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The Truth with Lisa Boothe: Was the Attempted Assassination of Donald Trump Preventable?

Published Jul 18, 2024, 8:00 AM

In this episode, Lisa interviews Jonathan Gilliam, a former Navy SEAL and FBI agent, about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13th. They discuss the failures of the Secret Service and law enforcement in preventing the attack. Gilliam provides insights from his experience, emphasizing the need for well-trained and vigilant security personnel. The conversation also explores the lack of social media presence of the shooter, the timing of the Iranian threat assessment, and broader issues of distrust in governance and accountability within law enforcement and government agencies. The Truth with Lisa Boothe is part of the Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Podcast Network - new episodes debut every Monday & Thursday.

What the hell happened on July thirteenth?

How did a twenty year old outsmart the Secret Service, an agency that is supposed to protect commanders in chief, the most powerful men, not just in the United States but in the entire world. How did a twenty year old outsmart them? What the hell happened? Also, we know that it's been reported that he was seen and known by law enforcement earlier in the day. He was seen with a rangefinder, which is used for long distance shots. So how did he get those shots off at six ' eleven pm? Was that not concerning enough to stop? And what does a Secret Service have to say about it? The Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheedle blamed a sloped roof for the security failure, But we've seen images of snipers on a sloped roof behind the former president's podium, So why is she lying to us?

Now?

We're hearing about this Iranian threat to President Trump, even though we've known about a threat since January twenty twenty, when the former president took out Castam Solomoni.

So why are we hearing about it now?

We've got so many questions, very few answers, and we're going to get those answers from a guy named Jonathan Gilliam. Jonathan is a former Navy sealer. You know, I guess, once a steal, always a seal, right, a former FBI agent, host of the Experts podcast, and the best selling author A Sheep no More. We're going to ask him to merge those worlds that he has been living in and.

Try to give us some answers.

Also want to know from him, what kind of developments is he looking at moving forward, what is he paying attention to? All that and more with Jonathan Gilliam, Stay tuned, all right, So, Jonathan, you know, I think we're all still assessing. You know, what happened on July thirteenth, a massively historical moment, you know, the former attempted assassinate or the attempted assassination of a former president Donald Trump. You know, with your Steel background and the FBI background, you know, how the hell did this happen?

Well, I'm glad you brought up my backgrounds because the two different backgrounds they're similar as far as the tactics go. But and the honor and integrity that you would think would get you into that job. But the big difference between those two is that as a seal we are we're trained as attackers, so that's our job is to attack. We also do protection details and we're very very good at it because we look.

At things from the attackers point of view.

And so when I went into law enforcement, I actually started as a cop and then in Arkansas and then went into the seal teams, and then from there I was a Federal Air Marshal, So I was flying undercover on planes for a year and then went from there to contracting where I led a course called the Soft Target Awareness Training, which is where I went all over the country and teaching high value targets schools, malls, tall building, stadiums and arenas how to look at themselves from an attackers point of view. So even when I was an air marshal, I was still looking at things from the attackers point of view. If somebody got up and tried to take over one of those planes, my job was to attack them. So then when I went into the FBI and started investigating, I became a hunter. We hunted, you know, criminals on the Asian Organized Crime Squad. And then when I transitioned into the soft target or excuse me, the Special Events Unit, where I was the coordinator for that. What I became then was the defender and I had to teach again, just like when I was a contractor, to teach these private sectors how to look at themselves from the attackers point of view and then defend against that. But my job was to go out there and look at everything, do the threat assessments, do the advances, and then come back and write an operations order so that the FBI could put their resources in those areas, similar to what the Secret Service does, but we weren't protecting anyone. We were putting our resources out there to try to find people that were going to do wrong or ways to act and have a plan to act if something occurred. So when you put all that together, the Secret Service should be trained in a very similar fashion. And when I was in college working at a hotel, all the Secret Service agents that work for Clinton were coming in there, and I was fascinated by them because they were all like six foot five, former military, very athletic, and very aggressive. They got Clinton is an incredible runner, believe it or not. Most people didn't know that about him, but Secret Service had to run six seven miles a day at a six minute mile pace. So they were tremendous athletic and huge. And so we didn't even know what DEI was back then. And so as I got in the military and then the FBI, I started to seeing the FBI this thing that was happening where the recruitment was absolutely crazy. You would have an operator like myself sitting next to somebody who was an attorney, that makes sense, or somebody who was an accountant, that makes sense, But then there were all these other people that they just they had checked boxes and they got it seemed like special privileges to get in there.

And I saw that.

More and more to the point where I ended up getting out of the FBI and starting my own company. And now we see that full circle. So and the reason I'm telling you all this is because this is what occurred last Saturday, is that it was a culmination. I believe we see it in the FBI, but it's hard to pinpoint that because the FBI does investigations behind the scenes. What the Secret Service does is in plain sight of everyone, and typically nothing happens, right, So they put a presence out there. They have a tremendous amount of assets in that location that are very visible, some that are not. And what happened on Saturday was that the tactics, the procedures, the threat assessments, the advances that they did, the interaction with law enforcement, and then the time on target when the actual attack happened on the president and that actual venue, the time on target to get the principle, which was Trump from where he went down into that vehicle. If he had had a sucking chest wound or an artery in his leg or arm that had been hit, he could have bled out by the time they got him to that vehicle and not put a tourniquet on that.

So that's how long they took.

And I've heard all these Secret Service agents on television, former Secret Service agents talking about how they did a great job there. But when you look at the totality of the failures of that day, they started with the hiring, the recruiting, and then putting those people in on the job and then promoting them through the ranks. And so you saw this meeting of the unright minds on that day that allowed this to occur, and then when it did occur, a complete breakdown in movement of the team of the individual's total loss of what they were supposed to do, as you could tell people that were not fit either physically fit or height wise to protect this particular individual, Donald Trump. And so I think if you take all that that I just told you and you relate that to Uvaldi, you'll see the same exact thing happened in Uvaldi. It wasn't necessarily dei hires, but the lower end standards because of the one common denominator in all this, the left, leftists in government and in governments around the country have deluded, degraded law enforcement to a point where if they do have big, strong, aggressive, controlled aggression warriors that are out there, they're punished and the weaker people who don't rock the boat are left in and people who are dei hires rise to the top. And so that's what you've seen in both of these instances. Yeah, they're very similar.

Well, you know, but I guess what it's hard for Americans to wrap their mind around is, you know, I get the comparison to Uvaldi, but you're you're also talking about you know, local police. Obviously, here we're dealing with, you know, the Secret Service protecting former commander, a former commander, you know, in chief, one of the most powerful men of Republican nominee to be President of the United States. So you know, you would think on a different level we wouldn't be seeing similar breakdowns. And then you know, I know you had mentioned sort of the the afterpart, the slowness to get him into the car and to get him out of the area and get him in a more controlled environment. But even previously before that, I mean, he was photographer. The shooter was photographed by the Secret Service at least an hour before the attack. Reportedly, a suspicious person was spotted at five forty one PM with a rangefinder, which of course you know is used for long distance shots, right.

And then the shots happened at six eleven PM.

So that's a lot of time between all of that where this guy could have been stopped wasn't stopped.

So you know, I mean, how do they how do they get that that wrong?

Well, I know it sounds different that state local or local state and federal law enforcement would be so different, but they're actually very similar and they all suffer from the same but they're there. This this controlled, aggressive, in shape, large individual is what should be doing that job is the same with a firefighter. If you know, if your house is on fire or your apartment and you live thirty floors up, do you expect somebody a man or woman. I'm gonna even leave the female part out of this, but somebody who was hired based on fairness. Do you want somebody who's hired on fairness coming to try to rescue? Do you want somebody who is the best of the best coming there? And so that best of the best in all aspects of this has been pushed out. The reason I keep bringing subleaks is that the failures that we saw, including the range finder, not taking that seriously, not having good communications with law enforcement when the advance was done, to put people on those roots or even their own counter snipers on those roofs, to include people who are of the right caliber to protect this large man, and to not employ new and upgraded tactics like a podium that is bulletproof. They don't use these bulletproof podiums for some reason when they go out and speak in public. So every failure that you see there is a culmination of a long time coming, of this degradation of law enforcement that has crept into local it's crept into the FBI, it's crept into the Secret Service, to a point where even the individuals that were with Trump inside the RNC conference this week, they're bigger and they have more of a presence. But if they're moving at the pace, and so many of them have praised what they did after the action took place, the shooting took place last Saturday, if they move at that pace and any of their protectees sustain a shot that is significant, they're going to And so I think when we look at the thread assessment, taking all these things into account, the threat assessment that they did when they do their advance, they for some reason did not look at the totality of the circumstances and asked the question if a shooter could access that roof. And if they did ask that question, they decided to put law enforcement over there, or they said that's a private company.

Well that doesn't stop.

As you can see that old saying, if you want to hide from the police, sell pencils in the.

Police parking lot.

Apparently it's true because this guy was able to go in show them at a range finder. They for some reason didn't think that was odd enough to kick him out and then he went in, came back out and then walked over there and gone on the roof, and whether he had a ladder or climbed up the air conditioner unit, which they're saying, the fact is it was a complete breakdown from the the top of the Secret Service down to the person who did the advance, the way the teams function together, and the local law enforcement who became completely complacent that even they because this is what happens when you put when you put one law enforcement agency that has been affected by this and their standards are low, and you put them in charge, the other law enforcement agents around there will only reach to their standard. It's not like they're going to go over their standard typically and do their own threat assessment put their own people on the roof.

If it's not important to.

The primary investigative or protective agency, it's not going to be important to the other law enforcement agencies.

I don't agree with that, but that's the way it seems to work out.

We've got a quick commercial break more with Jonathan on the other side. I guess we're saying, now he cut the law I have of LA Enforcement around three pm that they obviously will continue to learn more about this. It's obviously developing story. You know, I guess the reason why people are so suspicious of the information we're being also, you know, the lack of social media presence of this guy. And then even beyond that, you know, we've got a government who, you know, the FBI weaponized an internet rumor against Donald Trump previously with the Russia collusion hoax. We've got a government where former CIA directors lied to us and told this hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation when it was in fact the truth.

And we have.

Democrats in Congress who recently sought to remove Donald Trump's security detail, and you know, and a president who just said Joe Biden should be caught in a bulls eye, So Joe Biden saying President Trump should be caught in a bulls eye. So you know, I mean there's a healthy distrust there, and you know, and it's warranted, right, and it's to their governments to blame for it.

Yeah, I mean, look what they did.

They the FBI took part in creating or handling made up evidence in the Russian collusion issue and then took that with not even vetting it or at least they said they didn't vet it. That was their excuse. I think they knew exactly where it came from. They took it to a PHISA judge, which the FBI is an entire unit that goes through and scrubs the stuff to make sure it's verified before they go to a PHISA judge. Because it's in secret, it has to be scrubbed right, because the overwatch is not there that there would be in a regular criminal court. So that unit failed somehow. The PISA judge failed somehow. But when you look at who was handling those things, it was very specific individuals that, as we see now over a period of time, are really a part of the collusion or the conspiracy to basically overthrow the constitution in this country. And so when you take that and you apply that to the Secret Service, as an investigator, I can't rule out that a conspiracy did not take place that day, that that kid was somehow connected and they grubbed everything for him. I can't unless I see proof that that absolutely did not happen, then I have to at least keep that on the burner, and well.

Then that's what that's what an investigator does.

Go ahead you know, and it was reported too that he tried out for the varsity rifle team, didn't make it because he's a bad shooter.

It's just there's just.

A lot of weird And then now we're hearing, you know, this Iranian threat assessment of an attempted assassination against you know, the former president, when we've kind of known that this was a possibility since Donald Trump took out Castam Solomoney in January twenty twenty. I mean, this has been kind of in the public circulating that Iran is wanted to seek vengeance and revenge for that taking place. It's like, why why are we hearing about that now? It just seems like strange timing considering that this has already been part of the broader public conversation.

It's very similar to nine to eleven. You know, there were threats before nine to eleven. Nothing changed. They just sat on the information because because the government and law enforcement in general has this strange love for the term no known threat, right, So they get a general threat and they know that somebody may be planning something, but there's no specific threat to this particular event, and so they say in the briefs there's no known threat, and I try to get that eliminated from all the briefs that I gave. I would always say we don't know of a threat, but it doesn't mean there's not one, so that you should be showing up today considering that something will happen, and that is clearly not the case for what happened this past weekend. But with conspiracies, the problem with that is is you have a little bit of information, credible information. The FBI was crooked, the EI has crushed everything. The evidence that we see with the Secret Service was so bad in their tactics and structure and the threat assessments. So we have that evidence. But what people do is they take that and based on their uneducated opinion, they will create or even their educated opinion. They may say this is through history, this is what's occurred when that occurs, but they create. So that's twenty percent of the pie. They create the other eighty percent without knowing facts or any type of sources that can be verified. So that's the worry about conspiracies is that the American people will get tied up online arguing about this instead of saying we demand THEI not be a part of anything anymore and stand up to the government, and so we get pulled off to the side. So conspiracies, to me, the way they come about at these particular times after these events, they really do resemble clickbait or reverse propaganda where the left would create certain things to get the right spun up.

They do that.

They handle us very well when it comes to propaganda and spinning the conservatives up in this country. But I think what we need to look at is getting the overall picture of what occurred in how that threat assessment. It all goes back to that threat assessment, so we can completely eliminate for the conversation what happened after the shot was taken. If we look at what happened before the shot was taken, that there is a complete breakdown in that threat assessment, and that involves local law enforcement. So that's why the conspiracy part kind of as far as with the Secret Service, that part kind of dies for me because.

Local law enforcement was involved.

They showed the same complacency, and we're talking about, you know, fifty different individuals from multiple different law enforcement agencies all showing the same complacency where they got locked inside a fence and couldn't even get they even have that plan that they may need an exit to a fence or putting that fence around those buildings so that complacency kills and I think that's what it did on Saturday. But there are a couple things I would say three big things that from me are standouts other than what the failures of the Secret Service and law enforcement were. One is the Iranian threat. Two is this report that I just saw from one of the students that went to school with him. And again you have to take those witness reports with a grain of assault. But he said that the guy was he wasn't as quiet as what they make came out to be. He was he was pretty quiet and even kill but when it came to math or politics, he was very outspoken and somewhat snobby, right, So that says a lot more. And then he said he was a part of a group of a small group, a secretive group of kids that talked a lot about I think it was it was assassinations, but a lot about overthrowing the politicians of the government.

The third thing is.

The fact that the father called law enforcement that day and said his gun was missing. Now, I grew up in a house with guns and rifles, and everybody I grew up with had rifles in their home, and all the kids were taught how to shoot at a young age. It sounds like the shooter's father and him had a relationship that did exist around a range where they went and shot, and around this particular gun. So why was his father so alarmed when that gun was missing that he called law enforcement? Because the first thing I would think is, well, he must have gone shooting without me. I'm have to give him a call, right, But he didn't do that. He didn't call his son. He called law enforcement and said this gun was missing. So I think there's more to this young man than we've been told. I think there's probably some mental issues there, even potentially from birth. And I think that there may be a group of people, if that one witness is correct, If there is a conspiracy, it might be between those those individuals, and if those individuals had contact with Iran or anybody inside the government, that would take it to another level. But I think there's there's a couple of things right there in particular that stand out beyond the Secret Service involvement.

I mean, I'd be less willing to engage in conspiracy theories if they have not been so true.

For short years, you know, like they've lied.

About pretty much everything, and you know, the you know, conservative conspiracy theorists have been right about you know, a lot, and you know throughout these these years, and again we're so there's not been a lot of time passed since July thirteenth, so you know, there really isn't much to speculate yet about as we learn more. You know, we don't know motive yet in you know, parentheses. Obviously I can't do that because we're not visual right now, we're audio.

How much does a motive matter?

I mean, this guy has been told throughout a lot of his life, he's only twenty years old, that you know, Trump is hitler and that he is a little threat to democracy, that he should be put in a bull's eye. I mean, how much does a motive matter in these types of things?

Well, when we look at how it occurred, that.

Finding out that, you know, finding the motive.

I think it's important to separate the how from the why, and the how it occurred is because of incompetence and and just overall breakdown of how law enforcement does a job what you talked about. But the why is important because we want to understand how this individual was pushed to this level. But you also want to understand and find out if he was associated with other people, and that's going to come from the why.

So was this individual.

Groomed brainwashed from the rhetoric that we hear consistently. I think it's safe to say if you've seen prisoners of war, for instance, who are told the same thing over and over and over again, after a while, they begin to believe that that's truth. You go to communist countries where it is a closed society and they're not able to be influenced by outside societies. They can tell them anything. They can tell them that their leader is a god, they can tell they can take even in this day and age, they could take the teaching of solar eclipses out of the classroom, and then they could convince a certain portion of the country that they're going to predict that the president can predict an eclipse, and then when it happens, they can because they will know about it. They say it's tomorrow, I'm going to turn the sun black. Right, So, if you say these things and over and over again. You know this, You're in communication, so you know how this works. You say something over and over again, people are going to start to believe it, and then you keep the division up, they're going to pick sides. And so when you have an individual like this that says what he said, it follows exactly along the lines of what the left preaches every day, day and out on day in and day out online in media right, they say these things the exact verbiage he used. Could he have come up with that verbiage on his own through critical thinking, I guess he could, But most likely he gained that verbiage, exact verbiage from hearing it over and over and over again and developing this fixation of Hitler and Trump and politicians in general. It sounded like he didn't like politicians at all, but this anti government type of mentality. And nobody is bringing this up, but I you know, he could have been influenced by the left, but he also could have been influenced by libertarians and never trumpers. They say the same thing all the time, they just package it in a different sound bite and they put it out there. And basically, I think what we're seeing whether it's with school shootings that are carried out by transgender confused or gender confused young men who've been groomed all through school and told one thing that's not the truth, but over and over and over again. Or it's an individual who tries to take a shot in the president. We have to look at what's being said and look at their verbiage and see where that comes from. I think motive is very important because people are culpable of motivating people to do these things when they go out there and lie it constantly and degrade those who are trying to protect and uphold the Constitution. And it seems like that's what the left always does. And then libertarians just they don't like the person, then they turn them into a villain.

They say the same thing.

So I think the motive is very important because it helps us understand the why, and included in that why, will be co conspirators if there are any.

Jonathan, when you were an evy seal, I guess you're always an evy seal. But yeah, true, did a sloped roof ever get in your way?

Oh goodness? Not only that.

I just responded to Elon Musks where you talk about how that truck that he has has a sloped roof?

What if it was inverted slope? Right?

Could you ever get out of that? Is that like a black hole? I mean, are you stuck once you fall into an inverted slope?

Quick break? More in trying to figure out what the hell happened? What do you make of?

I mean?

The Secret Service director can really cheat old? This is this is her excuse?

Well, first of all, she says the buck stops of her, but refuses to resign and has not been fired, which she should be. But blame the sloped roof for the security failure?

Well, does she blame the sloped roof on the accurate shot that the Secret Service counter sniper took. He was on the exact slanted roof as the other one. The other one was probably less slanted than the one that they were on behind President Trump. So I think I cannot believe the sound bites, Lisa, that come out of these people at times where they and it's always on the left. I mean, sometimes you get people on the right to say ridiculous things, But to say that, to say that it was because of slanted roof when there's a video out there of counter snipers on a sloped I should say sloped on a sloped roof is mind bogglingly stupid and incompetent. And when you add to that the vitriol that many in office, including Biden and staffers and people from Hollywood, all these people who run in the same circles, the vitriol that they say, it's mind boggling to know that many of these people are either influencers of anyone or leaders in our country. And I use that word very lightly, but in position of leadership in this nation, and just.

Know accountability whatsoever. And when we still know accountability after Afghanistan, She's not big fired, My orcus is still there. I mean, the left is the only place where you can fail upwards, you know, like Republicans believe in the accountability and and firing. And you know Trump did, he fired everyone, you know.

Yeah, but Trump?

And who I am a huge Trump supporter and I've always been his supporter. I was probably the first person in the media when I was hosting Sean Hannity's radio show for him, that came out in support of Trump because he was operationally proven and he had failed. And then came back and did a better job, and I hope the failures that he had in his first presidency when he wins this election, that he will correct those. And one of those failures was listening to the Washington d C satellites that orbit constantly, the bill bars, the Chris Christie's who got Chris Fay in? You know, these individuals that come there that have been a part of government for the longest time and made it into the highest ranks. Those are not the people you need advising and helping the president lead this country. You need warfighters, You need people who are not just been in the trenches, but people who are in the trenches, and bring them out and let them take over these agencies, show and rededicate themselves in loyalty to their country. So what's interesting about the reason I even got into that is that you were absolutely right. There's no accountability and no repercussions for anything the left does because the left owns the government. They may not have the majority in Congress, but they own it because they are unified, and the Conservatives or the Republicans are not unified. So you can take a smaller unified group and walk all over the non unified group. Even if you don't have the majority, and that's what occurs. So when we look at all these different issues, whether it be the influence on the shooter, the lack of tactics, and the breakdown of what occurred that allowed that shooting to happen, the way things are degrading in this country, every single and you can go through and look at all this, Every single major issue that we have with this nation at this time is because of the Democrat Party and the leftists.

Every single one is because of them.

I agree, before we go, what are you looking? What developments are you looking for? As the story moves toward you know, what are you paying attention to? What should people pay attention to?

Well that first of all, you want to look and hold the FBI cantle and if they're making press releases like they did two days ago that say we haven't found evidence for this, we don't think this, we don't believe that this.

Is the case.

We don't need to know that. What they're doing right there is what they always do. They are programming you to expect nothing, And I don't want to know what you haven't found. I want to know what you're looking for. And then when you find it. You can come and tell me. But I don't need to be groomed into believing that, oh, it's just some simple guy that somehow got on the roof, and you know, shame on the Secret Service. I want to know what happened. I want to know his motivation, who he was, why he did the things, who he hung out with. And it's interesting because if this was a white police officer that just shot an armed or let's say the guy didn't have a gun, but he was trying to run over cops with a car and they shot and killed him, and he was black, we would know everything about those cops.

We would know everything.

About that guy, the guy shot that was good, that he was a young boy one time, and he has a mom. You know, we would we would find out everything. And I think what we're seeing here is that when it comes to when the liberals are in charge, even the stuff that we see from the FBI is not reported or investigated correctly. And I think the American people should keep a close watch.

That's what I'm doing.

I'm keeping a close watch on the verbiage that the FBI uses, that the Secret Service uses, that the President uses. I'm keeping close watch on that and then within there potentially find details like these these two things about this young young man that carried out the attack and the Iranians. Those are details that we can now put on a board and as things come out, we can connect and see if those things connect. Instead of saying, well, I think it has to do with the fact that the government wants to kill Trump. Okay, there probably are plenty of those people in the government, but were they they We can put that over here as well, But don't make.

That eighty percent of what you believe happen.

Make it one of the top headlines on your board, and then start collecting the evidence and that will lead you to what happened.

That's how I look at all these things.

No, I agree, and that you know. That's what we try to do on the show, is to get to the truth of things. Johnathan really appreciate well, first of all your service to the country, and then secondly, this is super interesting. I learned so much from you, so we'd love to have you back on. I want to keep following the story because it just seems like, you know, there's more to it.

But anytime you know, you and I were on Bill O'Reilly show, not together, but at the same same night with Scaramucci. This was years ago, the only time I've ever seen you at Fox, and I remember that night so well because the dress or the green room was packed. It was like, you know something, any Fox News fan would go crazy. Kimberly Gilford was in there, You were in there, Guttfeld was in there. And then Bill O'Reilly walked in and close the curtain to get his hair done, and I looked up and I was the only one left there.

He's such a he's such a care I but I love on show a show. I did it every week across from Wad Williams, and he was so funny.

I liked him a lot. But Jonathan, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

This was awesome. Thank you.

That was Jonathan Gilliam. I really appreciate him taking the time to join the show. I thought he was very interesting and I hope you did too. I also want to thank you guys at home for listening every Monday and Thursday, but you can listen throughout the week. I want to think John Cassio and my producer were putting the show together until next time.