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By Guy Page
“Choose One: Law Enforcement at Trump Shooting Was Either Incompetent or Complicit.”
So reads the headline of an op-ed authored by Ryan McMaken of the Mises Institute, republished July 19 by Windtaskforce.org. McMaken says Candidate Donald Trump’s protective detail – local police but especially the U.S. Secret Service – failed by epic screwup or on purpose. One or the other.
I suggest an alternative: criminal negligence, for which the online legal encylopedia Nolo offers this definition:
Criminal negligence (sometimes called culpable negligence) refers to a defendant who acts in disregard of a serious risk of harm that a reasonable person in the same situation would have perceived. Another common definition includes an act that amounts to a gross deviation from the general standard of care.
“Disregard of a serious risk of harm that a reasonable person in the same situation would have perceived.”
“A gross deviation from the general standard of care.”
It walks like a duck. It talks like a duck. Therefore…..
Already we know the Secret Service repeatedly denied Trump campaign requests for more security. We know it didn’t want to bring its own snipers. We know it provided more agents to protect Jill Biden than Donald Trump on the same day in the Pittsburgh area, failed to attend a morning law enforcement briefing, and failed to delay the start of the rally despite having a report of a man with a rifle.
Secret Service Director Cheatle admitted to Congress that Saturday, July 13 was an epic fail. But does it rise to the level of civil or even criminal prosecution for negligence?
And what about immunity? Don’t police enjoy absolute immunity for service-related infractions?
No. Just ask Grand Rapids Police Officer Derek Schurr, charged with second degree murder for shooting a motorist to death during a traffic stop. Or for that matter, Derek Chauvin, now serving a 22-year sentence for the 2020 death of George Floyd.
Of course the Secret Service isn’t the Grand Rapids PD. Nor did it fire the bullet. But malicious intent? Willful, reckless ‘go ahead, I don’t care’ negligence in effect conspiring with the shooter?
The U.S. Department of Justice says “It is a crime for one or more persons acting under color of law willfully to deprive or conspire to deprive another person of any right protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States. (18 U.S.C. §§ 241, 242). ‘Under color of law’ means that the person doing the act is using power given to him or her by a governmental agency (local, State, or Federal).”
Conspiring to try to deprive a person of their life, not to mention half the country of their presidential candidate, would seem to qualify as a crime committed “under color of law.”
Let’s hope the investigations underway will reveal to the American public just how badly the Secret Service failed.
We know Congress is grilling Cheatle. This morning her boss, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, appointed an “independent review panel” he said is “committed to getting to the bottom of what happened on July 13.”
This panel, led by Obama’s former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, has nary a Trump appointee among them: Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security Advisor to President George W. Bush; Mark Filip, a former federal judge and Deputy Attorney General to President George W. Bush; Chief David Mitchell, the former superintendent of Maryland State Police and former Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Homeland Security for the State of Delaware. Mitchell was appointed to both his Maryland and Delaware jobs by Democratic governors.
Wise Vermonters aren’t betting their next, inflated property tax payment on the Mayorkas Four concluding (publicly, at least) that the Secret Service on its nearly-impeached boss’s watch was criminally culpable, even of mere ‘negligence.’ Here’s hoping the next administration, or Congress – our money’s on Sen. Ron Johnson – determine what really happened.
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Categories: News Analysis
Like her incompetent boss Joe, she is gone, none too soon. DEI will be the ruin of us all.
How deep is the DC swamp ??……. Real deep !!
Do you think the ” Secret Service ” is just inept or were they “some ” part of a plan and turn a blind eye, in setting up an assassination attempt after everything else the left has tried to stop Trump ??
An assassination is pretty easy when you leave a door open or in this case, a roof available for easy access, but you have a liberal fool on a fool’s errand, he was like a mouse to a mouse trap, with the same ending and we have ” no answers “, so it’s just a coincidence that 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks just walked around and climbed onto the building people shouted as they saw him, and let with all that they let Trump go on stage, is Secret Service inept………… Nah, !! you set a trap and you’ll catch a mouse !!
Desperate people do desperate things, and the left is desperate !!
A content creator did a deep dive on Regan’s assasination attempt back in 1981. Interesting, they drove Regan to a hospital further away than the nearest hospital. The location of his vehicle was pulled up away from the hotel entrance. The secret service agents left him exposed and wide open on one side walking to the vehicle. While Regan was recouperating, Daddy Bush went to work re-arranging the deck chairs inside the Administration. Regan had just been sworn in weeks prior. It was a miracle that bullet (an interesting type of bullet) didn’t take him out – and not to lunch. Since then, all Presidents and administations are all of the same ilk, with the same farm animals and/or offspring installed inside the Oval office, pulling the levers and strings. A banana republic for decades.