Sen. Markwayne Mullin, R-Okla., told Newsmax on Thursday that the Secret Service agent in charge at former President Donald Trump's Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally "should have been able to identify" gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks "as a serious threat and make the decision" to delay the event.
"At 5:09 [p.m.], they said they identified [Crooks] as a point of interest," Mullin said during an appearance on Newsmax's "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "No contact was made. So if you know he's a point of interest, he's got a backpack, he's got a range finder — which, why would he have a range finder? — why wouldn't a uniformed police officer address him and say, 'Hey, what are you doing here? Let me take a look at your bag.' Nineteen minutes before the shooting took place, meaning nine minutes before he took the stage — it was 10 minutes into his speech that President Trump got shot — they were already actively looking for him.
"Now, I used to do advance work and set up protective service work for people," he continued. "We used to secure sites, set up those perimeters. We always had contingency plans. So if you have a principal on stage, you have three goals. One is harassment, embarrassment, and death. Harassment, embarrassment is typically what you're dealing with, but you also deal with contingency plans. ... When they realized they couldn't find [Crooks], they could have easily put something on the teleprompter that said, 'Hey, technical difficulties,' meaning the president needs to leave the stage without having to interrupt the speech and cause a big scurry. But they did nothing like that. Nothing."
The Oklahoma senator pointed out that Trump "doesn't always take the stage on time anyways" because at live events like rallies "things happen, things run late."
"So it wouldn't have been out of line for them to wait until they found [Crooks]," Mullin said. "Nineteen minutes is not too long. They could have had a band take the stage. They could have had somebody else talk. You don't let your principal — in this case, President Trump — take the stage."
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Nicole Weatherholtz ✉
Nicole Weatherholtz, a Newsmax general assignment reporter covers news, politics, and culture. She is a National Newspaper Association award-winning journalist.
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