Newly released footage in the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump shows a shadowy figure running across the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building where attempted assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks wounded the Republican presidential candidate.
And bizarrely, the video was taken from the smartphone camera of James Copenhaver, one of two people injured by Crooks, who also killed firefighter Corey Comperatore.
The Secret Service has been under fire since Crooks tried to assassinate President Trump on July 13, and the new findings in the shocking murder attempt are unlikely to make things any better. One reason is that former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was forced to resign after giving poor testimony before a House committee, said the roof was too sloped to safely accommodate Trump's security forces.
Disappearing and reappearing
The video, broadcast by Fox News, was filmed from behind, to the left, as Trump spoke.
The person, believed to be Crooks, runs for about three seconds, then disappears, before reappearing a few more seconds later, minutes before Crooks fires a shot at Trump, grazing him in the ear.
The significance of this video is clear when you consider what former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News, who argued that the slope of the roof made it too dangerous to place a sniper there.
“That building in particular has a sloping roof on the highest point,” she explained, to the expert's dismay.
So, you know, the safety factor was taken into account because you don't want people on a sloping roof, so the decision was made to protect the building from the inside.
The comment drew understandable ridicule from former military snipers.
“Sloped roof? That's total nonsense,” former Army Ranger Sean Parnell wrote to X.
Our snipers were on the mountaintops in Afghanistan, and down the slopes when necessary.
The stupidity of this statement goes a long way to explaining why disaster occurred that day.
Completely incompetent.
In testimony before the U.S. House Oversight Committee, Cheatle acknowledged that her agency failed that day at the Butler Farm Show grounds.
She quit the next day.
Crooks, apparently unconcerned about the slope of the roof, opened fire with an AR-15 at 6:11 p.m. A Secret Service countersniper shot him dead almost immediately with a bullet to the head.
Copenhagen South
Copenhaver, 74, is still recovering from gunshot wounds to his arm and abdomen.
Copenhaver's lawyer told Fox News yesterday that Copenhaver, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania, is outraged that political divisions are so intense that some would try to kill a presidential candidate at a campaign rally.
“Overall, he just wants people to understand how unnecessary it was and that the political divisions in this country have become so great that people are literally willing to go to a rally exercising their First Amendment rights and start firing guns into the crowd,” Joseph Feldman said.
“He's 74 years old. He's been in this country a long time. He's seen a lot of things happen in this country. And this is certainly one of the worst things he's ever experienced as an American. He wants people to understand that it doesn't have to be this way.”
Copenhaver, Trump and most of the rally attendees to his left turned their heads as the shot was fired to look at immigration statistics projected on a big screen to the left of the stage, just as Copenhaver looked down at his arm and noticed that he was bleeding.
“He apparently heard or saw something go by them, which we believe was a bullet, and he … looked down at his arm … and felt pain initially, but didn't even realize at that point that he'd been shot a second time,” Feldman explained. “He said he was pretty shocked at the time. It was chaos. People were screaming. Nobody really knew what was going on right away.”
President Trump called Copenhaver after the shooting.
Also injured was 57-year-old David Duch, who returned home from the hospital last week, Fox News reported, citing a news release.
Comperatore, 50, died while trying to protect his family from Crooks' gunfire.
Latest
The latest developments in the assassination attempt were reported by Republican Senator Charles Grassley.
The Iowan published text messages and photos of Crooks that local police shared minutes before the shooting.
“There are kids studying around the building we are in,” one message read. “I think it's the AGR (building). I definitely saw him looking through a rangefinder towards the stage. FYI. Please alert the SS snipers and keep them on their guard. I lost sight of him. Also behind the building there is a bike with a backpack on its side that I didn't see before.”
The official timeline of events shows that Crooks could and should have been stopped.
Officers spotted Crooks at 5:10 p.m., an hour before the shooting. They took a photograph of the suspect at 5:14 p.m. and a photograph of his motorcycle at 5:28 p.m. The suspect was seen “looking at his cell phone, news feed and a rangefinder viewed through a monocular” at 5:32 p.m. The report states that after 5:34 p.m., officers exchanged messages about Crooks' location.
As the AGR building was outside the perimeter set up by the secret services, local police provided security for the building.
Secret Service agents also encountered Crooks with a rangefinder three hours before the shooting, and the agency had repeatedly refused requests for extra security for Trump.
