The President's Daily Brief - PDB Situation Report | July 20, 2024: Secret Service Failures & Iranian Assassination Plot

Episode Date: July 20, 2024

In this episode of The PDB Situation Report: A week after the failed assassination attempt on President Trump, new details have emerged about critical security failures by the Secret Service. Retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent James Gagliano joins us to break it all down. Just hours after the attempt on Trump's life, we learned that US authorities had intelligence on a recent Iranian plot to assassinate him. Richard Goldberg, former Director for Countering Iranian Weapons of Mass Destruction for the White House National Security Council under President Trump, joins us to discuss this alarming development. To listen to the show ad-free, become a premium member of The President’s Daily Brief by visiting PDBPremium.com. Please remember to subscribe if you enjoyed this episode of The President's Daily Brief. Email: [e-mail]. ☕ Blackout Coffee: https://www.blackoutcoffee.com/PDB  Code: PDB 🏅 Patriot Gold: https://www.patriotgoldgroup.com Say Mike Baker sent you 💵 Tax Network: https://www.tnusa.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Kayak. Got that right. Welcome to the PDB Situation Report. I'm Mike Baker. Your eyes and ears on the world stage. All right, let's get briefed. In today's spotlight, a week after the failed assassination attempt on President Trump, new details have emerged about critical security fear. failures by the Secret Service. Now, to help us break it all down, we'll be joined by retired FBI supervisory special agent James Gagliano. A little later in the show, just hours after the failed

attempt on Trump's life, we learned that U.S. authorities had intelligence on a recent Iranian plot to assassinate him. Joining us to discuss that is Richard Goldberg, former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council under President Trump. That would not fit easily on a business card. But first, today's situation report spotlight. It's been about a week since the failed assassination attempt on President Trump during a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania.

And as you already know, the would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks, grazed Trump killed one rallygoer and critically wounded to others. Now, in the days since, as facts have emerged, we've learned of a number of critical failures by the U.S. Secret Service and local law enforcement, which allowed the would-be assassin to take multiple shots at the president. This includes the failure to secure a rooftop with line of sight to the rally stage, mind you, just 130 yards away from where the former president was speaking. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheedle has come under intense scrutiny in the days since

for her agency's handling of the event and apparent failures. While she said that the full blame lays with the Secret Service and has stated that, quote, the buck stops with her. She's offered some baffling excuses as to why these failures happened. Most notably, she told ABC News that the failure to secure the rooftop was due in part to the fact that it was a sloped roof. Yeah, sloped roof. By the way, if the buck did indeed stop with her, she would be unemployed at this point. but it's Washington, D.C.

Where the buck stops here actually means, that book is getting passed around indefinitely, or at least until the next news cycle. In addition, we've learned very little about the motive of the 20-year-old shooter. Now, he appears to have been a loner with very little social media footprint.

Okay, joining me now to help us unpack the security failures leading up to the attack is James Gagliano, retired FBI supervisory special agent. He's served 25 years, years in the FBI, including assignment to the FBI's elite counterterror unit, the hostage rescue team, and as senior team leader of the FBI's New York Field Division SWAT team. James, thank you very, very much for taking the time. Mike, it's good to join you. Okay, now I'm going to ask you

a very broad question here. Good God, what went wrong? Yeah, I think, Mike, you know, we're at a point right now where there are so many more questions than answers. And as you pointed out, we're just coming up on one week ago. I mean, it was last Saturday at 6.12 p.m. That the former president and current presidential candidate came under fire from someone about 130 yards away perched on top of a of a rooftop with full view of the candidate. And it's unconscionable. And I heard you mention in the wind up to this about the Secret Service Director.

and how she is taken responsibility and yet deflected and kind of distracted away from what appear to be a colossal set of cascading systems failures here. I cannot imagine how something of this magnitude. And I understand it's not a national special security event. It's not akin to the RNC in Milwaukee where the resources are plentiful and abundant. There's hundreds of police agencies that are all integrated. There are tabletop exercises, field training exercises running up to it. That's not what this was. This was a former president.

It looks like there was a paucity of resources from the federal side of this. They're forced to integrate with the local community, the Pennsylvania State Police, as well as the Butler Township Police. But Mike, you called it. When the independent review of this is conducted and the FBI conducts a review of this, there are going to be a set of colossal. failures that never, ever, ever should have happened here. Okay, now I want to back up just a little bit because you made an important point. You referenced national security events and the fact that this was not one, this was a campaign event.

Two things. Could you explain to our audience sort of the process involved? You get a national security event like the RNC that's been going on. But also, as a sidebar here, do you know or have you heard about? at what point this campaign rally that took place in Pennsylvania on Saturday, at what point was that put on the calendar as an event for the Secret Service? Sure. So as being the FBI senior team leader in the New York City Division back in 2004, 20 years ago,

this upcoming month, I was the tactical response team leader for the Republican National Convention that was held at Madison Square Garden. That was something that we planned out in advance over a year. So we worked hand and glove with the Secret Service, with the New York City Police Department, with the New York State Police, and a whole host of federal state and other local police departments to prep for that. And as you pointed out, it's an NSSC, a national special security event. These are things that resources are not an issue. They're major, major events. I've said to people that have been asking me about this all week, Milwaukee's FISAF Center right now where the R&C is going on is the same.

safest place to be on earth. That is in direct opposite, polar opposite end of Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday. And why was that? I don't know for certain, but having been involved in dignitary protection, I worked on three Attorney General's details, Janet Reno's, John Ashcrofts, and Alberto Gonzalez's, and I worked protecting two FBI directors, Director Mueller and Director Free. Something like this where you're dealing with a candidate who's conducting a whistle stop tour, they probably got information that he was going to Butler, Pennsylvania, a week or less in advance. Now, that's no excuses. It's no excuse that somebody could have been able to access a rooftop 130 yards away. That's unconscionable. It's no excuse that the site advance plan did not put that place into play,

meaning if they didn't have a drone over the top of it or they didn't control access to the top of it, there should have been somebody on top of it. So colossal failure there, but I will give the service the benefit of the doubt that this was not something planned far in advance where there were times to coordinate it and get the necessary resources. There were a paucity of resources there, and it's probably something, Mike, that got put on the calendar a few days, if not a week or so in advance. Okay.

Now, okay, I think, yeah, that is logical. That makes perfect sense. And it's just the way that it works. but is it fair to say that fine, you've got a resource issue when you're talking about a short time fuse for an event, right? Like the event in Pennsylvania compared to a national security event. But on the operational side, you've got protocols in place, right? So not to oversimplify it, but every event, you tend to step through, and correct me, please correct me if I'm wrong. You tend to step through the same methodology, right?

You do the same things over and over again, which in part is why, you know, this can be such a mind-numbing business because of the repetitive nature of it. But that also means that you are stepping through certain things every time to create your security plan for that particular event. Oh, no doubt. And the five-paragraph military operations order applies. It applied when I was in SWAT. It applied when I was on the FBI's Hosses Rescue Team.

It applied when I worked overseas with Joint Special Operations Command. It applies. Situation, mission, execution, administration, and command and control. In this instance, it's going to be easy. And this is the typical thing that comes out of every single hot wash or after action review that was conducted after an operation, whether it was a training mission or whether it was a real life crisis incident. And there's always going to be complaints about communication. And people said to me, well, Jimmy, why couldn't the counter-snipers from the Secret Service speak to the police officers that were on the ground?

Mike, you know as well as I do. In an operation like this, there were probably six or seven, maybe eight different frequencies. You're going to have a command frequency. You're going to have your state police on one frequency. Your local police on another frequency. The counter-sniper team is on one. The counter-assault team's on another. the protection detail, the body people that were up on the stage, they're going to be on another.

Now, yes, you have to have liaisons that go through the command post or the Joint Operations Center and get that real-time information. Hey, there's a guy up on the roof. We think he has a gun. How does that not get translated where it needs to get to and passed along? That is the fog of war. And, brother, I know you've been in some hairy places in your life, as I certainly have. And it is the fog of war.

We know that there were some 90 seconds before. some of the video shows where people were pointing out where the sniper was on the roof before the Secret Service actually was able to engage him. After he had already fired off eight shots of 556 at the head of a former president, unconscionable, but again, it's going to probably come down to fog of war communication issues. And maybe to your point at the top of this, were there any flaws with the site planning? Did they look at that rooftop as not a threat or not as something? something that needed to be owned. Look, let's go back to December of 1963. The secret surface

realized then that somebody up in a book depository could take shots at an open-air convertible that the president of the United States was traveling in in Dallas and assassinate him. So, everything changed, and it became the, you have to own the high ground. Clearly in this instance, Mike, that didn't happen. Yeah, look, I mean, they, you bring up the Kennedy assassination, I've actually taken sights out of that window that Lee Harvey Oswald used and looked at in depth his time there and establishing himself and understanding and scouting out his position there ahead of the convoy that came through. So I guess part of the problem I think that the Secret Service is facing right now is the immediacy

of information flow. I mean in events past, people had to sit and wait for it. for the news to tell them what was going on. There were so many people in attendance at that event with smartphones and taking video and the different angles that it covered and also just the speed of information that it flows through social media now. That we need transparency from Secret Service and local law enforcement as to how this all fell apart.

But at the same time, we've already got some transparency that is conflicting with some of the responses that we're getting from Secret Service. So I think that's creating, I mean, again, it's a crisis communications issue. They're compounding what is already a very bad situation by the way that they're handling it. Now, I don't want to disappear down that rabbit hole just yet, but you mentioned communications and you mentioned the different freaks that would be used for this. And the fact that it is, and it is actually, it's much more complicated, I think, than people understand, at least initially.

But, again, going back to the idea that this is done over and over and over, It's not the first time they've had to use local assets at a campaign event of any sort, whether it's with the former president or anyone else. So they're walking through various steps. Now, I think one of the things that also is confusing people is, look, there must have been a site assessment and a security ops plan for this. And so wouldn't that then have to be given final approval reviewed again just prior to all of this? And we're not even getting to some of the immediacy of, you know, we've spotted a suspicious

individual. How about we hold the former president in the secure place until we sort this out? Again, I'm not sure. I don't necessarily have a question for you, James. I think I'm as confused as a lot of people out there. And I'm looking for your perspective on some of this without asking you to speculate. That's not fair to you. So, you know, talk to me about really go anywhere with you because I think people will find any

direction we go interesting at this point. Yeah, I think, Mike, you certainly understand, having, again, been in the business, as we say, that we're very careful. We want to make sure that the investigation is conducted. There'll be an internal review by the Secret Service. And remember, the Secret Service answers under the Department of Homeland Security since 2002, post-9-11. So there'll be an investigation by the Department of Homeland Security. The FBI is being pulled in to obviously investigate this as well. And then the president the other night stated that from the Oval Office that there would be an independent review.

I don't know what that meant if they were going to bring outside contractors, but there will be an independent review. There will be a number of reviews on this. I'm never in the business of shilling. I bleed FBI blue and gold. I spent 25 years, retired at age 50. So half of my life in the FBI, I love the agency. I love the mission. I love the men and women in it.

But I never shill for it. And I will never shill for law enforcement. in a situation where we're looking to, you and I are looking at this and saying, what can we do to prevent the next one? Where was the breakdown? And look, there's plenty of things that you could use to excuse this. Jimmy opt tempo. Now, opt tempo is a word that you understand, but for your listeners that might not be familiar

with it, it's operational tempo. And following a presidential candidate around such as the former president, Donald Trump, polarizing figure, the people that love him, love him, The people that loathe him, loathe him. So there's probably plenty of chatter. You already spoke about it, you know, potentially could a bad state actor like Iran have put out a hit on him? Could another bad state actor, North Korea, Russia, China, and then locally, the fact that we're a bifurcated nation. So I just laid the groundwork to say, yes, there should have been a heightened sense of awareness here.

But the Secret Service has limited resources like everybody else. and the way they conduct their operations, they cannot do it. Their primary mission is protecting the president or whatever other dignitary or dignitary's families they're assigned to without resources. Now, Representative Waltz from, I believe, is a Republican from the state of Florida, has accused Secretary Majorcas, who runs the Department of Homeland Security of denying a request for additional assets and resources from the Secret Service to protect the former president. That will be fleshed out in the investigation.

But okay, let's start from the position. Let's just assume that let's stipulate that there were limited numbers of people there to do the job. To your point, they still had to conduct a site advance. That meant that members of the Secret Service went out to that location in Butler, Pennsylvania, linked up with the local police, linked up with Pennsylvania State Police, walked the area, did sight lines, looked at the high ground, look at what the threat would be regarding the actual terrain. They did a terrain walk. And then they had to augment with state and local police.

Now, I'll say this. There's 327 million people in this country. Only 770,000 of them, a percentage of less than 1% are involved in law enforcement. We love the police. We back the blue. We love the police. You and I've worked through our careers with numbers of police agencies. They're the best of the best.

But Mike, they're not all equal. And in one area, you may be working with the finest. And in another area, they don't have the gear, equipment, training, or wherewithal. I'm not casting shade on the Butler Township Police Department. I'm not because the investigation hasn't been conducted. But I think that's the conundrum that the Secret Service has put in. They could be working with the NYPD one day. And they could be working with some tiny police department with three uniformed police officers

that has never handled a crisis. incident before. And I think that's the problem here is that when they're following a candidate around the country and they have to provide a protection as a presidential candidate and as a former president, it leaves it wide open that you don't always get the same level of talent and expertise from your law enforcement partners. Yeah, that opens up some additional questions that I want to get to straight away. But first of all, James, if you'll stay right there, we are going to take a quick break because we have some terrific sponsors. When we come back, we'll have more on the attempted assassination of former President Trump. Hey, if you're a listener to the PDB, well,

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failures that led to the failed assassination attempt on President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania. Our guest, James Gagliano, retired FBI supervisory special agent is helping us to unpack what went wrong. And there clearly is a fair amount to unpack here. James, before the break, we were talking about, and you were talking about the variations in abilities, training, resources for local law enforcement, which oftentimes is called onto augment the Secret Service element that's involved in any protective detail. Now, am I wrong in saying that whether it's Butler County where the assassination attempt was or any other place, when you're talking about this type of event, the Secret Service, though, has primacy. Is that correct? I mean,

they're the final decider, as George W. used to say. Absolutely. And related to a presidential decision directive many years ago, they are the lead agency where it comes to protecting the president and his family. And in this instance, they would have controlled it. I referenced before 2004 when I was the FBI chief in New York City and our role there as part of the, the counter assault or the takeback team, again, was underneath the Secret Service. They're the lead agency where it comes to presidential protection. And look, They've been doing it a long time. And Mike, I think another piece of this is we're talking about breakdowns,

whether it's in comms or the fact that you don't always know what you're going to get in regards to the local law enforcement resources that are provided to you. And the Secret Service relies heavily on that. It's also a little bit in intelligence. I mean, you know, we've been in the business of having presidents assassinated since 1865. when it happened with President Lincoln. I think the next one was 1881, President Garfield. Then 1901 with President McKinley.

In 1963, we talked about President Kennedy. And 43 years ago, we had the attempted assassination of President Reagan. This is the charter mission. This is the primary mission of the Secret Service. But, you know, I want to look at and see from the After Action Review here, whichever report comes out to what was the intelligence. We know that there had been some chatter about, you know, foreign nation states, bad state actors looking to do something to harm the former president.

The Secret Service fields daily, just a plethora of online cooks. 99% of them are just like keyboard warriors, and we know about those kind of people. But there's that maybe less than 1% that you actually have to worry about. will they translate that overheated rhetoric and that, you know, that language, that heated language, which could be construed as hyperbole, but could also translate into actual action. They've got to track those folks down. So intelligence is important.

I think the other piece of this is complacency. Complacency kills. And if you don't, when you're on a surveillance mission or when you're protecting a dignitary or a protectee, it's easy to, quote, unquote, fall asleep at the switch. because it is a boring, mind-numbingly mundane task. So that's an issue. And then lastly, Mike, I think this is something you probably know from your previous life. But in a free and open society, we don't live under martial law.

And the president doesn't live in a bunker 24-7, 365. In a free and open society, there is not one human being on this planet, including the president of the United States, the current sitting president of the United States, that can't be assassinated. So long as he live in a free and open society and politicians want to get out, shake hands, kiss babies, press the flesh, campaign and do those kind of things, so long as the criminal or the terrorist

is willing to die in the conduct of the attempt. And that's what we saw here, somebody that was obviously willing to die and was able to take a shot at the president. Something the Secret Service, I'm sure right now, is tortured by and are conducting reviews internal to figure out how to prevent this from happening the next time. Yeah, look, I think the world that you lived in in terms of, you know, dealing with protectees

and, you know, the world that I spent a long time in counterterrorism operations, I mean, we're both faced with the same problem, right? Which is you can't afford a failure. You've got to get it right all the time, right? And the bad guy, whether it's a terrorist organization or a lone wolf, you know, attempting an assassination, they just need to be right one time. And so, but that doesn't, again, that that doesn't excuse what's going on. I'm just saying that there's complexities here that sometimes get lost in the initial, you know, rush to, unfortunately, to judgment.

But I think everybody saw, like we mentioned earlier on in the discussion, so many people have watched this that I'm always the first to say, you've got to let the investigation run its course. You've got to allow the time for the facts and the evidence to develop. This is one of those really odd moments in time where people saw what they saw and people with absolutely no experience can make a judgment that says how did they not cover down a building that close with line of sight. And then by the way, how did they get advanced information about this suspicious person, not hold off and getting the president out there, the former president out there? How did they spend so much time deciding go-no-go on taking a shot on the shooter?

What are all those things? Now, people are, you know, it's human nature, right? People are going to jump to conclusions. But again, in this case, they're helped along in that process by a lot of information coming out almost immediately after the fact, rather than waiting for the Secret Service to discuss this case. I go back to the same thing again, which is I am shocked, not just by the events of Saturday, but I am shocked by the ineptness of the Secret Service Director. and ultimately their oversight, the DHS, and I think that could be a problem too, that they've been

assumed by DHS. In terms of crisis management and understanding the importance of dealing with this issue immediately, you know, your thoughts obviously very welcome here. Yeah, well, you know, in our former businesses, you always, you never wanted to intersect politics with our job. We did our job. We followed the evidence bereft of fear, favor. We did our jobs so long as it was a lawful order we were given. We acted on behalf of the U.S. government. We followed the mission. We did what we're supposed to do. But I don't know about your experiences in your previous life, but I retired eight years ago. And I have noticed that there have been distractions and whether or not you want to argue about DEI or the fact that, you know, the U.S.

military as well as federal law enforcement and all the agencies, all the acronyms out there, right? They're all now so beholden to things that are so far from what they used to be focused on. It's no longer a meritocracy. And again, I'm not going to impugn the agents that were there. There were a number of them that rushed to the sound of the gun, you know, piled on top of the former president, put their body between the president and a two, two, three round. That is, that is admirable, honorable, those are true heroes, but are the best of the best being assigned to these details? Or are we checking boxes? And I'm sure your listeners can read between the lines on that. I think the frustration is, is or was the Secret Service Director the best person for the job,

or as a New York Post has reported, was she selected because she served when Vice President Biden's wife was the second lady and she served on the detail protecting the second lady and now the second lady who's the first lady decided that this person is the best person and pushed to get her hired again that's maybe you know james james james she may be the first lady or she may be the acting president at this point we don't really well i uh clear on that i i was so kind yeah no i know and i very much appreciate that because i think that's you know that that that is important. We are trying to ensure that we tone down the temperature. And look, I agree with you, right? I think from my perspective, I don't give a rat's ass about DEI, right? What I care about

is particularly in operational roles or roles involving the security and the protection of others, you get the best candidate. It's so simple, right? Get the best candidate. And so if that means that your best candidate is, again, I could care less with their gender or with their ethnicity or that. Who cares? If you, if after a battery of tests and an assessment, you've decided that suppress, great, hire that person. If they're not, then don't hire that person. It is so basic. And okay, fine. You want to have a different, you know, activity in the business world? Great, Godspeed. But we're talking about a different world. And whether we're talking about the law enforcement or the intelligence business, operational world, military, whatever it is,

we've got to get our minds right on that issue. So look, I think that with what we saw, you're absolutely right. Those agents that rush to the stage, that's what we all expect, right? And that's what they did. And it's so impressive. From my perspective, this is a supervisory problem. someone didn't look at that site assessment and the security plan that it contained all the information timeline right resources deployment of resources tasking for the various elements some someone failed in

that job right to to look and go and question it and stress test what they were seeing before that event kicked off and so we have a problem here you're telling me that you're covering this building from inside the building all right give me a state trooper give me a state trooper give me me somebody, right, to get up on that roof or that other roof over there. And let's just do the simple thing. So I don't have any issue with those agents who rushed to the sound of the gun and protected the former president, the way they did, got him offsite. I've got a problem with the people who were in charge, who also had issues apparently with command and control on the communication side, because your point is extremely correct, right? Lots of frequencies. It's not as simple

is just everybody's on the same channel. But that's what they've done many, many times in the past. So that command and control broke down in terms of relay of information and decision making in real time. Again, I don't have a question, James, because I'm so happy you're with us. I just want to throw my thoughts out, and then I want to get your thoughts on any issue related to what we're talking about here. No, I think you make some good points.

And, you know, if we pivot back to the tactical X's and O's, you know, having done more than just a couple of site advances during my career and reviewing them and evaluating them and signing off of them as I moved up the ranks. I will be interested to see what the site survey, the advance team must have put that together. And something like that where you're talking about a fixed location, you know where the stage is going to be, and your gain plenty. You're always thinking about the worst possible thing that could happen and working yourself backwards from that. You would have had to walk the area,

and you would have had to have done it with locals. You would have done it with, you know, a liaison from the state police and a liaison from the local police department and the property owner, and you would have walked around, and you would have looked at every single contingency. And that's what you have to do in the business. The crisis management business is about thinking about the worst possible

outcomes and then working backwards from that. And I'm not here to tell the Secret Service how to do their job. They've been doing it a lot longer than me. And that is not their primary, their only mission, but that is their primary mission. I get that. But you pointed it out earlier, anybody, anybody, a layman could have been sitting on their couch the other night and watching the feed, much of it was captured by, you know, pocket computers, somebody holding a cell phone and videotaping and looked at it and said, boy, that really strains credulity. Why wouldn't you have done this? And Mike, maybe there's a plausible explanation for that.

I haven't heard it. And to your point about crisis communication, I thought the Secret Services Director was clumsy, was ill-prepared, and stated something that is now going to be the subject of laughter, mockery, and memes when she said, we couldn't handle it because it was, and she didn't use the word handle, but she said, we couldn't position people there because it was a sloped roof. Do you know how many precarious perches I have hung off of where that's why you need people who are fit? That's why you need people that are

agile. That's why you need people who are qualified and tested and experienced and can do this job. But that's no excuse. And I think she probably wish she could have walked that back because the mockery that's going to come from that. And if that is even, if they even potentially put that out there as a reason, everyone knows that that doesn't meet the smell test. So yes, the tactical X's and O's, I'm going to want to see a good rundown. And I'm sure there'll be some stuff that will be classified that you and I may no longer have access to.

And I don't need to know that. But I can read between the lines and whatever is publicly available or disseminated to the public, which it should. and in short order, this is not something that's involving international events or foreign nations or travel to Arizona. You can do this right there at the site location and interviewing the agents and the officers involved and the bosses, to your point, who must have signed off on this and said, yep, you've got enough resources. You're good to go. I will be sitting back with bated breath waiting on that one, Mike.

Yeah, I think with the, I mean, I don't know. there's at this point there's four or five hundred different investigations that have been called for this at this point but i think the the key investigation maybe the bipartisan committee and up on Capitol hill uh they they have got to demand i think before Kimberly Cheathel shows up on site to answer questions they have got to have on their desks the uh communications that took place between the secret service and the various local law enforcement that were occurring in real time you know Let's go with three hours before the event kicked off to the time when the former president was finally secured and safely off the site. They've got to have that because that communications that was taking place plus the site survey, what was actually done and signed off on,

and communications that took place discussing that site survey, those things will answer a lot of these questions. Once that happens, James, we've run out of time, but I'd love to have you back so that we can continue this conversation. James Gagliano retired FBI supervisory special agent. I'm sorry. I'm sorry, man. We're doing that thing that we always do when we talk over. The guest and I apologize for that. But yeah, if you're willing to come back, I'd love to have you back. Look forward to it. Excellent, man. We really appreciate your time and insight. That's James Gagliano. He's retired FBI, supervisory, special agent, but that title doesn't do him justice in terms of the decades of experience that he's had that gives him the insight that he's just shared with us. All right, up next, we'll look at a story that emerged just

hours after the failed attempt in Pennsylvania. An Iranian plot to assassinate Trump will be joined by Richard Goldberg. He's the former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council, the NSC, under President Trump. We'll be right back. Are you overwhelmed with back taxes or unfiled returns? I'm sorry, I don't mean to scare you, But with 88,000 newly hired agents, that's 88,000 of them, the IRS has increased enforcement issuing millions of pay-up notices in 2024. How would you like to walk out to your mailbox and get a pay-up notice? Well, look, don't face the IRS collection tactics alone.

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Protect your financial security. Contact Tax Network USA for strategic advice on reducing or eliminating your tax debt. To schedule a complimentary consultation, call 1-800-24-6,000, or visit tnusa.com. Look, don't let the IRS confess. control your life. Empower yourself with Tax Network USA's support and take charge of your financial future. Visit tnusa.com today. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. U.S. authorities recently obtained intelligence from a source revealing a plot by Iran to assassinate Donald Trump. Now, this alarming information led the Secret Service to ramp up security around the former president.

Now, look, I don't want to sound surly, but does that mean that what we saw during the assassination attempt on Saturday was the beefed-up enhanced security package for the former president? We'll talk about that some other time. U.S. officials have stated that they believe the attack on the rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania was unrelated to any Iranian effort. But despite this, there remains a significant concern, of course, about the Iranian regime's intentions. U.S. intelligence has long warned that Iran might seek to avenge the death of Iranian commander

Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a 2020 U.S. drone strike authorized by the Trump administration. Now, this ongoing threat continues to be a focal point for U.S. security agencies. Iranian officials have, of course, no surprise, rejected these reports, insisting that the Islamic nation is only pursuing a legal path. Of course, they are, to hold Trump accountable for order and. Soleimani's assassination. They maintain that their focus is on seeking justice through international legal channels, because as you can imagine, the Iranian regime is all about following international laws and norms. Joining me now to dive deeper into this situation is Richard Goldberg,

former director for countering Iranian weapons of mass destruction for the White House National Security Council, the NSC, under President Trump, and a senior advisor at the foundation for the defense of democracies. Richard, thank you very much for taking time out. I understand you're in Milwaukee at the RNC, so I know your schedule is probably very chaotic. No, it's great to be with you. Well, thank you.

Listen, let's start off with this threat assessment that has been disclosed shortly after the assassination attempt on Saturday in Pennsylvania. What can you tell us about it? Well, what we've understood so far is what you've seen in the news. There is some sort of verified, potentially highly reliable human intelligence source that has provided some level of intelligence to our intelligence services,

the CIA or other, perhaps it came through a partner like Israel or a different country that passed along the intelligence. But it's something that was credible enough, according to the reporting, to be taken seriously that there was an act plot by the Iranians to take out the former president. Now, we have seen some of these plots materialized in public, but we know a little bit of the tactics that they've engaged in. John Bolton, the former National Security Advisor, has been targeted between indictments surrounding sort of near misses, where folks have already been in motion to kill Bolton. We've seen reporting that there have been similar plots disrupted against Mike Pompeo, the former Secretary of State.

There may be things going on against Robert O'Brien, the former National Security Advisor. and certainly we know Brian Hook, the former special envoy, also has very heightened security around him based on the threat environment. What we have seen in the past is the Iranians look for some sort of contract killers. Could be Eastern Europeans. We've seen some of those types of folks used in the kidnapping plots, the murder plots alleged against the Iranian Americans like Masi Al-inajad, who the Iranians just in the last couple of years tried to kidnap from New York, send another squad towards her home that got disrupted mid-plot. So, you know, we don't know who we would be looking for.

You know, the idea that you're looking for an Iranian who's like walking around doing something is not exactly the plot twist here. This would be probably a subcontract to Eastern European gang or a mob or somebody else. They could be on the dark web. They could be using various blockchain crypto to pay for things like that. So we don't have the details here. What we know is that there was an act of plot. We know that we could have assumed, based on the reporting of other former Trump officials,

that this sort of thing would be likely. Pretty brazen, though, to really put something in motion in an election year when he is running for president to return. I mean, that is, I mean, it's always horrific. It's always an attack on our democracy to try to with fast-made a former president. but while he is running to be the president again, I mean, that is trying to really undermine just throw a grenade into our democracy and try to tear our country apart. So I would imagine there should be a major response from the U.S. government that is happening.

Economic consequences, military consequences, covert consequences. What have we seen so far? Just a couple days ago, the administration renewed a sanctions waiver to give their regime access to $10 billion, and there's been no major crackdown on their oil sales, let alone any news of other types of activities of things blowing up or people going by-bye. So, I mean, wow, if you're the regime, and it's just like there's nothing they can do to escalate that wins a response that incurs a consequence from the Biden administration, whether it's launching 120 ballistic missiles in the state of Israel,

killing free Americans in Jordan, plotting to kill the former president. I mean, I don't know what it's supposed to take to actually show this regime from consequences, but apparently for the Biden administration, the lingering hope, the candle still being lit for a nuclear deal, still trumps all of. Well, I think you raised a really important point, which is, you know, what is a U.S. government response? Now, we're just learning about this, right? I mean, it just came out in the news. they just felt the need to discuss it in some fashion.

But that means that, you know, the intel community, obviously, and the White House, they've known about this for some time. And as you pointed out, it is, you know, tangentially related, I'm sure, to the threats that have been there for some time related to Pompeo and Bolton and Brian Hook. So it's not as if this is something new. It's not as if the Biden administration hasn't been aware that the Iranians. regime is looking for payback, for Soleimani. Do you, based on what you've seen over the past three and a half years, the Biden

administration, in terms of how they've dealt with Iran, the people that they've put in place, whether it's the Pentagon or State Department or others, in the forward-facing positions to deal with Iran, do you expect anything, any consequence that the Iranian regime is going to have to pay for this? Or do you think this is just, okay, it's just going to go away and we'll continue to try to affect some type of rapprochement. You see how I said that. It's almost French with the Iranian regime.

Well, the now former special envoy for Iran, Robert Malley, who we still don't know much about the criminal investigation that drove him out of that position, something about his classified materials being turned over to perhaps Iran or in some way being exploited. The reason I bring him up is because I know he speaks French and spent a lot of time in France, I maybe think so. But, no, listen, I think that the regime has tested the Biden administration from K-1 in every length

and continue to push the envelope incremental way, which is their MO. If we go back to January 2021, they start increasing level of enrichment, 30 levels of their enriched uranium. They fell up 20% high in with uranium. That happens. They go up 60% higher in risk, rain. Nothing happens to them.

They install advanced interfuges. They produce uranium metal, a key component of nuclear weapons. They kick out inspectors. I mean, nothing happens to them in three and a half years. They are increasing their terror budgets. You see budgets increasing for Hamas, for Hezbollah, for the Uthis in Yemen.

Militias are attacking American forces left and right. Nothing happens to them. The reason why nothing happens then is, even when you're trying to kill, you know, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton and Masa Linejad, or when you're escalating your nuclear program or when you're increasing your funding of terrorism, for this administration, they just see this all in silos that can be dealt with separately. And what is sacrosynct is the capability, the, you know, posture to go back to a nuclear. And so you have to continue to offer terrorists. you have to continue to be in the accommodation and its posture. Otherwise, the thinking is we will push the regime away. We're to blame for them not being ready to do a deal because we haven't shown our willingness

to do a deal. And that just continues to feed this decision-making process of refusing to escalate no matter what. Now, on the assassination side, we've seen this movie before. They claim that this can be dealt with as a law enforcement issue, which you said earlier. And they've made that point on the Bolton side, on the Pompeo side, when Moskieland and Shenzhen was targeted in New York. That's what they said. Well, look, it's working. The FBI is what they does what they does.

Why do we need to cross the streams and threaten Iran in any way to have escalation in the Gulf, escalation in the Red Sea, escalation in a nuclear program? We can handle this through a law enforcement approach. In Tehran, what they see is completely. week, this complete capitulation. I think the Supreme Leader can't believe what he's gotten away with without ever seeing any major American pushback through October 7, through all the things we talked about earlier. Yeah, Richard, I do want to talk about the recent political developments within the Iranian regime. But first, we're going to take a quick break. And we'll be right

back with more from Richard Goldberg. If you've been paying attention to the financial news, and I hope you have, experts are beginning to express concern that the U.S. dollar may lose its status as the world standard. Look, the warning signs are already there. Saudi Arabia ending the petro dollar. Russia replacing U.S. dollars with the Chinese currency trades. And bricks. Well, the BRICS. countries are attracting countries moving away from the U.S. dollar.

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That's a lot of years in a row. Call 1-888-8-70-547. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band teas, but on Deep-hop, people are searching for exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at Merchstand. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on D-pop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste would be a money-making machine?

Your style can make you cash. Start selling on D-pop, where taste recognizes taste. Some follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion-dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now at Bloomberg.com. Welcome back to the PDB Situation Report. I want to bring back our guest, former National Security Council official, Richard Goldberg. Richard, let's shift gears slightly away from the threat that was just discussed related to former President Trump.

And let's go inside of Tehran. And if you could talk to me a bit about the recent political developments, mostly the new president. They refer to him as a moderate. But tell me what you know about him and whether you think that this signals any type of change within the Iranian regime. Well, I believe that a moderate in this regime is a regime official who's out of bullets. That's the definition of a moderate for me. But, you know, there has been in the past distinction between reformist and hardliner, which was something that was nuanced within the system itself.

It was misinterpreted into West, spun into people who are moderate for hardliners. Not ever what it was, is the idea that you could, within the confines of the Islamic Republic, as long as you respect the system, respect the Supreme Leader, continue to pledge yourself the Islamic Republic of the United States, America, that's the Israel, all the good, that you could still somehow maneuver and change some rules and improve life and modernize within that system. There was this camp that believed that. In the late 1990s, one of the presidents of Tommy represented that camp.

Over the last 20 years or so, those that continued to believe that that was possible have diminished. And certainly, since the 2019 uprising that was put down by the Supreme Leader with a thousand people killed the streets. And now, even more recently, with the Masa Amini uprising of 2022 and the 2023, as you saw the nation of really, say, death to the dictator at this point, across all kinds of economic, ethnic, demographics, women at the forefront. You no longer saw any support for this idea of reforming the regime within everybody

sort of proposed to the idea of the regime. And this last election that they held, important for a few reasons, Number one, obviously, Raeisi, who was the president, who went down in a helicopter crash, was picked for a reason. This was somebody who was very loyal and close to the Supreme Leader, whether Kamen wanted to have Raeisi take over for him as Supreme Leader, and this was a transition play, or have somebody who was so loyal and dependable be in the position of president under the Supreme Leader while a transition would take place. we don't know. What we do know is that whatever the plan was, the plan kind of went out the window with the helicopter going down. And they went into the snap election under their constitution. So what I kind of see is they could have gone with Raishi type clone, somebody who was really viewed as hardline, was within the system, an Ayatollah, Mullah, somebody close to the Supreme Leader. They've gone with somebody who at least has the new. New York Times believing that he's a moderate, he's a reformist. But the question is why, why would you want that? The person who has a mixed bag has pledged loyalty to the Supreme Leader in the Islamic Revolution,

has pledged to keep working against the West, has pledged support to all the terror organizations that Iran funds. He doesn't control the nuclear program or the IRDC, that's the Supreme Leader's domain. But he has also, at the same time, spoken out against cracking down on women's rights, for having loosening the rules on the wearing of hijab, which was at the source of the spark of those riots with uprising, the protest movement back to 2022 and 2023. Is this a play to just remove the stress from the system

in a moment of instability because Raezi died and have some sort of an off-ramp for grievances among the population while the Supreme Leader continues his transition plan? Or is it a hedge on Donald Trump coming back into office? that he wants to appeal to Donald Trump to try to make another deal. Don't go right back to maximum pressure negotiations. Don't put pressure on this regime. We might be willing to do a nuclear deal with you.

He's right to appeal to Trump's transactional sentiment in that way. I think whatever it is, let's remember the guy who runs the country as a supreme leader. Donald Trump's the president who's just learned that there's an active assassination plot to kill. him. We know how he treated the regime when he was president the first time. Hassam Soleimani is no longer on this earth because they escalated. If they think they're going to rope-a-dope them into something else, I think they got another thing coming. So, you know, pick this guy, pick a different person, a hardliner, a moderate, whatever you want to call them. They're all part of the regime that's the largest state sponsor of terrorism

in the world, building larger and larger, longer-ranked missiles and nuclear weapons programs. Yeah, I think you raised a really important points here, which is, I mean, A, you know, he's a moderate, the new president, but was allowed to run because he was allowed to run. And so, you know, by definition was selected as someone that the Supreme Leader understood, could be controlled, perhaps. Now, also, Khomeini, the Supreme Leader is, what, 85 years old? So at some point. And dying cancer for like 15 years or something, yeah.

Yeah. And so I think that the question then becomes who replaces the supreme leader. Any sense of who that could be? Could it be Khomeini's son? That is the number one odds pick, I think, in the betting odds in Vegas. But betting odds in Vegas, we're not good for the Veepe steak. So I don't put much faith in them. We'll see.

I mean, I think that that would be controversial in some part of the system. The alternative is an IRGC type control of somebody that merges, sort of the IRGC presence already in the economy and control over the state alongside. The Mullahs wouldn't like that, I imagine, as well. So we'll see. There's a lot of choices out there's list, but the person that most people have their eye on is the leader's son. Okay, that's an interesting and, you know, somewhat disconcerting concept that Brad, the IRGC gets someone of their choosing in that Supreme Leader's slot. I mean, they've already got their fingers in every part of the economy, but I don't know

that it would bode well for any potential for stability in the region if that were to happen. Richard Goldberg, Senior Advisor at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracy's former NSC official. Listen, thank you very much, Richard, for your time. I hope you'll agree to come back and talk to us more because I suspect Iran will continue to take headlines over the next handful of years. But thank you again for your time. Yeah, you bet anytime.

Excellent. Listen, thanks. That's all the time. Oh, my gosh. Would you look at the time? Look at the time. That's all we have for the PDB situation report. That was a smooth ending, wasn't it?

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, humorous anecdotes, whatever. Please reach out to me at PDB at thefirsttv.com. Look, to PDB staff, including, don't forget our crack team of interns. They very much enjoy getting your emails, your faxes, your beeper messages, whatever. We take a bunch of them each month, as you may know, and compile them into our regular Ask Me Anything podcast sessions. And of course, to listen to the podcast of this show ad free, well, you know what to do. You can become a premium member of the president's daily brief by visiting bdbpremium.com.

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