(New York Post) A clear picture is emerging of the exact timeline of staggering failures that enabled an armed 20-year-old man with no military training to scale a building loaded with counter-sniper team cops in broad daylight and come within a hair’s breadth of killing former President Donald Trump.
Thomas Matthew Crooks was spotted at least twice by cops — 26 minutes before he rained bullets on the Pennsylvania rally crowd, wounding Trump and two others and killing an ex-fire chief, according to WPXI sources.
The Beaver County Emergency Services Unit — which traveled to the Butler County, Pennsylvania, Trump rally from the neighboring Pittsburgh suburb — noticed Cooks on the roof, took a picture of him and reported it around 5:45 p.m., WPXI reported.
Incredibly, not only did Crooks manage to avoid being confronted despite sticking out like a sore thumb, he secured his rooftop perch right under the noses of a local police sniper team stationed inside the building, law enforcement sources told The Post.
The building — the AGR International Inc. factory next to the Butler County Farm Fair grounds — was being used by local police as a “watch post” for snipers to scan for threats as the former president spoke onstage only 130 yards away, according to sources.
Cops were inside, but not on the roof, during the shooting, sources said.
Crooks was able to scale the building unchallenged before firing off up to eight shots with an AR-style assault rifle, grazing Trump in the ear, killing one Trump supporter and wounding two others.
Law enforcement sources said it was not clear as of Monday night whether any of the local officers — who were tasked with securing the perimeter outside the rally — were able to warn Secret Service agents about the gunman.
Chilling video captured at the rally illustrates the botched security operation. This includes approximately two minutes of footage that could go down in history as a low point for the Secret Service in the agency’s more than 100-year history of protecting US presidents.
🚨 Watch the real time assassination attempt on Trump from different angles. With countdown from footage of people warning authorities about the shooter to Trump being whisked away. pic.twitter.com/iJTbRNlCEw
— MilkBarTV (@TheMilkBarTV) July 15, 2024
A multi-feed video montage assembled by MilkBarTV, which has been viewed more than 3.5 million times on X, shows the attempted assassination play out in real time using clips from several vantage points.
In it, more than 120 excruciating seconds pass between rallygoers first spotting Crooks on the roof and the moment he fires his rifle. Perhaps most disturbingly, the people who saw the would-be assassin repeatedly tried to alert law enforcement patrolling nearby.
The surreal footage echoes what several witnesses told reporters after the shooting: Some rally attendees were aware of Crooks’ presence well before he fired.
One local cop from the Butler Township police did manage to get hoisted onto the roof, and came face to face with the gunman, who pointed his rifle at the officer. The Butler County sheriff defended his failure to stop Crooks, saying the cop was still pulling himself up and had to let go when faced with the weapon.
Law enforcement sources who have served on presidential protection details told The Post that Secret Service field offices where events are taking place routinely engage in a budgetary tug-of-war with purse string holders back in Washington.
The field offices usually get “a fraction” of what they ask for, the sources said.
