JULY 13: ATTEMPT ONE Day before ex-President was shot, Iran-linked man was held for trying to hire hitmen to assassinate U.S. politicians — and FBI HASN’T ruled out linkBy Freddy Gray Nearly ten weeks have passed since Thomas Matthew Crooks came within inches of killing Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania. But it’s strange how much we still don’t know about the 20-year-old would-be assassin.What, exactly, was his motive? Did he act alone? And why on earth did Secret Service and law-enforcement officers ignore the glaring warning signs and fail to stop Crooks firing off eight rounds on July 13, clipping Trump’s ear, killing one spectator and badly wounding two others?In a country obsessed with conspiracy theories, this lack of transparency is only feeding a growing sense, especially among Trump’s supporters, that the ‘Deep State’ is hiding information that might swing the presidential election on November 5 in his favour. Last week, Melania Trump released a video demanding clarity. ‘The attempt to end my husband’s life was a horrible, distressing experience,’ she said. ‘Now the silence around it feels heavy… There is definitely more to this story. And we need to uncover the truth.’ Donald Trump after being shot at by Thomas Matthew Crooks on July 13Members of a Congressional inquiry into the shooting also expressed their frustration at the reluctance of the FBI and other official agencies to be more forthcoming about Crooks’s story.’The more we get into it, the more questions I have,’ is how Republican Florida congressman Mike Waltz puts it.Freddy Gray considers the evidence…How did an amateur assassin get so close?Crooks was seen wandering around the rally for several hours, acting strangely and carrying a ‘range-finder’ device commonly used by marksmen.Experts remain baffled as to why the warehouse on to which Crooks climbed, with an assault weapon, was not included within the Secret Service’s ‘security perimeter’ for the event, even though it was less than 150 yards from where Trump made his speech.Worse still, agents and officers neglected to act despite at least three police alerts about Crooks’s unusual behaviour – not to mention the large number of Trump supporters who had sounded the alarm about a dangerous-looking man scrambling around on a roof.Last, but not least, nobody has yet adequately explained why the Secret Service sniper team, which had their guns trained on Crooks, waited for him to start shooting before firing back and killing him.The task of securing the warehouse was given to local police, who stationed two officers inside, apparently unaware of the threat as Crooks scrambled onto the roof above them. And while his earlier suspicious behaviour had been noted by local law enforcement – and the secret service informed twice – Crooks had not been spotted with a weapon and was not considered a serious threat.It all points to a sense among those minded to believe conspiracies that those there to protect Trump were in fact wilfully exposing him to lethal risk. Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was an introvert who excelled in maths and IT and worked at a healthcare centreWhat was the killer’s motive?Crooks left behind no publicly available manifesto explaining his beliefs before he was killed by a secret service sniper team.He had donated money to the Democrats but was also ­registered as a Republican. The FBI claims to have discovered an online account linked to Crooks that shared anti-Semitic material.What we do know is that Crooks was an introvert who excelled in maths and IT and worked at a healthcare centre. A school classmate suggested he had been bullied and that might explain why he kept such a low profile online.Most intriguingly, however, Crooks was using encrypted message accounts based in Belgium, Germany and New Zealand.’Why does a 19-year-old kid who is a healthcare aide need encrypted platforms not even based in the United States, but based abroad — where most terrorist organisations know it is harder for our law enforcement to get into?’ demands Waltz.Did crooks act alone?The FBI is yet to rule out the possibility that Crooks was working with co-conspirators. In an odd and under-reported coincidence, the day before the shooting, FBI officials arrested Pakistani national Asif Raza Merchant, who has ‘ties to Iran’, accusing him of trying to hire hitmen to kill US politicians in retaliation for Trump’s 2020 assassination of ­Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander Qasem Soleimani.There is no available evidence connecting Crooks to Merchant or any international plot – but why hasn’t the FBI explicitly ruled out any link? The agency has form when it comes to not disclosing politically explosive information. In 2020 it put pressure on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and others to suppress a story about sensational material discovered on a computer belonging to Joe Biden’s son Hunter on the ground that it was ‘misinformation’.The story, which could have harmed his father’s chances of reaching the White House, turned out to be true – but Left-leaning Silicon Valley suppressed it on the orders of the FBI. Given the lack of progress in the Crooks case, some observers are wondering: is the FBI again keeping the public in the dark about Crooks’s motivations, for fear of helping Trump back into the White House?Did his parents play a part?Matthew Crooks and his wife Mary, both 53, have hired a team of top lawyers to defend themselves ahead of a possible upcoming trial. Matthew gave his son the AR-15 assault rifle used on July 13, which had a collapsible stock, making it easier to conceal.’The FBI still very much has questions about what they knew and how he [Thomas] slipped through the net,’ an anonymous family member told the NEWSWALLA last month.Matthew and his wife Mary are both licensed mental health counsellors – yet Matthew is a ‘gun nut’ who owns more than a dozen firearms. A neighbour claims that until recently the father of the man who nearly murdered Trump kept a Make America Great Again sign in the front garden of the three-bedroom family home.There is no indication that Crooks’s parents assisted him in his crime. Yet they have been keeping quiet since the shooting. In Pittsburgh in late July, when reporters asked if he would be willing to make a statement, Matthew simply stopped, paused and said, rather oddly, ‘I gotta pee.’Was Trump’s security detail compromised?The FBI insists that standard procedures were followed. But that hasn’t stopped Trump’s supporters from pointing fingers at the Bureau, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security. Republican Senator Josh Hawley has this week shared with Congress an extraordinary report from a Secret Service whistleblower who claims that the senior agent in charge of the operation to protect Trump in Butler had failed a key examination when training to become an agent.The whistleblower further alleges that the Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division, which usually carries out assessments of event sites, was not present on the day of the rally.Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned days after the shooting. But the agency’s own investigation has since shown that its failures went even deeper than officials had admitted.As well as a special ‘radio-room’ for security services not being put to use, no attempts were made to beef up Trump’s security detail, despite intelligence suggesting an Iranian-backed plot to murder him. Such mind-boggling failures lead many Trump fans to believe that the agency must have wanted the 45th President dead.Was an FBI diversity quota to blame?The spectacularly inadequate way the Service operated that day does suggest at least some of its agents had no idea what they were doing. Donald Trump is 6ft 3in, yet one of the team tasked with bundling him off stage was a woman almost half his size. ‘What are we doing? What are we doing?’ screamed one female agent.Another seemed to think her most urgent task was to make sure her sunglasses were on. And a third kept trying and failing to re-holster her pistol. In the aftermath of the shooting, some claimed that the Service’s obsession with diversity quotas (its director was leading an initiative to hire 30 per cent women) meant that applicants were appointed because of sex rather than ability – and the disastrous results were all too evident on July 13.Trump has often said political correctness is killing America. Perhaps political correctness very nearly killed him.It’s hard for America’s high-level institutions to admit such ­incompetence. And that is probably why, for now, the full story of what really happened in Butler remains untold. SEPTEMBER 15: ATTEMPT TWOCareer criminal who’d been to Ukraine and owned a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ somehow stakes out golf course for 12 hours on day Trump WASN’T due to play By Tom Leonard It’s the mystery gripping America. How has Donald Trump escaped a second attempt on his life just two months after he was almost assassinated at an ­election rally in Pennsylvania?Like the first time, the threat was terrifyingly close. Trump was playing a round of golf on Sunday afternoon at one of his usual courses when his security detail spotted the barrel of a rifle sticking through a perimeter fence near the sixth hole.Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, fled as soon as the Secret Service shot at him, and was later arrested some 50 miles away. Ryan Routh, 58, fled and was caught 50 miles away after an assassination attempt on Trump while he was playing golfFollowing the Pennsylvania shooting by Thomas Crooks, Trump’s security detail was thought to have been intensified. So how could this sinister character have ended up anywhere near him?The latest attempt to murder the former President has thrown up some troubling theories. Did Routh have ties to the US military? Was he part of a global plot to take out Trump before he got too close to the Presidency?What was Routh’s motive?Routh’s preparations for the golf course operation indicate ‘a very high level of pre-planning’, says Andrew McCabe, a former senior FBI official.Along with the rifle and backpacks, the authorities discovered a Go-Pro compact camera attached to the perimeter fence at the scene. Could Routh have been planning to broadcast ­footage of the slaughter later?Routh was active on social media and, according to his ­X (Twitter) account, was an ex-Trump supporter who vehemently backed Ukraine in its war against Russia. In a 2020 post, Routh made clear he voted for Trump in the 2016 election but later wrote that he was ‘man enough to say that I misjudged and made a terrible mistake’.He’d also made outspoken pro-Palestinian, pro-Taiwan and anti-China posts, and his social media musings reveal how he became increasingly militant about the geopolitical forces he railed against. In a 2023 self-­published e-book, Ukraine’s Unwinnable War, he described Trump as a ‘buffoon’ and said ­Iranian leaders should feel ‘free to assassinate’ him.Fuelling suspicions of those on the Right that this was a plot orchestrated by the Democrats, North Carolina voting records show Routh voted in the recent Democratic primary election there and made small donations to the Democrats in recent years.How did he manage to get hold of a gun?Law enforcement say they recovered an SKS-type assault rifle ­fitted with a telescopic sight from where they believe Routh had been hiding. Routh had sufficient tactical know-how to take along with him two backpacks filled with ceramic tiles, which he had hung on the perimeter fence in a likely attempt to protect him from incoming gunfire.Routh’s eldest son, Oran, insisted that his father was ­’loving and caring’ and an ­’honest, hardworking man’.However, his criminal history tells a different story. The FBI admitted Routh was banned from possessing a firearm because of various offences that include a conviction on a felony charge of possessing a ‘weapon of mass destruction’ in 2022 – a reference to a fully automatic machine gun. On that occasion, he barricaded himself inside a commercial property in a three-hour stand-off with police.Routh has also been prosecuted for over a dozen other offences, ranging from issuing bad cheques and handling stolen goods to a hit-and-run and resisting arrest.Anyone selling a gun to Routh would have been required to carry out a background check that would have revealed those convictions and barred them from completing the sale. If reports are correct that the serial number on Routh’s gun had been scratched off, it’s possible he obtained it illegally.How did Routh get so close to his target?Routh had set up his rifle on the golf course perimeter and skulked there – apparently undetected – for at least 12 hours, according to his phone data. He was 300-500 yards away from Trump on the fifth hole green when he was spotted – ‘not a long distance’ for a gun fitted with a scope, said Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw.His assassination plans were only foiled because Secret Service agents were walking the course one hole ahead of the ex-President and spotted the gun barrel. But how did he get there in the first place?The Secret Service’s explanation is that since Trump’s round of golf hadn’t been scheduled, agents hadn’t swept the club’s more than three-mile perimeter. And, say officials, Trump isn’t President, which makes all the difference. ‘If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded,’ said Bradshaw.’How did he know Trump was golfing?Given that his game had been a last-minute addition to his schedule, how did Routh know Trump would be at the course? That’s the ­’million-dollar question’, said Florida sheriff Will Snyder.As former FBI Director Chris Swecker said: ‘There are only three possible answers. He guessed and got very lucky; he conducted surveillance on Trump and followed him to the golf course; or he had inside information about Trump’s schedule.’The last answer is scary and has implications that another person was involved.’However, the club is only a 10-minute drive from Trump’s home at Mar-a-Lago and Trump is a creature of habit. Could it be that Routh simply decided to stake out the course, expecting that Trump might head there on a sunny Sunday morning?Was Routh working for Ukraine?It appears Routh’s biggest source of antipathy towards the ex-President was his reluctance to support Ukraine in the war against Russia. So could Routh be a plant in an attempt to kill the man who might secure a Putin victory?Routh claims he recruited ­foreign soldiers to fight in the Ukrainian forces during a five-month visit to the country in 2022, sparking speculation that he could have been working for Ukraine – or NATO or the CIA.However, those who did fight in the volunteer force, the International Legion, for which Routh says he was recruiting, insist that he wasn’t associated with them and recruited nobody.Did he appear in a Blackrock ad?Conspiracy theorists have long argued that multinational investment company BlackRock secretly controls global events for its own sinister ends. So claims that Routh appeared in a promotional video for the company rapidly went viral.One wildly-popular online post said ‘Ryan Routh also appeared in a BlackRock commercial, just like Thomas Crooks … These aren’t coincidences.’It is true that Crooks briefly appeared in a 2022 BlackRock promotional video which profiled his school teacher. However, the company said it was ‘false’ to suggest Routh had ever been an employee. Experts say a video, shot at a political rally in Ukraine, has been manipulated to make it look like a BlackRock commercial.Should Routh have been on the radar?Routh had certainly been to Ukraine and his behaviour had alarmed one person so much that she alerted US officials.Chelsea Walsh, a nurse who met Routh while she was volunteering in Kyiv in 2022, said he was a ‘ticking time bomb’. ‘He frequently spoke of hurting people, especially politicians,’ she said.FBI agent Jeffrey Veltri revealed they received a 2019 tip saying that, despite being a convicted felon, Routh had a firearm. He says they investigated but the tip came to nothing.