Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality, people who have served on his US Secret Service detail, as well as others to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.

Podcaster Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who was highly critical of the agency’s leadership as security failures around the alleged attempts on Trump’s life became clear, as well as Sean Curran, the head of Trump’s current detail, are among those being considered for the job.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe, meanwhile, was unsuccessful in trying to set up a meeting with Trump this week.

Video Transcript:
(00:00) assignments now and again this is saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the current culture that has been fostered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by D it’s not a role it’s the you ask agents on the president I think everyone’s heard me say before Dei equals diie you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we need be very do correct um great gentlemen we’re going to bring him up for can we bring him up for a couple of minutes you get ready mck you get ready
(00:37) I you the world will see a vibrant Republican beyond the president you can see the shooter moving across the roof now I look at this as someone who is a prosecutor he worked in the US attorney’s office he worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone who was a sniper like Mr Mills or Mr Crane working the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can see him clearly just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want
(01:10) to ask I’m going start with you Mr Bonino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just let g go down the list and jump in can you chalk up the mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the radios as Mr Higgins has reported can
(01:40) you chalk it up to M incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t remove him from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther and the exent that the perimeter wasn’t further out that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered is that just incompetence is it
(02:06) just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house Judiciary Committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just Inc competence we’re hearing now about The Whistleblower saying that there were no canines was it just incompetence that there wasn’t sufficient policing along the security
(02:36) border was it just incompetence that there was allegedly an abandoning of the post due to heat that there was supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was too hot is it just in competence that there was additional security requests turned down according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a
(03:05) second if we could queue up the police body footage video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if y’all can play that video real quick and then I want you to respond well body is a good that’s a good word told them post the guy I told him that the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to post over here I have what thought you no we’re inside Alpha One Bravo One okay that’s good thank you all um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s
(03:56) what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you can maybe attribute it to ignorance layered incompetence always means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97 degrees and you leave a kid in there and you close the door did they intend to kill the kid probably not but how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but
(04:29) but don’t think it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with rings so you got this circle but it’s threedimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have police officers that outer ring is out to about a thousand yards which is about what a really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute Total
(04:57) incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they miss this guy roaming around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement instincts said we’ve got a problem the answer is cuz they weren’t there is that incompetence or is that
(05:27) shutting the door in 97 degrees with your kid there going I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yards away secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the effective range of a really quality sniper is out to a th000 yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again this is where we get to the shutting the door in 97 degrees and pretending you didn’t know it was offered they offered you a drone it’s it’s unforgivable and just think of the Rings quick and I’ll wrap this up so
(06:00) in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you have what they call post standers post standers are they’re not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents those guys were not even Secret Service they were HSI most of them who
(06:28) were great and fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grabbed me as a former Secret Service guy and said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation list no that’s not what I learned we are training Secret Service agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw I’m glad you played that video Envision that is what we would call the shift the body guys right he’s got a shift around them in
(06:58) supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door in 97 degrees I’m sorry layered intent it layered U incompetence like that is absolutely intent I’ll let some of the experts on that subject follow up on that I think there’s probably some more follow up there I just want to ask one last question my last minute time Mr Bonino U we talked about this before I have seen credible information the extent to which the shooter had had significant um uh
(07:32) explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20-year-old just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on his person or sophisticated detonation device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments on that and that’ll be my last question well four years of doing protective
(08:03) intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have incredibly uh threatened our protectees I’ve never seen anything like it if you would have told me it was a 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer and for the last 10 years had been planning this hard to believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was what 13 to never get an online presence we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now 6
(08:33) weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the media in the other side we do you you know who the high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing about this guy and sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law en enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an online search history a library saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it
(09:03) it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some of my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of time and that is um another failure that I think everybody here’s probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with with a president or a protected a protecte and there’s been a some kind of security hold I mean
(09:36) we’ve just stopped and you say you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben is Mr schaer has described actually did did arise to a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on president in TR why was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause never me yeah yeah what makes your question uh even more impactful is every Secret Service site for a high Threat Level protecte has
(10:14) what they call a holding room which you would guess is for holding the protect I I see from engag because it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for things just like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever an accident they’ll hold him in the holding room saying Joy you go you all have been if none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service agent at the door you guys have Congressional hard pins a staff will
(10:43) escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump Administration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we use the exact same terminology as the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protect the in it is why was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described in your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat or suspicious well if you’re a threat
(11:14) it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the point of the holding room can ask more more question so I’m gonna I I just want to follow that up um and you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there were no counter surveillance teams there
(11:44) um was Mr but there but there’s there’s a a public domain videos of him Mr Crooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if he would have had a counter surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I’m going to answer yes but respectfully and I don’t know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific behavioral indicators that would give off a and and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to
(12:22) bad guys I know you understand that but the the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure setting you’d be like how how did they miss this how the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for five minutes thank you uh Mr banino do you have any confidence that uh secret service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh 10 years in the
(12:57) Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President Bush is because the guy wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he survive because we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what your thoughts are on this do you know who Joe Kent is Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s
(13:25) running for congress right now for special forces guy up in Washington yeah this is a text he sent me on U believe Monday August 19th he said Hey brother I know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to a very small venue Johnson wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse
(14:03) host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the steakhouse had Kent for congress signs on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one out on the street in a busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the
(14:38) Kint signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a good show show and looked the part I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a basic simple task secure the second entry two entry points a shocking level of incompetence the event was in Vancouver in the shadow of Portland
(15:16) Oregon Mr Bonino what do you is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capital Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with these security failures what was mentioned about 3/4s of the way through uh that that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know why is think about this why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the threat over there’s existential every day I
(15:46) mean these are little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shine when you’re not worried about door kickers are going to keep you alive uh the good show part is a problem and it’s ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly pressed suit on these guys have to be out there ready to go into action
(16:17) and defeat that 1520 man Hezbollah team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20-year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had detonated taken out that fence line and rushed a 10 15 Man team in there with uh with with rifles and heavy weapons you know there would have been a mass murder scene that motor cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon system why is it important to
(16:48) have a sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what what was why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get on board with having their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not the secret Services operating kind of de facto motto when I was there about tech technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m not kidding you get a
(17:21) bunch of Secret Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding him well maybe you should look at this thing called GPS ah we’ve never done it that way before why
(17:45) would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get my pistol this is technology the military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just it’s it’s a mentality where no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened because they got lucky in the past then there’s no reason to change anything Mr Bonino odd to say the least yes I want
(18:14) to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail should be appointed based upon the title you carry or the threat level based upon the office in which you are to obtain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you were the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s profile based on the existing threats
(18:47) that would need to be mitigated based on the requests by his own officers that that would be something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where a sane rational will trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump not a chance well I really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret Service be Dan Bonino than it be Ronald
(19:19) row or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh my colleague Mr honorable chip Roy for five minutes um I and Mr V I’ll let you comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh Miss kbry who was here with the panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by Iranian uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh
(19:55) perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump um and others for well over three years now so there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan ear death to America so it’s they’re not actually uh
(20:26) their motives are you don’t have to invest tigate their motives they tell you uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromised and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh under the influence of the Iranian
(20:53) Terror regime then then this is going to be a whole different panel if we do this again Mr bino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of
(21:27) these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and other other things here that are
(21:59) inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with
(22:36) the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high Lev protecte you’re supposed to
(23:09) have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said ah we’re going to pass on the coms really you described
(23:39) that as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded CU When something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the
(24:11) Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a CA suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kill 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheet the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who
(24:43) is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the RO if you get the right people was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while
(25:15) withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck cuz that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody would with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve
(25:47) already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath any one is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was
(26:19) yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly
(26:56) be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of
(27:27) again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protectee you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect
(27:58) president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described it as catastrophic he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last
(28:30) incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a SE suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired
(29:02) she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the
(29:34) kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr Bonino seems to have told us is they haven’t learned the lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr Bonino I will have to draw on your experience and and um you know protecting folks I have none
(30:07) but I do have some experience in observing what a government agency does when they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refus the VX they were scapegoated and driven out we saw it at FBI when whistleblowers talked about spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve
(30:40) also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because senator hly now has a whistleblower saying there was a Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarters Secret Service was putting downward pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower requ so give
(31:14) give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I I saw Senator Holly’s tweet the secret service is going to rely on this and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re going to say is well there was no real formal
(31:46) request made but here’s an example and then I’ll tie something to something that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual accountability you know stockle tank or whatever you can’t make products at kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time that
(32:16) the CEO doesn’t care so in the 51st time you tell the product blows up the CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell you because he told you 50 times before and you ignored him so what they’re doing now is Ron Row the acting director who is the deputy director the number two who is unbelievably again got a promotion out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel of this whole day-to-day adpo assistant director protective operations deputy director
(32:48) director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying them for four years I was told by a direct source a direct source this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that
(33:21) those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and that’s where you guys I think have had the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games where they go well that specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have
(33:48) you in the past how often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first time counter sniper Secret Service assets were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me your most threatened protecte had no professional Secret Service OverWatch as Ben show these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell them how to do their job I think that gets to this
(34:18) intent question that that Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the beginning of our discussion Congressman Mill says the key question here is whether this was your run-of-the-mill government incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr Prince says when the incom when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture
(34:47) of denying requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail we’re saying hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even making those requests so they couldn’t be denied I I think you can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service
(35:15) they’re off uh with with a number of detain or of protectees right of all kind of different profiles and different um I guess you know priority for lack of a better term and so what should we think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of most the one of the most threatened people on the planet Earth is having is having to endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I I don’t think I put this out yet but I I’ll put
(35:48) it out there now when I was there it was definitely not a political Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never once working for President Clinton uh bush and Obama had anyone even remotely implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the agents in charge of the Donald Trump detail which I have heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a
(36:24) political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure heart and I’m being absolutely candid I have no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I am not their PR guy I run my own business I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilit facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics and making
(36:53) him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there and they were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school level politics I don’t want to believe that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a lot of these these agencies that have been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we’re inspired by their patriotism and their
(37:20) their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so what what you just what Mr Bonino just said ought to be the most important work of the United States Congress to figure out if these decisions were run-of-the-mill in competence that you’ve got to deal with with the better
(37:47) Tech and the better processes and the better HR and getting rid of the Dei but but if it’s something even darker and more devious than that that must be rooted out because what we’ve seen that these other agencies have government is it does not cure itself it has to be excised and that investigation is the most important work we can do I thank you guys for leading this effort and I Y back and I want to go to you Mr Bonino I want to point out some things because culture failure as my colleague has pointed out and others I want to mention
(38:12) a couple of things August 14th 2024 is reported failure that a secret service agent uh abandoned her post with per without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive in North Carolina August 12 2024 it was reported that a secret service special agent who was an official site agent for the July 13 Butler PA rally is under investigation for posing videos and photos for protective assignments to social media uh July 27th 2024 a secret service agent covered the security camera of a local Salon in Pittsburgh
(38:45) Massachusetts before an event featuring kamla Harris where the salon was closed but opened it up without a without approval and utilizing restrooms for an hour and a half while the building security alarm was going off July 20 July 2nd 2023 it was reported that a former secret service director cheel and Senior agency leader sought to destroy the cocaine found in the White House in July of 2024 the evidence was not destroyed due to push back and individuals in the Secret Service forensic service divisions May 2024 a
(39:14) man enters the US Secret Service Miami Field office through a propped open door and was not removed from the building until the following morning April 24 2024 a special agent assigned to Harris’s detail had a mental breakdown where the agent is reported to have physically attacked the commanding agent in charge of at the base after verbal disputes with other agents uh sometimes between during 20 23 and 2024 at least two people breached President Obama’s Hawaii residence though the president wasn’t there at the residence his two
(39:42) daughters were on premise at the time April 2023 a drunken Intruder entered the home of National Security adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night the man was able to gain access to Sullivan’s home despite 24/7 Secret Service Protective Services in Sullivan due to the sensitive nature of his position now I want to go back to a comment that you made Mr banino where you said none of these problems are new I think just the list of those that I’ve just mentioned shows that this is not a new problem but it’s existed for
(40:12) quite a while and with a $3 billion annual budget I would think that we would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions would you agree with the things that I’ve listed with the budget that is allocated that there should be a much better provision of security for protectees than what you’re seeing today oh there there’s zero zero dispute about this you know Mr Prince’s company had accountability people fire him and find a new company if he lost to protecte you can’t fire the Secret Service 18 USC 3056 they’re
(40:46) obligated to protect him the Secret Service is a culture problem uh Congressman uh I was an instructor in our training academy in Beltsville Maryland for three years I ran operations over there taught investing vations over there spent a little time in the control tactics unit again was there for three years unfortunately I I can’t count on one hand I would need probably two in toes as well to count how many agents uh who could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills but who met other
(41:17) criteria completely irrelevant to job performance uh who were pushed through and told with a wink and a nod uh this this woman or man needs to graduate well why they’re clearly incompetent every instructor who’s encountered this person has said this person’s incompetent to the point where in judgment drills they’re killing the protecte and the Judgment drills that’s kind of not what we do you’re not supposed to shoot the protecte yourself in a simunition drill and you would say things you would hear things excuse me
(41:47) from from special agents in charge and I encourage you all to look into this uh how the training center works and how they graduate students where they would say well that person files a lot of complaints like eeo complaints okay well are they real that sounds serious sounds like a serious thing to me I take that stuff seriously and they would say well they file them enough that it’s it’s become a nuisance and they’re not really legitimate but because this person files a lot of complaints we need to graduate
(42:12) them some of those people now matter of fact not just a few but many are out on protective assignments now and again this is not saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the current culture has been fered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by D it’s not a role it’s the you ask agents on the president I think that everyone’s heard me say before Dei equals diie you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we comp correct um great great gentlemen so we’re going to bring him up for can we
(42:50) bring him up for a couple of minutes you get ready M you get ready I’ll give you up the world will see a vibrant Republican beyond the president you can see the shooter moving across the roof now I look at this as someone who is a prosecutor who worked in the US attorney’s office he worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone who was a sniper like Mr Mills or Mr Crane working the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can
(43:23) see him clearly just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want to ask I’m going start with you Mr Bonino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just let me go down the list and jump in can you chalk up to Mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were
(43:52) using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the radios as Mr Higgins has reported can you chalk it up to Mere incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t remove him from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and to the extent that the perimeter wasn’t
(44:19) farther out that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered is that just in competence is it just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house Judiciary Committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just in competence what we’re hearing now about The Whistleblower
(44:49) saying that there were no canines was it just incompetence that there wasn’t sufficient policing along the security border was it just in competence that there was allegedly an abandoning of the post due to heat that there was supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was too hot is it just in competence that there was additional security requests turned down according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests
(45:18) and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a second if we could queue up the police body footage video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if y’all can play that video real quick and then I want you to respond well bodies a good that’s a good word told them they need to post the guy here I told him that the the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to PO over here I have no contact
(45:53) with what I thought you no we’re inside Alpha One Bravo One Pi okay that’s good thank you all Mr can you resp to that um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you could maybe attribute it to ignorance layered in competence always means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97° and you leave a kid in
(46:34) there and you close the door did they intend to kill the kid probably not but how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but but don’t think of it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with ring so you got this circle but it’s three-dimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have
(47:03) police officers that outer ring is out to about a thousand yards which is about what a really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute Total incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they miss this
(47:36) guy roaming around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement instincts said we’ve got a problem the answer is because they weren’t there is that incompetence or is that shutting the door in 97 degrees with your kid there Going H I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yards away secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the effective range of a really quality sniper is out to 1,000 yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again
(48:06) this is where we get to the shutting the door in 97 degrees and pretending you didn’t know it was off they offered you a drone it’s it’s unforgivable and just think of the Rings quickly and I’ll wrap this up so in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you
(48:33) have what they call post standers post standers are they’re not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents those guys were not even Secret Service they were HSI most of them who were great guys and were fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grabb me as a former Secret Service guy and said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation list no that’s not what I learned we are training Secret Service agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the
(49:05) so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw I’m glad you played that video Envision that is what we would call the shift the body guys right he’s got a shift around them in supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door 97° I’m sorry layered intent it it layered U incompetence like that is absolutely intent I’ll let some of the experts on that subject follow up on that I think
(49:38) there’s probably some more follow up there I just want to ask one last question my last minute time Mr Bonino U we talked about this before I have seen credible information the extent to which the shooter had significant um uh explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20 just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on his person or a sophisticated detonation device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital
(50:10) footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments on that that’ll be my last question well a four years of doing protective intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have incredibly uh threatened our protectees I’ve never seen anything like it if you would have told me it was a 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer and for the last 10 years had been planning this hard to
(50:39) believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was what 13 to never get an online presence we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now 6 weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the media in the other side we do you you know who the high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing about this guy and
(51:08) sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law en enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an online search history at a library saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some of my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of
(51:39) time and that is um another failure that I think everybody here is probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with a president or a protected a protecte and there’s been a some kind of security hold I mean we’ve just stopped and you you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben as Mr schaer has described actually did did arise to a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on President Trump why
(52:18) was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause never yeah D what makes makes your question uh even more impactful is every Secret Service site for a high Threat Level protecte has what they call a holding rule which you would guess is for holding the protecte I I see C from engaging because it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for things just like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever
(52:52) an accident they’ll hold them in the holding room thinking Joy you go you all have been if none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service agent at the door you guys have Congressional hard pins a staff will escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump Administration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we use the exact same terminology as the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protti in it is why
(53:19) was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described and your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat or suspicious well if you’re a threat it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the
(53:51) point of a holding room ask one more question so I’m going to I I just want to follow that up um and you you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there were no counter surveillance teams there um was Mr but there but there’s there’s a public domain videos of him Mr krooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if you would have had a counter surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I I’m going to answer
(54:27) yes but respectfully and I don’t know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific behavioral indicators that would give off a and and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to bad guys I know you understand that but the the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure setting you’d be like how how did they miss this how the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr
(54:59) Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for five minutes thank you uh Mr banino do you have any confidence that uh secret service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh after 10 years in the Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President Bush is because the guy wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he survived because we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted
(55:29) about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what your thoughts are on this do you know who Joe Kint is who Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s running for congress right now for special forces guy up in Washington yeah this is a text he sent me on uh believe Monday August 19th he said Hey brother I know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret
(56:04) Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to a very small venue Johnson wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the steakhouse had Kint for congress signs on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one out on the street in a busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the
(56:41) venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the Kent signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a
(57:16) good show and looked theart I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a basic simple task secure the second entry to entry points a shocking level of incompetence the event was in Vancouver in the shadow of Portland Oregon Mr Bonino what do you is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capitol Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with these security failures what was mentioned about three qus of the way through uh that that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know
(57:54) why is think about this wh why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the threat over there is existential every day I mean these are little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shined when you’re not worried about door kickers are going to keep you alive uh the good show part is a problem and it’s ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether
(58:21) it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly pressed suit on these guys have to be out there ready to go into action and defeat that 1520 man Hezbollah team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20 year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had detonated taken out that fence line and rushed a 105 Man team in there with uh with with rifles and heavy weapons you know that would have been a mass murder scene that motor
(58:54) cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon system why is it important to have a sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what was why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get on board with having their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not the Secret Service is operating kind of day fact motto when I was there about tech
(59:28) technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m not kidding you get a bunch of Secret Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in
(59:54) the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding them well maybe we should look at this thing called GPS eh we’ve never done it that way before why would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get my pistol this is technology the military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just
(1:00:21) it’s it’s a mentality where no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened cuz they got Lucky in the past and there’s no reason to change anything Mr Bonino odd to say the least yes I want to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail should be appointed based upon the title you carry or the threat level based upon the office in which you are to obtain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have
(1:00:55) nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you were the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s profile based on the existing threats that would need to be mitigated based on the requests by his own officers that that would be something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where a sane rational well-trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump Trump not a chance well I
(1:01:27) really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret Service be Dan Bonino than it be Ronald row or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh my colleague Mr honorable chip Roy for five minutes um and Mr B I’ll let you comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing so I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh Miss Crabtree who was here panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier
(1:01:59) about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by Iranian uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump
(1:02:31) um and others for well over three years now so there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan ear death to America so it’s they’re not actually uh their motives are you don’t have to investigate their motives they tell you uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember
(1:03:01) correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromised and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh under the influence of the Iranian Terror regime then then this going to be a whole different panel if we do this again Mr banino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the
(1:03:33) Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say I but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a
(1:04:06) sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked this 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication fa failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman
(1:04:42) Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guy out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way
(1:05:16) this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the
(1:05:48) locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described that as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and
(1:06:19) Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a SE suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to
(1:06:50) CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fire she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump
(1:07:24) Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi red that has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and
(1:07:54) calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower
(1:08:26) problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was at I’m gone since 2011 it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses is uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they
(1:09:03) didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was
(1:09:37) the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll Comm Comm unicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard
(1:10:09) it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described that as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and
(1:10:40) I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a SE suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget
(1:11:09) explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the
(1:11:42) agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr Bonino seems to have told us is they haven’t learned the
(1:12:13) lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr Bonino I will have to draw on your experience in in um you know protecting folks I have none but I do have some experience in observing what a government agency does when they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refuse the vax they were scapegoated and driven out we saw it at FBI when whistleblowers talked about
(1:12:47) spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because Senator Holly now has a whistleblower saying there was a
(1:13:19) Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarter Secret Service was putting downward pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower request so get give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I saw Senator Holly’s tweet the secret service is going to
(1:13:54) rely on and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re going to say is well there was no real formal requests made but here’s an example and then I’ll tie something to something that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual accountability you know stockle tank or whatever you can’t make products that’ll kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re
(1:14:21) the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time that the CEO doesn’t care so in the 51st time you tell the product blows up the CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell you because he told you 50 times before and you ignored him so what they’re doing now is ronro the acting director who is the deputy director the number two who is unbelievably again got a promotion
(1:14:53) out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel of this whole day-to-day adpo assistant director protective operations deputy director director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying them for four years I was told by a direct source a direct source
(1:15:27) this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and that’s where you guys I think have had
(1:15:57) the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games or they go well that specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have you in the past how often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first time counter sniper Secret Service assets were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me you your most threatened protecte had no professional
(1:16:29) Secret Service OverWatch as Ben show these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell them how to do their job I think that gets to this intent question that that Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the beginning of our discussion Congressman Mill says the key question here is whether this was your run-ofthe-mill government incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr
(1:16:55) Prince says when the inom when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture of denying requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail were saying hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even making those requests so they couldn’t
(1:17:24) be denied I I think you can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service they’re off uh W with a number of deta or of protectees right of all kind of different profiles and different um I guess you know priority to for lack of a better term and so like what should we think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of most the one of the most threatened people on the planet Earth is having is having to
(1:17:55) endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I I don’t think I put this out yet but I’ll I’ll put it out there now when I was there it was definitely not a political Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never once working for President Clinton uh Bush and Obama had anyone even remotely implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the agents in charge of the Donald Trump detail which I have
(1:18:29) heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure heart and I’m being absolutely candid I have no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I have not their PR guy I run my own business I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture
(1:19:02) he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilit facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics and making him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there and they were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school level politics I don’t want to believe that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a lot of these these agencies that have
(1:19:29) been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we’re inspired by their patriotism and their their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so what what you just what Mr banino just
(1:19:57) said ought to be the most important work of the United States Congress to figure out if these decisions were run-of-the-mill in competence that you’ve got to deal with with the better Tech and the better processes and the better HR and getting rid of the Dei but but if it’s something even darker and more devious than that that must be rooted out because what we’ve seen at these other agencies of government is it does not cure itself it has to be excised and that investigation is the most important work we can do I thank
(1:20:22) you guys for leading this effort and I back and I want to go to you Mr Bonino I want to point out some things because culture failure as my colleague has pointed out others I want to mention a couple of things August 14 2024 is reported failure that a secret service agent uh abandoned her post with per without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive in North Carolina August 12 2024 it was reported that a secret service special agent who was an official site agent for the July 13 Butler PA rally is
(1:20:51) under investigation for posing videos and photos for prot effective assignments to social media uh July 27 2024 a secret service agent covered the security camera of a local Salon in Pittsburgh Massachusetts before an event featuring kamla Harris where the salon was closed but opened it up without without approval and utilizing restrooms for an hour and a half while the building security alarm was going off July 20 July 2nd 2023 it was reported that a former secret service director cheel and Senior agency leader sought to
(1:21:22) destroy the cocaine found in the White House in of 2024 the evidence was not destroyed due to push back in individuals in the Secret Service forensic service divisions May 2024 a man enters the US Secret Service Miami Field office through a propped open door and was not removed from the building until the following morning April 24 2024 a special agent assigned to Harris’s detail had a mental breakdown where the agent is reported to have physically attacked the commanding agent in charge of at the base after verbal
(1:21:50) disputes with other agents uh sometimes between during 20 23 and 2024 at least two people breached President Obama’s Hawaii residence though the president wasn’t there at the residence his two daughters were on premise at the time April 2023 a drunken Intruder entered the home of National Security adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night the man was able to gain access to Sullivan’s home despite 247 Secret Service Protective Services in Sullivan due to the sensitive nature of his position now I want to go back to a
(1:22:18) comment that you made Mr Bonino where you said none of these problems are new I think just the list of those that I’ve just mentioned shows that this is not a new problem but has existed for quite a while and with a 3 billion doll annual budget I would think that we would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions would you agree with the things that I’ve listed with the budget that is allocated that there should be a much better provision of security for protectees and what you’re seeing today oh there there’s zero zero
(1:22:53) dispute about this you know Mr your Prince’s company had accountability people fire him and find a new company if he lost to protectee you can’t fire the Secret Service sat USC 3056 they’re obligated to protect him the secret service has a culture problem uh Congressman uh I was an instructor in our training academy in Beltsville Maryland for three years I ran operations over there taught investigations over there spent a little time in the control tactics unit again was there for three years unfortunately I I can’t count on
(1:23:23) one hand I would probably two and Toes as well to count how many agents uh who could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills but who met other criteria completely irrelevant to job performance uh who were pushed through and told with a wink and a nod uh this this woman or man needs to graduate well why they’re clearly incompetent every instructor who’s encountered this person has said this person’s incompetent to the point where in judgment drills they’re killing the protecte in the
(1:23:56) Judgment drills that’s kind of not what we do you’re not supposed to shoot the protecte yourself in a simunition drill and you would say things you would hear things excuse me from from special agents in charge and I encourage you all to look into this uh how the training center works and how they graduate students where they would say well that person files a lot of complaints like eeo complaints okay well are they real that sounds serious sounds like a serious thing to me I take that stuff seriously and they would say well they
(1:24:23) file them that it’s it’s become a nuisance and they’re not really legitimate but because this person files a lot of complaints we need to graduate them some of those people now matter of fact not just a few but many are out on protective assignments now and again this is saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the current culture that has been fostered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by the it’s not a role it’s the you ask agents on the president I think everyone’s
(1:24:56) heard me say before Dei equals diie you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we need comp do correct um great great gentleman so we’re going to bring him up for can we bring him up for a couple of minutes you get ready mck you get ready I’ll give you up here the world will see a vibrant Republican D beyond the president you can see the shooter moving across the roof now I look at this as someone who is is a prosecutor he worked in the US attorney’s office he worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone who was a sniper like Mr Mills
(1:25:30) or Mr Crane work the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can see him clearly just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want to ask I’m going start with you Mr banino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just let me go down the list and jump in can you chalk up to
(1:26:05) Mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the radios as Mr Higgins has reported can you chalk it up to M incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t remove him from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the
(1:26:32) buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and to the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered is that just in competence is it just in competence that there was no drone being flown and the Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just in competence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house Judiciary Committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet
(1:27:00) of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just in competence what we’re hearing now about the whistleblowers saying that there were no canines was it just incompetence that there wasn’t sufficient policing along the security border was it just incompetence that there was allegedly an abandoning of the post due to heat that there were supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was too hot is it just in competence that there was additional security requests turned down
(1:27:29) according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a second if we could queue up the police body footage video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if yall could play that video real quick and then I want you to respond well B is a good that’s a good word told them they need to post the guy
(1:28:01) here I told him that the the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to PO guys over here I have no contact what I thought you no we’re inside alha one Bravo One okay that’s good thank you all Mr I told can you respond to that um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you could maybe attribute it to ignorance layered incompetence always
(1:28:46) means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97° and you leave a kid in there and you close the door did they intend to kill the kid probably not but how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but but don’t think of it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with rings so you got this circle but it’s three-dimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown
(1:29:16) encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have police officers that outer ring is out to about a, yards which is about what a really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute Total incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the
(1:29:50) question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they missed this guy roaming around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement Instinct said we’ve got a problem the answer is cuz they weren’t there is that incompetence or is that shutting the door in 97 degrees with your kid there’re going H I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yards away secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the effective range of a really quality snipers out to a th000
(1:30:19) yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again this is where we get to the shutting the door in 97° and pretending you didn’t know it was offered they offered you a drone it’s it’s unforgivable and just think of the Rings quickly and I’ll wrap this up so in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch
(1:30:47) it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you have what they call Posters post standers are they’re not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents those guys were not even Secret Service they were HSI most of them who were great guys and fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grabbed me as a former Secret Service guy and said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation no that’s not what I learned we are training Secret Service
(1:31:18) agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw I’m glad you played that video Envision that is what we would call the shift the body guys right he’s got a shift around them in supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door at 97 degrees I’m sorry layered intent it a layered incompetence like that is
(1:31:51) absolutely intent oh let experts on that subject follow up on that I think there’s probably some more follow up there I just want to ask one last question my last minute time Mr banino we talked about this before I have seen credible information the extent to which the shooter had significant um uh explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20-year-old just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on his person or a sophisticated detonation
(1:32:22) device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments on that and that’ll be my last question well four years of doing protective intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have credibly uh threatened our protectees I’ve never seen anything like it if you would have told me it was a
(1:32:51) 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer computer and for the last 10 years have been planning this hard to believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was what 13 to never get an online presence we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now six weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the media in the other side we do
(1:33:19) you you know who the high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing about this guy and sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law enforce enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an online search history at a library saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some of
(1:33:53) my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of time and that is um another failure I think everybody here is probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with a president or a protected a protecte and there’s been a some kind of security hold I mean we’ve just stopped and you say you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben as Mr
(1:34:26) schaer has described actually did did arise to a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on President Trump why was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause never me yeah D what makes your question uh even more impactful is every Secret Service site for a high Threat Level protecte has what they call a holding room which which you would guess is for holding the protect I I see from engaging because it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for things just
(1:35:04) like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever an accident they’ll hold them in the holding room saying Joy you go you all have been in none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service agent at the door you guys have Congressional hard pins a staff will escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump admin ministration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we
(1:35:31) use the exact same terminology as the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protect in it is why was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described and your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat or suspicious well if you’re a threat it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs
(1:36:02) the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the point of the holding room can ask one more question so I’m going to I I just want to follow that up um and you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there were no counter surveillance teams there um was Mr but there but there there’s a a public domain videos of him Mr Kooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if you would have had a counter
(1:36:33) surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I I’m going to answer yes but respectfully and I I know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific Behavioral indicators that would give off a and and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to bad guys I know you understand that but the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure setting you’d be like how how did they
(1:37:11) miss this the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for 5 minutes thank you uh Mr B Gino do you have any confidence that uh secret service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh 10 years in the Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President Bush is because the guy wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he
(1:37:43) survived because we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what your thoughts are on this do you know who Joe Kent is Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s running for congress right now for special forces guy up in Washington yeah this is a text he sent me on uh believe Monday August 19th he said Hey brother I know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this
(1:38:18) antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to a very small venue Johnson wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the Stak house had Kint for congress signs on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one one out on the street in a
(1:38:55) busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the Kint signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no
(1:39:30) control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a good show and looked apart I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a basic simple task secure the second entry two entry points a shocking level of incompetence the event was in an Vancouver in the shadow of Portland Oregon Mr Bonino what do you is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capitol Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with these security failures what was mentioned about 34s of the way through uh that
(1:40:06) that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know why is think about this why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the threat over there is existential every day I mean these are little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shined when you’re not worried about door kickers are going to keep you alive uh the good show part is
(1:40:35) a problem and it’s ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly pressed suit on these guys have to be out there ready to go into action and defeat that 1520 men Hezbollah team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20-year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had detonated taken out that fence line and rushed a 105 Man team in there with uh
(1:41:07) with with rifles and heavy weapons you know that would have been a mass murder scene that motor cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon system why is it important to have a sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what was why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get on board with having their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not
(1:41:41) the secret Services operating kind of de facto motto when I was there about tech technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m not kidding you get a bunch of Secret Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re
(1:42:09) losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding him well maybe we should look at this thing called GPS ah we’ve never done it that way before why would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get my pistol this is technology the
(1:42:34) military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just it’s it’s a mentality where no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened because they got lucky in the past then there’s no reason to change anything Mr bngo odd to say the least yes I want to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail should be appointed based upon the title you carry or the threat level based upon the office in which you are to
(1:43:08) obtain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you are the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s profile based on the the existing threats that would need to be mitigated based on the request by his own officers that that would be something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where a sane rational well-trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a
(1:43:41) protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump not a chance well I really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret Service Dan Bonino than it be Ronald row or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh my colleague Mr honorable chip Roy for five minutes um and Mr V I’ll let you comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh
(1:44:12) Miss Crabtree who was here over the panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by arranging uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the
(1:44:44) death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump um and others for well over three years now so there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan ears death to America so it’s they’re not actually uh their motives are you don’t have to investigate their motives they tell you uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her
(1:45:15) reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromis IED and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh under the influence of the Iranian Terror regime then then this is going to be a whole different panel if we do this again Mr banino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service
(1:45:48) whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there are so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems
(1:46:18) the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problem problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked this 20124 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down
(1:46:54) that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mill says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law
(1:47:27) enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each
(1:47:58) site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said ah we’re going to pass on the coms really you described it as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly
(1:48:32) I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the secet service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a SE suite at a company that makes widgets
(1:49:00) we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy job somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was
(1:49:34) concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody with a lot of experience
(1:50:05) in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or
(1:50:37) elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio
(1:51:12) system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the of courtesy they showed up
(1:51:47) and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protect you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are
(1:52:19) kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the comps really you described it as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Ro in charge no it’s it’s
(1:52:54) worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded cuz when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a suite at a company that makes widgets we
(1:53:24) find out that there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he
(1:53:58) was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi R has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threaten man on Earth if you can explain it good luck cuz that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr banino seems to have told us is
(1:54:30) they haven’t learned the lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr Bon you know I will have to draw on your experience and in um protecting folks I have none but I do have some experience in observing what a government agency does when they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refus the VAC they were scapegoated and driven out we saw it at
(1:55:01) FBI when whistleblowers talked about spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because Senator Holly now
(1:55:35) has a whistleblower saying there was a Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarters Secret Service was putting downward pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower request so give give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I saw Senator Holly’s
(1:56:10) tweet the secret service is going to rely on this and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re going to say is well there was no real form request made here’s an example and then I’ll tie something to something that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual accountability you know stockle tank or whatever you can’t make products that’ll kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but
(1:56:37) imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time that the CEO doesn’t care so in the 51st time you tell the product blows up the CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell you because he told you 50 times before and you ignored him so what they’re doing now is Ron Row the acting director who is the deputy director the number two
(1:57:09) who is unbelievably again got a promotion out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel of this whole day-to-day ad assistant director protective operations deputy director director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying them for four years I was
(1:57:42) told by a direct source a direct source this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and
(1:58:13) that’s where you guys I think have had the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games or they go well that’s specific specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have you in the past how often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first time counter sniper Secret Service assets were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me
(1:58:43) your most threatened protecte had no professional Secret Service OverWatch as Ben show these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell them how to do their job I think that gets to this intent question that that Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the beginning of our discussion Congressman Mill says the key question here is whether this was your run-of-the-mill government incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe
(1:59:11) there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr Prince says when the inom when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture of denying requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail were saying hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even
(1:59:41) making those requests so they couldn’t be denied I I think you can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service they’re off uh with with a number of detain or of protectees right of all kind of different profiles and different um I guess you know priority to for lack of a better term and so like what should we think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of most the one of the most threatened people on
(2:00:10) the planet Earth is having is having to endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I I don’t think I put this out yet but I’ll I’ll put it out there now uh when I was there it was definitely not a political Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never once working for President Clinton uh Bush and Obama had anyone even remotely implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the agents in charge
(2:00:46) of the Donald Trump detail which I have heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure hard and I’m being absolutely candid I have no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I am not their PR guy I run my own business I absolutely believe Donald
(2:01:18) Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilit facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics and making him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there and they were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school level politics I don’t want to believe that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a
(2:01:45) lot of these these agencies that have been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as a above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we’re inspired by their patriotism and their their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so
(2:02:13) what what you just what Mr Bonino just said ought to be the most important work of the United States Congress to figure out if these decisions were run-of-the-mill competence that you’ve got to deal with with the better Tech and the better processes and the better HR and getting rid of the Dei but but if it’s something even darker and more devious than that that must be rooted out because what we’ve seen at these other agencies of government is it does not cure itself it has to be excised and that investigation is the most important
(2:02:39) work we can do I thank you guys for leading this effort and I he back and I want to go to you Mr Bonino I want to point out some things because culture failure as my colleague has pointed out and others I want to mention a couple of things August 14th 202 24 is reported failure that a secret service agent uh abandoned her post with per without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was scheduled to arrive in North Carolina August 12 2024 it was reported that a secret service special agent who was an official site agent for
(2:03:07) July 13 Butler PA rally is under investigation for posing videos and photos for protective assignments to social media uh July 27 2024 a secret service agent covered the security camera of a local Salon in Pittsburgh Mass Massachusetts before an event featuring kamla Harris where the salon was closed but opened it up without without approval and utilizing restrooms for an hour and a half while the building security alarm was going off July 20 July 2nd 2023 it was reported that a former secret service director
(2:03:38) cheel and Senior agency leader sought to destroy the cocaine found in the White House in July of 2024 the evidence was not destroyed due to push back and individuals in the Secret Service forensic service divisions May 20 24 a man enters the US Secret Service Miami Field office through a propped open door and was not removed from the building until the following morning April 24 2024 a special agent assigned to Harris’s detail had a mental breakdown where the agent is reported to have physically attacked the commanding agent
(2:04:06) in charge of the at the base after verbal disputes with other agents uh sometimes between during 20 23 and 2024 at least two people breach President Obama’s Hawaii residence though the president wasn’t there at the residence his two daughters were on premise at the time April 23 a drunken Intruder entered the home of National Security adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night the man was able to gain access to Sullivan’s Home Des spite 247 Secret Service Protective Services in Sullivan due to the sensitive nature of his
(2:04:35) position now I want to go back to a comment that you made Mr Bonino where you said none of these problems are new I think just the list of those that I’ve just mentioned shows that this is not a new problem but has existed for quite a while and with a $3 billion annual budget I would think that we would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions would you agree with the things that I’ve listed with the budget that is allocated that there should be a much better provision of security for protees and what you’re
(2:05:08) seeing today oh there there’s zero zero dispute about this you know Mr Prince’s company had accountability people fire them and find a new company if he lost to protectee you can’t fire the Secret Service 18 USC 56 they’re obligated to protect him the secret service has a culture problem uh Congressman uh I was an instructor in our training academy in Beltsville Maryland for three years I ran operations over there taught investigations over there spent a little time in the control tactics unit again was there for three
(2:05:39) years unfortunately I I can’t count on one hand I would need probably two in toes as well to count how many agents uh who could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills but who met other criteria completely irrelevant to job performance uh who were pushed through and told with a wink and a nod uh this this woman or man needs to graduate well why they’re clearly incompetent every instructor who’s encountered this person has said this person’s incompetent to the point where in judgment drills
(2:06:12) they’re killing the protecte in the Judgment drills that’s kind of not what we do you’re not supposed to shoot the protecte yourself in a simunition drill and you would say things you would hear things excuse me from from special agents in charge and I encourage you all to look into this uh how the training center works and how they graduate students where they would say well that person files a lot of complaints like eeo complaints okay well are they real that sounds serious sounds like a serious thing to me I take that stuff
(2:06:39) seriously and they would say well they file them enough that it’s it’s become a nuisance and they’re not really legitimate but because this person files a lot of complaints we need to graduate them some of those people now matter of fact not just a few but many are out on protective assignments now and again this is saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the current culture that has been fostered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by D it’s not a role it’s D you ask agents on the
(2:07:13) president I think everyone’s heard me say before Dei equals diie you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we need to be very correct um great great gentleman so we’re going to bring him up for can we bring him up for a couple of minutes ler you get ready you get ready I’ll give you up the world will see a vibrant Republican beyond the president you can see the shooter moving across the roof now I look at this as someone who is a prosecutor who worked in the US attorney’s office who worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone
(2:07:47) who is a sniper like Mr Mills or Mr Crane working the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can see him clearly just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want to ask I’m going start with you Mr Bonino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just
(2:08:20) I’m going to go down the list jump in can you chalk up to Mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the radios as Mr Higgins has reported can you chalk it up to Mere incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t
(2:08:45) remove them from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and to the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered is that just incompetence is it just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house
(2:09:13) Judiciary Committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just in competence what we’re hearing now about the whistleblowers saying that there were no canines was it just in competence that there wasn’t sufficient policing along the security border was it just incompetence that there was allegedly an abandoning of the post due to heat that there was supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was
(2:09:41) too hot is it just incompetence that there was additional security request turned down according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a second if we could queue up the police body footage video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if y’all can play that video real quick and then I want
(2:10:10) you to respond well B is a good that’s a good word told them they need to post the guy I told that the the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to PO guys over here I have noct what I you no we’re inside Alpha One Bravo One okay that’s good thank you all Mr I told can you that um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you could maybe attribute it
(2:11:01) to ignorance layered incompetence always means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97 degrees and you leave a kid in there and you close the door did they intend to kill the kid probably not but how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but but don’t think of it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with rings so you got this circle but it’s threedimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is
(2:11:32) Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have police officers that outer ring is out to about a th yards which is about what a really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute Total incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance
(2:12:04) that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they miss this guy roaming around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement instincts said we’ve got a problem the answer is cuz they weren’t there is that in confidence or is that shutting the door in 97° with your kid there’re going I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yards away secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the
(2:12:34) effective range of a really quality sniper is out to a th000 yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again this is where we get to the shutting the door in 97 degrees and pretending you didn’t know it was offered they offered you a drone it’s it’s unforgivable and just think of the Rings quickly and I’ll wrap this up so in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss
(2:13:03) them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you have what they call post standers post standers are they’re not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents those guys were not even Secret Service they were HSI most of them who were great guys and fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grab me as a former Secret Service guy and said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation l no that’s not what I
(2:13:34) learned we are training Secret Service agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw and I’m glad you played that video Envision that is what we would call the shift the body guys right he’s got a shift around them in supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door in 97 degrees I’m sorry layered intent it it
(2:14:07) layered incompetence like that is absolutely intent I’ll let some of the experts on that subject follow up on that I think there’s probably some more followup there I just want to ask one last question my last minute of time Mr Bonino U we talked about this before I seen credible information the extent to which the shooter had significant um uh explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20-year-old just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on
(2:14:38) his person or a sophisticated detonation device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments on that and that’ll be my last question well four years of doing protective intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have credibly uh threatened our protectees I’ve never seen anything like
(2:15:07) it if you would have told me it was a 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer and for the last 10 years had been planning this hard to believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was what 13 to never get an online presence we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now six weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the meetting in
(2:15:36) the other side we do you you know who their high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing about this guy and sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law en enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an online search history at a library saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some
(2:16:11) of my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of time and that is um another failure I think everybody body here is probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with a president or a protected a protecte and there’s been a some kind of security hold I mean we’ve just stopped and you say you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben is Mr schaer has
(2:16:46) described actually did did arise to the a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on President Trump why was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause never me yeah D what makes your question uh even more impactful is every Secret Service site for a high Threat Level protecte has what they call a holding rle which you would guess is for holding the protect I I see C from engaging because it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for
(2:17:22) things just like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever an accident they’ll hold them in the holding room saying Joy you go you all have been in if none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service agent at the door you guys have Congressional hard pins a staff will escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump Administration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we
(2:17:49) use the exact same terminology is the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protti in it is why was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described and your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat or suspicious well if you’re a threat it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs
(2:18:20) the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the point of a holding room can ask one more question so I’m going to I I just want to follow that up um and you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there were no counter surveillance teams there um was Mr but there but there’s there’s a a public domain videos of him Mr Crooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if you would have
(2:18:51) had a counter surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I’m going to answer yes but respectfully and I I know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific behavioral indicators that would give off a and and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to bad guys I know you understand that but the the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure
(2:19:26) setting you’d be like how how did they miss this the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for five minutes thank you uh Mr banino do you have any confidence that uh secret service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh after 10 years in the Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President
(2:19:58) Bush is because the guy wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he survived because we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what your thoughts are on this do you know who Joe Kent is Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s running for Congress right now for special forces guy arm up in Washington this is a text he sent me on U believe Monday August 19th he said Hey brother I
(2:20:31) know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to to a very small venue Johnson wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the steakhouse had Kent for congress signs
(2:21:07) on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one out on the street in a busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the Kint signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me
(2:21:42) neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a good show and looked apart I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a basic simple task secure the second entry two entry points a shocking level of incompetence the event was in Vancouver in the shadow of Portland Oregon Mr Bonino what do you is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capitol Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with
(2:22:20) these security failures what was mentioned about 34s of the way through uh that that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know why is think about this why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the threat over there is existential every day I mean these are little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shined
(2:22:48) when you’re not worried about door kickers who going to keep you alive uh the good show part is a problem and it’s ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly pressed suit on these guys have to be out there ready to go into action and defeat that 152 man HB team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20-year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had
(2:23:21) detonated taken out that fence line and rushed a 105 Man team in there with uh with with rifles and heavy weapons you know that would have been a mass murder scene that motor cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon system why is it important to have a sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what what was why did it take so long for the secret service to get on board with having
(2:23:52) their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not the secret Services operating kind of de facto motto when I was there about tech technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m not kidding you get a bunch of Secret Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started and
(2:24:23) President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding him well maybe you should look at this thing called GPS eh we’ve never done it that way before why would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do
(2:24:47) hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get pistol this is technology the military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just it’s it’s a mentality where no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened because they got lucky in the past then there’s no reason to change anything Mr Bonino odd to say the least yes I want to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail
(2:25:20) should be appointed based upon the title you carry or the threat level based upon the office in which you are to obtain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you are the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s profile based on the existing threats that would need to be mitigated based on the request by his own officers that that would be something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where
(2:25:52) a sane rational well-trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump not a chance well I really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret Service be Dan Bonino than it be Ronald Ro or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh my colleague Mr chip Roy for five minutes um and Mr bu I’ll let you
(2:26:24) comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh Miss Crabtree who was here over the panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by Iranian uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what
(2:26:57) we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump um and others for well over three years now so uh there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan ear death to America so they’re not actually uh their motives are you don’t have to investigate their motives they tell you uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter
(2:27:29) I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromised and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh under the influence of the Iranian Terror regime than than this is going to be a whole different panel if we do this again Mr bino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of
(2:28:00) experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a
(2:28:30) congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the
(2:29:04) Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president
(2:29:39) out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those
(2:30:10) individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said ah we’re going to pass on the coms really you described it as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your
(2:30:43) opinion is a secret service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now
(2:31:12) with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a sea suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheetle the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy job somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail this actually happened by the way
(2:31:49) these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck
(2:32:19) cuz that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying Direct ly to your face and you
(2:32:50) better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication
(2:33:25) failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret
(2:34:01) Services job to protect the president out of the of courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a highle protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those
(2:34:33) individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it off offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described that as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bono in
(2:35:06) your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service
(2:35:35) leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a sea suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties
(2:36:08) on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie there’s nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on
(2:36:41) Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr Bonino seems to have told us is they haven’t learned the lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr ban youo I will have to draw on your experience and in um protecting folks I have none but I do have some experience in observing what a government agency does when they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of
(2:37:13) scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refused the vax they were scapegoated and driven out we saw at FBI when whistleblowers talked about spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional
(2:37:46) Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because Senator Holly now has a whistleblower saying there was a Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarters Secret Service was putting downward pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower request so give give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make
(2:38:20) requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I I saw Senator Holly’s tweet the secret service is going to rely on this and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re going to say is well there was no real formal request made but here’s an example and then I’ll tie something something that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual account ability you know stockle
(2:38:50) tank or whatever you can’t make products that’ll kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time that the CEO doesn’t care so when the 51st time you tell the product blows up the CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell because he told you 50 times before and you
(2:39:21) ignored him so what they’re doing now is Ron Row the acting director who is the deputy director the number two who is unbelievably again got a promotion out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel of this whole day-to-day adpo assistant director protective operations deputy director director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and
(2:39:55) then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying them for four years I was told by a direct source a direct source this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the
(2:40:25) hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and that’s where you guys I think have had the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games where they go well that specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have you in the past how often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first
(2:40:54) time counter sniper Secret Service assets were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me your most threatened protecte had no professional Secret Service OverWatch as Ben show these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell them how to do their job I think that gets to this intent question that that Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the beginning of our discussion Congressman Mills says the key question here is whether this was your run-of-the-mill government
(2:41:22) incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr Prince says when the incom when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture of denying requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail were saying
(2:41:53) hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even making those requests so they couldn’t be denied I I think you can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service they’re off uh W with a number of deta or of protectees right of all kind of different profiles and different um guess you know priority to for lack of a better term and so like what should we
(2:42:23) think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of the most the one of the most threatened people on the planet Earth is having is having to endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I I don’t think I put this out yet but I’ll I’ll put it out there now uh when I was there it was definitely not a political Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never won working for President Clinton uh Bush and Obama had anyone even remotely
(2:42:55) implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the agents in charge of the Donald Trump detail which I have heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure heart and I’m being absolutely candid I have
(2:43:29) no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I am not their PR guy I run my own business I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilitate facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics and making him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there and they were making some of these decisions based purely on great school level politics I don’t want to believe
(2:43:59) that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a lot of these these agencies that have been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we inspired by their patriotism and their their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at
(2:44:25) headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so what what you just what Mr Bonino just said ought to be the most important work of the United States Congress to figure out if these decisions were run-of-the-mill in competence that you’ve got to deal with with the better Tech and the better processes and the better HR and getting rid of the Dei but but if it’s something even darker and more devious than that that must be rooted out because what we’ve seen at at
(2:44:51) these other agencies of government is it does not cure itself it has to be excised and that investigation is the most important work we can do I thank you guys for leading this effort and I he back and I want to go to you Mr Bonino I want to point out some things because culture failure as my colleague has pointed out and others I want to mention a couple of things August 14th 2024 is reported failure that a secret service agent uh abandoned her post what per without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was scheduled
(2:45:18) to AR in North Carolina August 12 2024 it was reported that a secret service special agent who was an official site agent for the July 13 Butler PA rally is under investigation for posing videos and photos for protective assignments to social media uh July 27th 20124 a secret service agent covered the security camera of a local Salon in Pittsburgh Massachusetts before an event featuring kamla Harris where the salon was closed but opened it up without without approval and utilizing restrooms for an hour and a half while the building
(2:45:50) security alarm was going off July 20 July 2nd 2023 it was reported that a former secret service director cheel and Senior agency leader sought to destroy the cocaine found in the White House in July of 2024 the evidence was not destroyed due to push back and individuals and the Secret Service forensic service divisions May 20 24 a man enters the US Secret Service Miami Field office through a propped open door and was not removed from the building until the following morning April 24 2024 a special agent assigned to
(2:46:19) Harris’s detail had a mental breakdown where the agent is reported to have physically attacked the commanding agent in charge of at the base after verbal disputes with other agents uh sometimes between during 20 23 and 2024 at least two people breach President Obama’s Hawaii residence though the president wasn’t there at the residence his two daughters were on premise at the time April 2023 a drunken Intruder entered the home of National Security adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night the man was able to gain access to
(2:46:47) Sullivan’s home despite 247 Secret Service Protective Services in Sullivan due to the sensitive nature of his position now I want to go back to a comment that you made Mr Bono where he said none of these problems are new I think just the list of those that I’ve just mentioned shows that this is not a new problem but has existed for quite a while and with a $3 billion annual budget I would think that we would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions would you agree with the things that I’ve listed
(2:47:20) with the budget that is allocated that there should be a much better provision of security for protectees than what you’re seeing today oh there there’s zero there zero dispute about this you know Mr Prince’s company had accountability people fire them and find a new company if he lost to protecte you can’t fire the Secret Service 18 USC 3056 they’re obligated to protect him the secret service has a culture problem uh Congressman uh I was an instructor in our training academy in Beltsville Maryland for 3 years I ran operations
(2:47:50) over there taught investigations over there spent a little time in the control tactics unit again was there for three years unfortunately I I can’t count on one hand I would need probably two in toes as well to count how many agents uh who could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills but who met other criteria completely irrelevant to job performance uh who were pushed through and told with a wink and a nod uh this this woman or man needs to graduate well why they’re clearly
(2:48:23) incompetent every instructor who’s encountered this person has said this person’s incompetent to the point where in judgment drills they’re killing the protecte in the Judgment drills that’s kind of not what we do you’re not supposed to shoot the protect yourself in a simunition drill and you would say things you would hear things excuse me from from special agents in charge and I encourage you all to look into this uh how the training center works and how they graduate students where they would say well that person files a lot of
(2:48:51) complaints like eeo complaints okay well are they real that sounds serious sounds like a serious thing to me I take that stuff seriously and they would say well they file them enough that it’s it’s become a nuisance and they’re not really legitimate but because this person files a lot of complaints we need to graduate them some of those people now matter of fact not just a few but many are out on protective assignments now and again this is saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the
(2:49:20) current culture that has been fostered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by D it’s not a role it’s D you ask agents on the president I think everyone’s heard me say before Dei equals diie you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we need to be very we do correct gentlemen so we’re going to bring him up for can we bring him up for a couple of minutes later all right you get ready you get ready I’ll you here the world will see a vibrant Republican beyond the president you can see the shooter moving
(2:49:57) across the roof now I look at this as someone who is a prosecutor he worked in the US attorney’s office he worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone who is a sniper like Mr Mills or Mr Crane working the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can see him clear just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want to ask I’m going start with you Mr Bonino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere
(2:50:29) incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just I’m going to go down the list and jump in can you chalk up the mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the radios as Mr Higgins has reported can you chalk it up to Mere incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an
(2:50:57) hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t remove him from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther out the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out that they at least make sure the building wasn’t covered is that just in confidence is it just in confidence that there was no drone being flown and the
(2:51:23) Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just in confidence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house Judiciary Committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just in competence what we’re hearing now about the whistleblowers saying that there were no canines was it just incompetence that there wasn’t sufficent policing along the security border was it just incompetence that there was allegedly an
(2:51:53) abandoning of the post due to heat that there were supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was too hot is it just incompetence that there was additional security request turned down according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a second second if we could queue up the police body footage
(2:52:21) video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if youall Can Play that video real quick and then I want you to respond well B is a good that’s a good word told them they need to post the guy I told him that the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to post over here I have no contact with what I thought you no we’re inside Alpha One Bravo One okay that’s good thank you all Mr I told can you resp to that um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s
(2:53:09) what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you could maybe attribute it to ignorance layered incompetence always means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97 degrees and you leave a kid in there and you close the door did they intend to kill the kid probably not but how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but
(2:53:42) but don’t think of it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with rings so you got this circle but it’s three-dimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have police officers that outer ring is out to about a thousand yards which is about what a really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute
(2:54:10) Total incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they miss this guy roaming around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement Instinct said we’ve got a problem the answer is because they weren’t there is that
(2:54:39) incompetence or is that shutting the door in 97 degrees with your kid there going I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yard way secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the effective range of a really quality sniper is out to 1,000 yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again this is where we get to the shutting the door in 97 degrees and pretending you didn’t know it was offered they offered you a drone it’s it’s unforgivable and just think of the
(2:55:11) Rings quickly and I’ll wrap this up so in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you have what they call post standers post standers are they’re not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents those guys were not even Secret
(2:55:38) Service they were HSI most of them who were great guys and fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grab me as a former Secret Service guy said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation no that’s not what I learned we are training Secret Service agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw and I’m glad you played that video Envision that is what we would call the shift the body
(2:56:08) guys right he’s got a shift around them in supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door in 97° I’m sorry layered intent it it layered U incompetence like that is absolutely intend I’ll let some of the experts on that subject follow up on that I think there’s probably some more follow up there I just want to ask one last question my last minute of time Mr Bonino U we talked about this before I have seen credible information the
(2:56:40) extent to which the shooter had significant um uh explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20-year-old just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on his person or a sophisticated detonation device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments on that and that’ll be my last question
(2:57:14) well four years of doing protective intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have incredibly uh threatened our protes I’ve never seen anything like it if you would have told me it was a 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer and for the last 10 years had been planning this hard to believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was what 13 to never get an online presence
(2:57:43) we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now 6 weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the media in the other side we do you you know who the high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing about this guy and sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law en enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an online search history at a library
(2:58:13) saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some of my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of time and that is um another failure I think everybody here is probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with a president or a protected a protecte and there’s been a
(2:58:47) some kind of security hold I mean we’ve just stopped and you say you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben is Mr schaer is described actually did did arise to the a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on President Trump why was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause that for me yeah D what makes your question uh even more impactful is every Secret Service site
(2:59:25) for a high Threat Level protecte has what they call a holding rule which you would guess is for holding the protecte I I see from engaging because it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for things just like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever an accident they’ll hold them in the holding room saying Joy you go you all have been in none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service agent at the door you
(2:59:54) guys have Congressional hard pins a staff escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump Administration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we use the exact same terminology as the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protect the in it is why was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described and your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat or suspicious
(3:00:26) well if you’re a threat it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the point of the holding room ask so I’m going to I I just want to follow that up um and you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there were no counter surveillance teams there
(3:00:56) um was Mr but there but there’s there’s a a public domain videos of him Mr Crooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if he would have had a counter surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I’m going to answer yes but respectfully and I don’t know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific behavioral indicators that would give off a and and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to
(3:01:35) bad guys I know you understand that but the the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure setting you’d be like how how did they miss this the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for five minutes thank you uh Mr banino do you have any confidence that uh secret service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh 10 years in the
(3:02:10) Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President Bush is because the wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he survived CU we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what your thoughts are in this do you know who Joe Kent is Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s running for
(3:02:38) congress right now for special forces guy up in Washington yeah this is a text he sent me on U believe Monday August 19 he said Hey brother I know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to a very small venue Johnson wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse
(3:03:16) host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the steakhouse had Kint for congress signs on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one out on the street in a busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the Kint
(3:03:51) signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a good show and looked the part I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a BAS basic simple task secure the second entry two entry points a shocking level of incompetence the event was in Vancouver in the shadow of Portland
(3:04:29) Oregon Mr Bonino what do you is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capitol Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with these security failures what was mentioned about 3ars of the way through uh that that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know why is think about this why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the threat over there is existential every day I mean these are
(3:05:00) little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shined when you’re not worried about door kickers are going to keep you alive uh the good show part is a problem and it’s ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly pressed suiton these guys have to be out there ready to go into action and defeat that
(3:05:31) 1520 man Hezbollah team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20-year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had detonated taking out that fence line and rushed a 105 Man team in there with uh with with rifles and heavy weapons you know that would have been a mass murder scene that motor cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon system why is it important to have a
(3:06:01) sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what was why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get on board with having their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not the secret Services operating kind of de facto motto when I was there about tech technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean it really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m not kidding you get a bunch of Secret
(3:06:34) Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding him well maybe you should look at this thing called GPS eh we’ve never done it that way before why
(3:06:58) would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get my pistol this is technology the military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just it’s it’s a mentality where no no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened because they got lucky in the past then there’s no reason to change anything Mr Bonino odd to say the least yes I want
(3:07:27) to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail should be appointed based of pain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you were the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s profile based on the existing threats that would need to be mitigated based on the request by his own officers that that would be
(3:08:00) something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where a sane rational well-trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump not a chance well I really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret Service be Dan Bonino than it be Ronald row or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh
(3:08:33) my colleague Mr honorable chip Roy for five minutes um and Mr V I’ll let you comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing so I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh Miss Crabtree who was here over the panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by Iranian uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any
(3:09:07) uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump um and others for well over three years now so there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan ears death to America so it’s they’re not actually uh their motives are you don’t have to investigate their motives they tell you
(3:09:39) uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromised and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh under the influence of the Iranian Terror regime then then this is going to be a whole different panel if we do this
(3:10:07) again Mr banino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this Point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there are so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and
(3:10:40) you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication
(3:11:15) failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret
(3:11:51) Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those
(3:12:23) individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described that as catastrophic he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in
(3:12:55) your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service
(3:13:25) leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a SE suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to C you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing
(3:13:57) red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this under the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened
(3:14:30) man on Earth if you can explain it a good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling
(3:15:02) you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problem s the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was at I’m gone since 2011 it last time I checked it’s 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like
(3:15:35) uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked
(3:16:11) asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to it didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole
(3:16:42) trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said ah we’re going to pass on the comps really you described that as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct
(3:17:15) Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino in your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with
(3:17:44) President Bush they overtook the magn magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a sea suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of
(3:18:16) the guys Behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this under the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie there nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU
(3:18:49) counter surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck because that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr banino seems to have told us is they haven’t learned the lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr Bon you know I will have to draw on your experience and in um protecting folks I have none but I do have some some experience in observing what a government agency does when
(3:19:21) they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refused the vaac they were scapegoated and driven out we saw it at FBI when whistleblowers talked about spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming
(3:19:54) uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because Senator Holly now has a whistleblower saying there was a Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarters Secret Service was putting downward pressure pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower request so give give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and
(3:20:26) then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I I saw Senator Holly’s tweet the secret service is going to rely on this and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re going to say is well there was no real formal request made but here’s an example and then I’ll tie something to something
(3:20:57) that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual accountability you know stockle tank or whatever you can’t make products that’ll kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time that the CEO doesn’t care so in the 51st time you tell the product blows up the
(3:21:30) CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell you because he told you 50 times before and you ignored him so what they’re doing now is Ron Row the acting director who is the deputy director the number two who is unbelievably again got a promotion out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel of this whole day-to-day adpo assistant director protective operations deputy director director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we
(3:22:02) are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying them for four years I was told by a direct source a direct source this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure
(3:22:33) nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and that’s where you guys I think have had the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games where they go well that’s specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have you in the past how often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you
(3:23:02) actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first time counter sniper Secret Service asses were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me your most threatened prot D had no professional Secret Service OverWatch as Ben show these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell them how to do their job I think that gets to this intent question that that Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the
(3:23:30) beginning of our discussion Congressman Mill says the key question here is whether this was your run-of-the-mill government incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr Prince says when the comp when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture of denying requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald
(3:24:01) Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail were saying hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even making those requests so they couldn’t be denied I I think can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service the they’re off uh with with a number of detain or of protectees right of all kind of
(3:24:29) different profiles and different um I guess you know priority to for lack of a better term and so like what should we think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of the most the one of the most threatened people on the planet Earth is having is having to endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I I don’t think I put this out yet but I’ll I’ll put it out there now uh when I was there it was definitely not a political
(3:25:00) Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never once working for President Clinton uh Bush and Obama had anyone even remotely implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the a agents in charge of the Donald Trump detail which I have heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman
(3:25:37) that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure heart and I’m being absolutely candid I have no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I am not their PR guy I run my my own business I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilit facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics and making him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there
(3:26:06) and they were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school level politics I don’t want to believe that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a lot of these these agencies that have been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we’re inspired by their patriotism and their their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone
(3:26:32) if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so what what you just what Mr Bonino just said ought to be the most important work of the United States Congress to figure out if these decisions were run-of-the-mill and competence that you’ve got to deal with with the better Tech and the better processes and the better HR and getting rid of the Dei but
(3:26:59) but if it’s something even darker and more devious than that that must be rooted out because what we’ve seen at these other agencies of government is it does not cure itself it has to be excised and that investigation is the most important work we can do I thank you guys for leading this effort and I Y back and I want to go to you Mr on Gino I want to point out some things cuz culture failure as my colleague has pointed out others I want to mention a couple of things August 14th 2024 is reported failure that a secret service
(3:27:26) agent uh abandoned her post with per without permission to breastfeed child before Donald Trump was sced to arrive in North Carolina August 12 2024 it was reported that a secret service special agent who was an official site agent for the July 13 Butler PA rally is under investigation for posing videos and photos for protective assignments to social media media uh July 27th 2024 a secret service agent covered the security camera of a local Salon in Pittsburgh Massachusetts before an event featuring kamla Harris where the salon
(3:27:57) was closed but opened it up without without approval and utilizing restrooms for an hour and a half while the building security alarm was going off July 20 July 2nd 2023 it was reported that a former secret service director cheel and Senior agency leader sought to destroy the cocaine found in the White House in July of 2024 the the evidence was not destroyed due to push back in individuals in the Secret Service forensic service divisions May 20 24 a man enters the US Secret Service Miami Field office through a propped open door
(3:28:27) and was not removed from the building until the following morning April 24 2024 a special agent assigned to Harris’s detail had a mental breakdown where the agent is reported to have physically attacked the commanding agent in charge of at the base after verbal disputes with other agents uh sometimes between during 2023 and 2024 at least two people breach President Obama’s Hawaii residence though the president wasn’t there at the residence his two daughters were on premise at the time April 2023 a drunken Intruder entered
(3:28:56) the home of National Security adviser Jake Sullivan in the middle of the night the man was able to gain access to Sullivan’s home despite 247 Secret Service Protective Services in Sullivan due to the sensitive nature of his position now I want to go back to a comment that you made Mr Bonino where he said none of these problems are new I think just the list of those that I’ve just mentioned shows that this is not a new problem but has existed for quite a while and with a $3 billion annual budget I would think that we
(3:29:26) would start evaluating those mistakes to make those corrective actions would you agree with the things that I’ve listed with the budget that is allocated that there should be a much better provision of security for protectees than what you’re seeing today oh there there’s zero there zero dispute about this you know Mr Prince’s company had a account ability people fire him and find a new company if he lost to protectee you can’t fire the Secret Service 18 USC 3056 they’re obligated to protect him the secret service has a culture problem
(3:29:58) uh Congressman uh I was an instructor in our training academy in beltzville Maryland for three years I ran operations over there taught investigations over there spent a little time in the control tactics unit again was there for three years unfortunately I I can’t count on one hand I would need probably two and toes as well to count how many agents uh who could not meet even basic protective functioning skills and criminal investigative skills but who met other criteria completely irrelevant to job performance uh who were pushed through
(3:30:30) and told with a wink in a nod uh this this woman or man needs to graduate well why they’re clearly incompetent every instructor who’s encountered this person has said this person’s incompetent to the point where in judgment drills they’re killing the protecte in the Judgment drills that’s kind of not what we do you’re not supposed to shoot the protect yourself in a simunition drill and you would say things you would hear things excuse me from from special agents in charge and I encourage you all to look into this uh how the training
(3:31:00) center works and how they graduate students where they would say well that person files a lot of complaints like eeo complaints okay well are they real that sounds serious sounds like a serious thing to me I take that stuff seriously and they would say well they file them enough that it’s it’s become a new nuisance and they’re not really legitimate but because this person files a lot of complaints we need to graduate them some of those people now matter of fact not just a few but many are out on protective assignments now and again
(3:31:28) this is saying is that Dei plays a major role not meritocracy with regards to the current culture that has been fostered no not a no the major role the Secret Service right now is dominated by D it’s not a role it’s the you ask agents on the president everyone’s heard me say before Dei equals de e you know Dei stands for didn’t earn it and we need to be very do this correct um great great gentleman so we’re going to bring him up for can we bring him up for a couple of minutes ler all you get ready you get ready I’ll
(3:32:05) you the world will see a vibrant Republican beyond the president you can see the shooter moving across the roof now I look at this as someone who is a prosecutor worked in the attorney’s office he worked in the Attorney General’s office not as someone who was a sniper like Mr Mills or Mr Crane work the Secret Service but to be very clear the perimeter the building he shot from is outside of the perimeter and the video we see we can see him clearly just a mere 130 yards away so here’s the the setup that I want
(3:32:36) to ask I’m going start with you Mr Bonino do you believe that you can just chalk up chalk up to Mere incompetence that the Secret Service did not attend end the 9:00 meeting for scheduling purposes they literally just didn’t attend can you chalk up and just I’m going to go down the list and jump in can you chalk up to Mere in incompetence the conversations about the communications that we talked about before where you didn’t have a body present and they were using the cell phones and they did not retrieve the
(3:33:03) radios as Mr Higgins has reported can you chalk it up to M incompetence that they identified Crooks uh about an hour ahead of time and then the president president Trump was never removed from the stage they didn’t delay they didn’t hold him back they didn’t remove him from the potential danger that the perimeter did not include the buildings around over here and to the extent should there have been a perimeter that was farther out and to the extent that the perimeter wasn’t farther out that they at least make sure the building
(3:33:29) wasn’t covered is that just incompetence is it just incompetence that there was no drone being flown and the Drone was turned down by the Secret Service was it just incompetence that the shooter had a drone as the FBI director testified in front of the house you just committee that he literally had flying within a couple hundred feet of the stage the same day mere hours before the shooting is it just in competence what we’re hearing now about the whistleblowers saying that there were no canines was it just in competence that there wasn’t
(3:34:02) sufficient policing along the security border was it just incompetence that there was allegedly an abandoning of the post due to heat that there were supposed to be someone on top of the roof and that they didn’t get on the roof because it was too hot is it just in in competence that there was additional security requests turned down according to the memos that we saw out of Senator Josh Holly and encouraging agents not to request to additional security requests and was it just incompetent what we saw with respect to
(3:34:29) the police body footage which I’ll I’ll play here in just a second if we could queue up the police body footage video where you’ve got the local police talking about what they said to the Secret Service if yall could play that video real quick and then I want you to respond well b a good a good told they need tost the GU I told that the Secret Service I told him that Tuesday I told him to PO guys over here I have no contct with what I thought you no we’re inside Alpha One Bravo One okay that’s good thank you all Mr I
(3:35:13) told can you respond to that [Music] um can you respond to that can you respond to that question because that’s what the American people want to know you know Congressman if you had just ended with your first statement and said well we may have screwed up the perimeter you could maybe attribute it to ignorance layered incompetence always means intent correct so I’ll give you an example you’re in a mall parking lot it’s 97° and you leave a kid in there and you close the door did did they intend to kill the kid probably not but
(3:35:48) how stupid do you have to be to do that so in secret service training you’re basically taught a ring based system but but don’t think of it as Rings think of it as a three-dimensional ring like a bubble with rings so you got this circle but it’s threedimensional above and below in that outer ring again this is Secret Service 101 Charlie Brown encyclopedia stuff this isn’t like advanced level PDT protective detail training in that outer ring you have police officers that outer ring is out to about a th000 yards which is about a
(3:36:15) really technically proficient sniper can hit why was the um why was the perimeter set again Absolute Total incompetence but then factoring the other things and I just want to add a few more how is it that a a counter surveillance unit whose actual job is to detect Sur to counter surveillance that’s what they do they’re the best at what they do we asked the question during uh during the conversation we had earlier how is it that they miss this guy around when the police officers clearly using their good law enforcement Instinct said we’ve got
(3:36:49) a problem the answer is cuz they weren’t there is that incompetence or is that shutting the door in 97 degrees with your kid there going I just didn’t know how did you not have a roof line 130 yards away secured when you’re taught day one in secret service training that the effective range of a really quality sniper is out to a, yards how did you not have a drone that not only did you not have a drone again this is is where we get to the shutting the door in 97° and pretending you didn’t know it was offered they offered you a drone it’s
(3:37:23) it’s unforgivable and just think of the Rings quickly and I’ll wrap this up so in the outer ring you have police officers you have counter surveillance and you have a protective intelligence team protective intelligence team is trained to go and find threats they miss them there’s no counter surveillance team the cops catch it but because the coms break down they miss it in that middle perimeter you have what they call post standers post standers are they not DTD agents they’re field office agents they’re not Donald Trump detail agents
(3:37:50) those guys were not even Secret Service they were HSI most of them who are great guys and fantastic but that’s not what they do if you grab me as a former Secret Service guy and said hey Dan can you go do a Homeland Security investigation no that’s not what I learned we are training Secret Service agents to do protection so we don’t have to use other entities that don’t do protection in the so that’s the middle perimeter so that breaks down the inner perimeter as you just saw I’m glad you played that video Envision that
(3:38:20) is what we would call the shift the body guys right he’s got a shift around them in supervisors everyone missed that guy crawling across the roof when he defeated the external the middle and the internal perimeter you shut the door in 97 degrees I’m sorry layered intent it it layered incompetence like that is absolutely intent I’ll let some of the experts on that subject follow up on that I think there’s probably some more followup there I just want to ask one last question my last minute time Mr Bonino U we talked about this before I have seen
(3:38:53) credible information the extent to which the shooter had significant um uh explosives explosives uh that were uh sophisticated uh beyond that you would expect some 20-year-old just to put together uh and that he had sophisticated detonation devices uh on his person or a sophisticated detonation device um and importantly that his digital footprint is completely Mia that his digital footprint is missing and that how can a 20-year-old in today’s time have no digital footprint so do you have any thoughts on that any comments
(3:39:26) on that and that’ll be my last question well four years of doing protective intelligence investigations with the Secret Service interviewed probably hundreds of people who have credibly uh threatened our protectees I’ve never seen anything like it if you would have told me it was a 60-year-old guy who lived most of his life without a computer and for the last 10 years have been planning this hard to believe but digestable you’re telling me a 20-year-old kid who’s grown up in the digital era figured this out when he was
(3:39:54) what 13 to never get an online presence we’ve seen nothing nothing we’re now six weeks in there’s not a Facebook photo you know it’s incredible we know every single thing about these shooting incidents when there’s a political narrative to be had by the media in the other side we do you you know who the high school girlfriend was sadly you know everything about these people we know nothing nothing about this guy and sophisticated explosives we have this this this massive law en enforcement bureaucracy no one’s got him with an
(3:40:24) online search history at a library saying how do I build this he’s 20 years old it it it just again it just defies logic I I can tell you again four years doing these exact investigations never ever seen or heard anything like this in my life well we could we could go on that I know some of my other my colleagues might want to do that as well but I I want to get to one last point and that before I run out of time and that is um another failure I think everybody here is probably everybody up on this group anyway has been with a president or a
(3:40:58) protected a protecte and there’s been a some kind of security hold I mean we’ve just stopped and you say you’re going to hold why why was there no security hold put on Trump at any time if you if you had a some kind of in individual I mean that that Ben as Mr schaer has described actually did did arise to a Threat Level what why was there no um security hold put on President Trump why was he allowed to go on the stage why was was why wasn’t he taken down why didn’t we see a pause that for me yeah D what makes your question uh even more
(3:41:37) impactful is every Secret Service site for a high Threat Level protecte has what they call a holding rle which you would guess is for holding the protecte I I see C from engaging CU it can’t it’s actually called the holding room the holding room is for things just like this the holding room is let’s say a congressman shows up and is a little late uh there’s a whatever an accident they’ll hold them in the holding room saying Joy you go you all have been in none of this is new you’ve been in the holding room there’s a secret service
(3:42:07) agent at the door you guys have Congressional hard pins a staff escort you in every one of you has seen this or will in the Trump Administration this is not a mystery to anyone why was he put on what uh what Eric had called accurately so the X we use the exact same terminology as the military the x is where that protect or that limo with the protti in it is why was he put on the X you have an open threat Ben has described and your timeline lays out was there for an hour I’m not going to play any word games were were they a threat
(3:42:39) or suspicious well if you’re a threat it’s because you’re doing something suspicious and if you’re suspicious it’s because you could be a threat these are silly stupid word games you know when it’s not a threat when your CSU or Pi team goes and grabs the guy and determines he’s not a threat until then your question’s accurate you put him in the holding room which is the point of the holding room ask more question so I’m going to I I just want to follow that up um and you made the point earlier about counter surveillance there
(3:43:07) were no counter surveillance teams there um was Mr but there but there’s there’s a a public domain videos of him Mr krooks wandering around is there uh was there anything in his behavior wandering around that if you would have had a counter surveillance team there they it would have uh triggered an an interaction with this guy earlier uh I I I’m going to answer yes but respectfully and I don’t know you understand the the CSU and Pi teams are trained in very specific behavioral indicators that would give off with and
(3:43:45) and speaking about them openly would probably give operational knowledge to bad guys I know you understand that but the the short answer is not only one but many behavioral indicators he was giving off that if if we could talk in a secure setting you’d be like how how did they miss this uh the CSU team would not have missed it if they were there which they weren’t thank you so much uh Mr Bigs we will now go to The Honorable Eli crane for five minutes thank you uh Mr banino do you have any confidence that uh secret
(3:44:16) service has learned their lesson uh no because I’ve been involved in a number of uh uh 10 years in the Secret Service I was in the training center when the Georgia grenade nearly exploded you know the only reason didn’t kill President Bush is because the guy wrapped it in a towel that’s it it’s the only reason he survived because we got lucky and the changes made from that lasted about a month they added more magnetometers and then basically the same problems resurface again so no I want to read a text to you um and see what you what
(3:44:47) your thoughts are on this do you know who Joe Kent is Mr Bonino Joe Kent he’s running for congress right now for special forces guy up in Washington yeah this is a text he sent me on U believe Monday August 19th he said Hey brother I know you are doing an independent j13 investigation I want to share this antidote with you from my experience with speaker Mike Johnson’s Us Secret Service detail this weekend bottom line up front speaker detail was incredibly LAX failed to seal off all entrances entrances to a very small venue Johnson
(3:45:24) wasn’t secured and very easy to access long version we had a local steakhouse host my fundraiser with the speaker location was only available after people rsvpd but the entrances to the steakhouse had Kint for congress signs on the two entrances one entrance was inside the hotel one out on the street in a busy pedestrian area I arrived about 45 minutes early to check out the venue and to make sure my team had stuff ready I also wanted to see if the US Secret Service had a checkpoint set up I carry everywhere I planned on leaving my
(3:45:59) pistol in a hotel room my team had there I entered the hotel followed the Kint signs into the steakhouse and immediately walked up to the unsecured holding room the speaker was in he was on a call so he did not notice me neither did any of his detail his detail was inside the restaurant just bsing no control over the two entrances at all once the event started they put on a good show and looked apart I can’t interpret their intent but they failed a basic simple task secure the second entry two entry points a shocking level
(3:46:36) of incompetence the event was in Vancouver in the shadow of Portland Oregon Mr B what is is Speaker Johnson what what’s what’s his job that would be Capitol Hill Police but it speaks to a larger issue with these security failures what was mentioned about three4 of the way through uh that that text where everything becomes about Optics I I’ll give you just a quick example you know why is think about this why are Secret Service agents out there wearing wearing suits you don’t see that with a lot of Israeli Shen bat and others because the
(3:47:11) threat over there is existential every day I mean these are little things you’re worried about Optics and what people look like you know red ties on agents and guys who’ve got their shoes shined when you’re not worried about door kickers are going to keep you alive uh the good show part is a problem and its ubiquitous whether it’s DSS whether it’s Capital whether it’s Secret Service we have to start functioning uh excuse me focusing on job tasks and not you know operational Optics or who’s got the freshly press suit on these guys have to
(3:47:41) be out there ready to go into action and defeat that 1520 men Hezbollah team or group of sarios Eric’s talking about before this was a 20-year-old kid who broke them down can you imagine if they had detonated taken out that fence line and rushed a 105 Man team in there with uh with with rifles and heavy weapons you know that would have been a mass murder scene that motor cave would have never gotten out of there yeah thank you you were talking about slings earlier and how long it took the Secret Service to adopt slings on their primary weapon
(3:48:13) system why is it important that have a sling on primary weapon system and what what is this uh what what what was why did it take so long for the Secret Service to get on board with having their agents carry slings I you know I I I candidly wish I was joking with you guys um but I’m not the secret Services operating kind of de facto motto when I was there about tech technology we’re laughingly calling a sling techn I mean really it’s like technology like the wheels technology right is uh because we’ve always done it that way the I I’m
(3:48:46) not kidding you get a bunch of Secret Service agents up here and you get them on the record um and they will tell you exactly that you know I remember when GPS technology first started and President Bush was riding his bike and we brought a guy in headquarters and uh we said hey we’re losing President Bush a lot on the bike I mean he was a good biker he’d go in the woods and uh I mean the guys were with him but the motorcade was having a hard time finding him well maybe you should look at this thing called GPS eh we’ve never done it that
(3:49:11) way before why would you need a sling for a thousand different reasons you may need to go Hands-On you may need to grab a ladder you may have a weapons malfunction what are you going to do hand the weapon to someone else in the crowd get while I get my pistol this is technology the military’s been using as you know for since World War I who knows it’s just it’s it’s a mentality where no one wants to take a chance and if nothing’s happened because they got lucky in the past then there’s no reason to change anything Mr
(3:49:37) Bonino odd to say the least yes I want to go back to something earlier as well Mr vonino Secret Service NYPD worked in the actual training of it do you believe that a protective detail should be appointed based upon the title you carry or the threat level based upon the office in which you were to obtain it should exclusively be based on a threat assessment it should have nothing to do with the title and do you agree that if you were the secret service director that when the request came in based on President Trump’s
(3:50:12) profile based on the existing threats that would need to be mitigated based on the request by his own officers that that would be something that you would approve or disapprove there is in a scenario where a sane rational well-trained secret service agent would deny CSU or counter sniper assets to a a threat to a protecte with a threat footprint like Donald Trump not a chance well I really appreciate that and I know that you’re enjoying the private sector but I can tell you we’d have been far better off by having the director of The Secret
(3:50:42) Service be Dan Bonino than it be Ronald row or director cheel um I’m going to go ahead with this and turn it over to uh my colleague Mr honorable chip Roy for five minutes um and Mr V I’ll let you comment on that and I’ll ask you one more question in closing I know you need to go um we had some reporting from uh Miss Crabtree who was here over the panel earlier and is um with us now uh earlier about um the potential engagement or interference I should say by Iranian uh authorities um in terms of our ability to protect our president
(3:51:19) Secret Service and so forth do you have any uh perspectives on that and why uh that’s particularly problematic or any uh anything to add about that and how our foreign adversaries are viewing what we’re seeing unfold in front of us well I want you to keep in mind that we’ve known about the Iranian threat after the death of sulamani to uh John Bolton Donald Trump uh former president Trump um and others for well over three years now so uh there’s no keep in mind this is a regime that has a history of documented Terror attacks who slogan
(3:51:50) ears death to America so it’s they’re not actually U their motives are you don’t have to investigate their motives they tell you uh they’ve known about it if they have if if and Susan’s an excellent reporter I want to if you’re not following her you’re making a big mistake on this I have no reason to not believe her reporting or its accuracy she’s been that good three sources if I remember correctly these three sources are are accurate that we have been compromised and security allocation decisions are being made by people uh
(3:52:18) under the influence of the Iranian Terror regime then then this is going to be a whole different panel if we do this again Mr bino I want to turn to you real quick as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there are so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank them and and say but I’ve already heard that from 10 other guys um
(3:52:52) and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked this 2024 it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and
(3:53:25) and other other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly be your excuse to say you know what I
(3:54:01) don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the a courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to and didn’t that day for reasons still unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a
(3:54:34) high Lev protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to protect president Trump said ah we’re going to
(3:55:03) pass on the coms really you described it as catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr Bonino and your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded because when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the last incident you’re out of your mind we have
(3:55:35) seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a sea suite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there’s there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheetle the director wasn’t even fired she was allowed to
(3:56:05) resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time think like agents wearing red ties on the detail this actually happened by the way these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the kind of stuff the Secret Service was
(3:56:40) actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck cuz that’s not the agency I worked for as somebody with a lot of experience in the Secret Service is it correct sir that you at this point have members of the Secret Service whistleblowing and calling you right now to talk to you about the culture of the Secret Service there were so many um it’s um it’s getting to the point now where I thank
(3:57:12) them and and say but I’ve heard heard that from 10 other guys um and I bring that up because none of these problems are new anybody telling you that is lying directly to your face and you better hope they’re not under oath anyone is suggesting in a congressional hearing or elsewhere um that that these problems are new the Personnel problems the logistics problems the Manpower problems the technology problems I just told you a sad running joke in the service when I was there I’m gone since 2011 it it last time I checked this 2024
(3:57:45) it was yesterday’s technology tomorrow and and another other things here that are inexcusable that have been brought up before uh like uh Ben and and uh and Eric just brought up the communication failures are basic this isn’t like the Secret Service million dooll radio system that uses uh NSA level encryption magically broke down that day they literally handed them a radio they didn’t take this is why when Congressman Mills says you know borderline criminal negligence you should take that seriously what could possibly possibly
(3:58:22) be your excuse to say you know what I don’t really need to communicate with the law enforcement guys out there on the scene we asked asked to they had no obligation to be there it’s a secret Services job to protect the president out of the of courtesy they showed up and you don’t even have the respect of these local law enforcement people respect for them to take the radio I mean where was the CP the command post there the way this works so everybody understands or it’s supposed to it didn’t that day for reasons still
(3:58:53) unexplained outside of again obscene negligence any trip for a high level protecte you’re supposed to have a command post that runs the whole trip at the airport or whatever they’ll communicate with everyone but those individual sites like in Butler County have security rooms themselves which are kind of mini CPS at each site where was it according to what what Ben said before and from what I’ve heard it was either not there or the the locals were running it offered Communications and the Secret Service whose job it was that day to
(3:59:25) protect president Trump said n we’re going to pass on the coms really you described that it’s catastrophic I he’s 100% correct Eric knows exactly what he’s talking about apocalyptic failure Mr banino and your opinion is the Secret Service in a better spot today with director Row in charge no it’s it’s worse and and sadly I’m glad this is all being recorded cuz when something else happens and I hope it doesn’t I pray to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ that I’m wrong that you play this and go look that guy was crazy you think this is the
(3:59:57) last incident you’re out of your mind we have seen these incidents over and over we saw the Georgia grenade incident with President Bush they overtook the magnetometers the Secret Service leadership in charge now with the exact same people exact same can you imagine a seite at a company that makes widgets we find out that there there’s a design defect the widget explodes and kills 10 people and the CTO gets a promotion to CEO you understand that’s what happened here correct these are the same people Kim cheel the director wasn’t even fired
(4:00:28) she was allowed to resign she’ll go get some cushy jobs somewhere and her Deputy who is one of the guys behind these stupid waste of time things like agents wearing red ties on the detail be this actually happened by the way you these people will tell you this on the road if you get the right people he was concerned about the tie color of the agents on the detail because it seemed to imply a supported president Trump Congressman Big’s wearing a red tie you’re wearing a semi- red tie has nothing to do with anything this is the
(4:01:00) kind of stuff the Secret Service was actually wasting their time with while withholding CSU counter uh surveillance assets and counter sniper assets from probably the most threatened man on Earth if you can explain it good luck cuz that’s not the agency I worked for and what Mr banino seems to have told us is they haven’t learned the lesson he’s told us decade after decade the we should not expect the lesson to be learned by osmosis Mr Bonino I will have to draw on your experience and in um protecting folks I have none but I do
(4:01:34) have some experience in observing what a government agency does when they’re not telling the truth and they’re trying to hide something and the pattern recognition always goes to some form of scapegoating we saw it at DOD when people refused the vax they were scapegoated and driven out we saw it at FBI when whistleblowers talked about spying at Schoolboard meetings and at Catholic churches they were driven out and now I take note of the fact that certain people at the Pittsburgh field office have been put on leave and I’ve
(4:02:07) also seen the story change where initially the Secret Service was blaming uh folks in local government and then there was admission that there weren’t appropriate responses to requests for additional Manpower so what I’d really like to do with you is bring us into that process because Senator Holly now has a whistleblower saying there was a Manpower request that was coming out of Pittsburgh and headquarters Secret Service was putting downward pressure on the local agents to try to reduce the intensity of that Manpower reest so give
(4:02:41) give Congress a little sense how does that get developed and then what should we think about the fact that someone is saying that headquarters was trying to get people to not make requests of enhanced protection well I can give you an example from personal experience um I I saw Senator Holly’s tweet the secret service is going to rely on this and what they’re trying to do now and you’re accurate in your analysis about how this cover up is starting to work what they’re goingon to say is well there was no real formal
(4:03:12) request made but here’s an example and then I’ll tie something to something that happened to me imagine you’re working for a company a public company it’s actual accountability you know stockle tank or whatever you can’t make products that’ll kill people you’ll go out of business if you do there’s a penalty but imagine you’re told by your safety guy you’re the CEO and your Chief Safety Officer says 50 to 60 times hey again this widget has a defect and if we put this out it’s going to kill someone and you it’s clear after the 50th time
(4:03:42) that the CEO doesn’t care so in the 51st time you tell the product blows up the CEO’s going to say well he didn’t tell me yesterday well he didn’t tell you because he told you 50 times before and you ignored him so what they’re doing now is Ron Row the acting director who is the deputy director the number two who is unbelievably again got a promotion out of this a guy was murdered and someone got promoted which is obscene and disgusting he is part and parcel to this whole day-to-day adpo assistant director protective operations deputy director
(4:04:15) director chain that makes management decisions when they tell you early on we are not doing this for president Trump Congressman we’re not doing counter sniper teams we’re not doing CSU and then they say well on that day we didn’t deny assets you didn’t have to you’ve been denying him for four years I was told by a direct source a direct source this is the quote that at maral Lago they were begging the DTD the Donald Trump detail begging for enhanced security we can’t secure this place like this and one of the quotes from that
(4:04:48) those one of those three people I just told you about was we don’t secure nightclubs really what if a nightclub owner runs for president you don’t secure night you secure whatever the hell they tell you to secure that’s not your job that is what happened here and that’s what they’re going to rely on and that’s where you guys I think have had the kind of the guts to take this on do not do not let them fall back on euphemisms and word games where they go well that specific day we didn’t say no to any assets have you in the past how
(4:05:16) often matter of fact how many counter surveillance teams have you actually dedicated what percentage of trump sites how many CS teams there’s a story out there you did that that was the first time counter sniper Secret Service Estates were ever used at a Donald Trump site so you’re telling me your most threatened protecte had no professional Secret Service OverWatch as Ben showed these guys are more than skilled and competent they don’t need the Secret Service to tell do I think that gets to this intent question that that
(4:05:47) Congressman Mills framed up perfectly at the beginning of our discussion Congressman Mills says the key question here is whether this was your run-of-the-mill government incompetence or whether you see features of such just disregard for the duty at hand that that you believe there’s some malice and in his opening statement Mr Prince says when the incom when the incompetence reaches a certain point you can you can impute the malice to that and what I think you have unique experience in is well like this culture of denying
(4:06:15) requests like to Trump or or a circumstance where not even the Donald Trump detail but the folks in the Pittsburgh field office who are not normally on the Trump detail were saying hey just based on this you know we’re going to we we might need more and they were they were discouraged from even making those requests so they couldn’t be denied I I think you can give us a lot of insight into the type of questions we need to be asking and of who to understand that culture because like you think of the Secret Service
(4:06:42) they off with with a number of detain or of protectees right of all kind of different profiles and different um I guess you know priority to for lack of a better term and so like what should we think about imputing malice at a point in which Donald Trump one of most the one of the most threatened people on the planet Earth is having is having to endure these denials and this culture of limited protection while you’re seeing other details you know beefed up substantially I think and I I don’t think I put this out yet but I’ll I’ll
(4:07:14) put it out there now uh when I was there it was definitely not a political Enterprise it it just wasn’t I never once working for President Clinton uh Bush and Obama had anyone even remotely implicate a political motive for any decision whatsoever however from the commentary directed at some of the agents in charge of the Donald Trump detail which I have heard about clearly it appears that for the first time in America history we have a secret service that is making decisions that may not be all political but may have a
(4:07:50) political tinge to them so what you’re saying I would love to say Congressman that’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard but I tell you with a pure heart and I’m being absolutely candid I have no skin in this game I don’t work there anymore I am not their PR guy I run my own business I absolutely believe Donald Trump and an enhanced security posture he should have had would have made him look more presidential would have facilit facilitated the logistical operation of him traveling I think they were concerned about Optics
(4:08:19) and making him look like a big shot or whatever you know word you want to throw out there and they were making some of these decisions based purely on grade school level politics I don’t want to believe that but I didn’t want to believe it with the FBI either I didn’t want to believe it with the NIH either I mean a lot of these these agencies that have been I think subject to political capture we want to think of them as above that and I I spend we all spend time around Secret Service we’re inspired by their patriotism and their
(4:08:47) their the willingness you have to have to literally take a bullet for someone if necessary but just like in the military just like at the FBI I worry about the political capture happening at headquarters and then that culture informing decisions in a way that’s that’s very damaging to the country so what what you just