earlier maybe there wasn't in any indication on the part of the father in the crumpley case you know there are cases where the the kid or the person the child the parent they know they have some indications that the kid has problems and he shouldn't have access to a gun but here we're talking about you know there may

not have been any indication that this 20-year-old man should not be able to borrow his father's weapon and go to the range. All right, Bobby, thank you so much for breaking it down for us. We really appreciate it. That's all we have for you here on Sidebar, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Jesse Weber. Speak to you next time. of this long crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.