Trump assassination plots expose FBI, Secret Service vulnerabilities and failures

A Pakistani man trying to help Iran assassinate Donald Trump gets waived into the United States. An American who would later try to shoot Trump is flagged at the border but gets no follow-up. A young man acting suspiciously at a Trump rally isn't confronted until he starts firing. And agents fail to confront a future would-be assassin after getting a tip about illegal weapons.

The back-to-back assassination attempts against the 45th president and current GOP nominee have exposed glaring failures and vulnerabilities inside several federal law enforcement agencies and prompted painful questions about whether the FBI and Secret Service are too lax when it comes to proactive security.

"I was disappointed in just the blasé attitude there. These aren't normal times," Sen. Ron Johnson, the top Republican on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show.

"They have to provide greater security for President Trump, and they've got to get those resources wherever they can get it. And President Biden, using his executive authority, ought to make sure that they get those resources," he added.

A former Navy SEAL turned congressman told Just the News that the country was lucky that the first two assassination attempts involved amateurish tactics and warned that a real professional assassin likely would have succeeded.

"The problem with that is is we're sending a signal to the rest of the world and even individuals within our own country who hate President Trump, that these guys, without any training and experience, are getting very close," Rep. Eli Crane, R-Ariz., told the John Solomon Reports podcast.

"And that's a very dangerous precedent and a very dangerous signal that we are sending to the enemies of President Trump," Crane said.

 The assassination attempt Sunday in Florida stunned security experts because the Secret Service had not swept or locked down the golf course with a security perimeter, and did not have cameras or drones to detect Ryan Routh even as the alleged assassin lingered for 12 long hours looking for a shot.

Now there are questions about earlier intervention with Routh.

Emerging evidence shows that Routh flashed across the federal law enforcement radar at least four times since 2019 without any significant intervention.

For instance, Just the News reported Tuesday that U.S. Customs and Border Protection flagged Routh during a return trip from Ukraine and referred him to Homeland Security Investigations to be probed but the agency declined to do so.

Instead, the suspect traveled to Florida and was spotted by the Secret Service with the barrel of his gun poking through the bushes, poised to fire on Trump as he golfed at his South Florida course Sunday. 

The FBI and Secret Service have recently been plagued by cases where investigators had flagged troubling behavior by suspects before they would go on to plan or commit serious crimes. These examples include failure to track Thomas Crooks, the first attempted Trump assassin, at the Pennsylvania rally and the Homeland Security Department’s decision to allow Asif Raza Merchant, a Pakistani national planning an assassination attempt against U.S. officials, into the country. 

Routh’s assassination attempt was no different. Two other known warnings preceded the flag by border entry officials in 2023. A 2022 report by a volunteer nurse warning officials about Routh’s unstable behavior and a 2019 tip to the FBI that Routh was illegally in possession of a firearm as a felon both seemingly show that Routh had been on federal law enforcement radar on at least two other occasions. Curiously, Routh has been interviewed several times by major media outlets prior to his death-stalking Trump last week. Routh has been quoted as a credible voice by Reuters, Newsweek, The New York Times, AFP, and others, speaking two years ago about his alleged commitment to supporting the war in Ukraine.

U.S. border entry records show Routh was interviewed in June 2023 by U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials when he returned from Ukraine last year and flagged for further investigation based on spontaneous comments he made to agents, but the Homeland Security Department simply declined to act, Just the News reported Tuesday.

Government records show that CBP officials knew that Routh had traveled to Warsaw, Poland, near the Ukraine border, and to Istanbul, Turkey, in 2022 and 2023 and had admitted in his interview that he had been recruiting as many as 100 foreign fighters from Taiwan, Afghanistan and Moldova to join Ukraine's war against the Russian invasion.

The self-appointed Ukraine advocate was referred to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), the lead investigative organ of the Homeland Security Department, but the division declined to pursue the matter. It is not clear why HSI refused to probe Routh further. The agency referred Just the News to the FBI when reached for comment Tuesday. 

The FBI did not respond to a request for comment from Just the News. 

Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who volunteered in Kyiv, Ukraine in 2022, claims she told Border Protection agents about several encounters she had with Routh in the country. She told CBP authorities she suspected Routh was dangerous in an interview when she returned to Dulles airport in Washington a year before Routh’s encounter with the agency in Honolulu. In a notebook kept during her trip to Ukraine, Walsh wrote that Routh exhibited “Overall Predatory Behavior (or antisocial traits),” according to a page she shared with the Wall Street Journal. 

Walsh also told the Journal that after Routh described to her his efforts to recruit Syrian refugees to fight in Ukraine against Russia, she submitted an online report to both the FBI and Interpol with her concerns about the future would-be assassin. 

Jeffrey Veltri, special agent in charge of the FBI's Miami Field Office, at a press conference yesterday in South Florida told reporters that a tip came in 2019 that Routh was in possession of a firearm as a felon. Veltri said the tipster failed to confirm details of his report and so the bureau referred the complaint to the local police department where Routh was living Hawaii. It does not appear local police pursued the lead after it was referred by the bureau. 

Routh was convicted of felony possession of a weapon of mass destruction—a machine gun—along with carrying a concealed weapon, possessing stolen property, and a hit-and-run in Greensboro, NC, where he lived before moving to Hawaii in 2018. There are also charges related to driving with a suspended license, according to the court records obtained from Guilford County, where Greensboro is situated. 

Just the News previously reported federal authorities allowed Asif Raza Merchant, the Pakistani man charged with plotting with Tehran to assassinate Donald Trump and others, to enter the U.S. in April with special permission known as “significant public benefit parole” even though he was flagged on a terrorism watchlist and recently traveled to Iran, according to similar border entry records. 

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force interviewed Merchant, fingerprinted him and inspected the contents of his electronic devices when he arrived at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport, in Houston, but then let him leave with the special parole that expired on May 11 despite his suspicious travel history which included a visit to Iran—a state sponsor of terrorism—and watchlist flag. 

The Justice Department says Merchant tried to hire an individual for an assassination plot shortly after he entered the country in April and that individual become a confidential informant for law enforcement after reporting the contact. He was reportedly targeting Donald Trump. Merchant was ultimately arrested on July 12 as he attempted to make arrangements to leave the country.

The Secret Service was plagued by several security failures leading up to the first Trump assassination attempt in Butler, PA, in July. The investigation into the assassination attempt that left one attendee dead, and three injured including Trump, is being led by the FBI. 

Before Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old Pennsylvania native, opening fire on the former president and his rally attendees, local law enforcement teams reportedly flagged him as suspicious, even taking photos of the would-be assassin before he climbed on the roof of a nearby building and launched his attack. 

In the lead up to the rally, several attendees reported to local police officers that Crooks was suspicious while he was pacing near the metal detectors, according to the Associated Press. Crooks reportedly attempted to bring a rangefinder commonly used by shooting enthusiasts through the metal detectors, raising the suspicion of law enforcement.

Other reports also indicate that a law enforcement officer member of a tactical sniper team took a photo of Crooks during a 5:30 PM sighting, more than 40 minutes before he fired on the former president, the Daily Mail reported. The photo taken by law enforcement has been circulated social and news media. CBS News reported that the tactical team saw Crooks at least twice looking at the building and using his rangefinder.