I think it is now established beyond doubt that the Secret Service is stonewalling the investigation into the Trump assassination attempt. 

Information has been dribbling out, and every bit of it looks horrible. In almost every case of a revelation from the Service, a whistleblower has already revealed what was only confirmed by the Secret Service. In other words, it was impossible to deny. 

The number of coincidental security flaws has gotten so large that I have no doubt that the New York City Police Department would have run circles around the Secret Service, supposedly the most elite protective service in the world. In fact, I suspect that most state police departments could have done a better job had they been given the responsibility despite not specializing in this kind of work. 

I have written several articles detailing just some of the unlikely coincidences and flaws and demonstrating that both the Secret Service and the FBI have committed perjury before Congress and provided some of the lamest excuses for their failures. FBI Director Christopher Wray dropping the absurd suggestion that Trump might not have been shot was clearly a lie--his Deputy testified that there had never been any doubt just days after Wray dropped that politically motivated lie. 

My favorite lie, though, was Interim Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe's testimony that the Secret Service never imagined that anybody would want to take a shot at President Trump, which must have made every Congressman want to laugh in his face or jump over the table and shake him in rage. 

Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe claims that what went wrong on July 13 was a “failure of imagination.”

“A failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees.”pic.twitter.com/rqdJ6Mf94f

— Julia 🇺🇸 (@Jules31415) July 30, 2024

If Rowe--who was IN CHARGE of the protective division of the Secret Service, never imagined anybody would want to do harm to Trump he must have been lobotomized. Perhaps he was, which explains how he rose so high in the federal government. 

There are just too many absurd coincidences, failures in communication, obvious security flaws, incompetence, malfeasance, failure to notice the most obvious things that at some point you have to wonder what the Secret Service would have done differently if they were intending to get President Trump. 

Confirmation:

USSS counter sniper team/s did not attend pre-event coordination meeting, and local SWAT team had ZERO comms with Secret Service until after the shooting was over. pic.twitter.com/GOr1LhsFAU

— Braxton McCoy (@braxton_mccoy) July 29, 2024

Scott Adams has emphasized the "Dilbert" filter, which basically tells us that it is always a mistake to underestimate the incompetence of any organization. And, admittedly, he has a very good point. Simply because an organization is thought to be expert and hypercompetent doesn't mean that it actually is. Incompetence is a good default hypothesis for explaining almost any screwup. 

Let's propose a different filter to consider: if this had happened in any other state--say Mexico, Brazil, Chile, or Serbia, would you even wonder whether incompetence was the cause or default to the explanation that the incompetence was a cover for something more sinister?

Trump was shot because they let him shoot Trump. https://t.co/j2yjKyszxD

— Sean Davis (@seanmdav) August 1, 2024

In other words, do we default to incompetence as an explanation simply because the alternative is unthinkable in the United States? 

I can tell you that for me, the answer is "Yes." I have a strong bias here, but I have always thought that conspiracy theories require extraordinary evidence, especially when you are talking about a government conspiracy. They strike me as implausible for any number of reasons, including the difficulty in pulling them off and keeping them quiet. 

For instance, among other reasons for believing that men landed on the moon is the fact that hiding that they didn't and faking the moon landing would almost certainly be more difficult than just doing it. Hundreds of thousands of people were involved. There is no way to keep a fraud quiet with so many people involved. 

There's so much newsy stuff in @susancrabtree's latest Secret Service story I can't even summarize. You just have to read the whole thing. https://t.co/LyH72YNFod

— Tom Bevan (@TomBevanRCP) August 5, 2024

On the other hand, we do know that conspiracies to leave politicians exposed to danger or assassination do happen in other countries, so they can be pulled off. Not without suspicion, of course, but with sufficient deniability that people get away with it. Especially if you put one of the conspirators in charge of the investigation--as Ronald Rowe, who denied resources to Trump's security detail, is. 

In the case of Butler, we don't even have to hypothesize that Rowe and/or Mayorkas DID anything except strangle resources and place substandard agents in a position where they would have defended Trump from an attack. That much incompetence wasn't the result of the best and the brightest. 

So the filter I am proposing is this: if all the circumstances we have seen surrounding the shots being fired had taken place in almost any other country would you lean toward incompetence or toward conspiracy to take out a man who threatens the entire Establishment, who call him an "existential threat?"

It seems about as plausible to me that this was incompetence as it is that Russian windows are so dangerous that Putin's enemies keep falling out of them. 

Possible, but my mind goes to other explanations. 

None of this is proof, of course. The Dilbert filter is a good one, but not the only one you should consider. 

At this point, I think it is incumbent on the Secret Service not just to give a plausible explanation for how the series of unlikely events took place in Butler, leading to the wounding and murder of four people, but to jump over a high bar to demonstrate that it was simply an unlikely series of unfortunate events and not a conspiracy. 

The burden of proof in my mind has shifted from "they couldn't have done it" to "it sure LOOKS like the leadership in the Department of Homeland Security (Mayorkas) and the Secret Service (Rowe) wanted somebody to take a shot at Trump. 

If that sounds excessively cynical, so be it. Just ask yourself, "If this happened in Mexico or Argentina would you suspect the government of complicity?" 

I have little doubt the answer is "Yes." In 2024 do you think our Establishment and law enforcement are beyond reproach?

I sure don't.