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.