Republican Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida announced in an interview published Thursday that there are at least five assassination squads in the United States planning to assassinate former President Donald Trump.
The revelation came in the wake of the arrest of 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh after he attempted to assassinate the former president on a West Palm Beach golf course. Gaetz expressed concerns that Trump may not have the protections to protect him from foreign and domestic threats:
“Tragic. Preventable,” Gaetz said when asked about his opinion on the second assassination attempt on the former president.
“I am beginning to feel that, given the threat environment, we do not have enough force protection to support President Trump as we should,” he said, referring to his recent meeting with a senior Department of Homeland Security (DHS) official who said there are at least five known assassination squads in the United States, “at least three of which are foreign-based and are intent on killing Trump.”
“And given this type of activity, I don’t think we should allow people to set up for extended periods of time and wait for their shot outside of his golf facilities or other properties,” Gaetz said, expressing concern that the second suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was previously known to officials and was encountered at the border after returning from Ukraine.
Gaetz further explained how Customs and Border Protection (CBP) “thought [Routh’s] The story was so suspect that he was recruiting freedom fighters from all over the world to fight in Ukraine, and when they asked him how he financed it, he said, ‘Oh, well, my wife pays for it.'”
The congressman was asked how these assassination squads could get into the United States. Gaetz replied that there were “not enough controls to stop them”:
“As far as I know, three of these teams are inspired from abroad – from Iran, Ukraine and Pakistan – and you know, it’s obviously a challenge to protect that work – protection troops, like in a presidential campaign that is being vigorously conducted and campaigning,” he said.
Given this threat, Gaetz said they are currently conducting investigations to determine if they have the right protection measures in place, such as the right sniper teams and the right tactical teams.
The legislator said there are Suspicions among his colleagues that there might be a mole in the Secret Service. The agency has been under surveillance since the first assassination attempt on Trump in July:
“I have Republican colleagues who don’t rule out the possibility of a mole in the Secret Service leaking information about vulnerabilities,” he said. “I haven’t seen any evidence of that, but I have colleagues who are very, very well-read about this who say that given some of the anomalies and the evidence here, they can’t rule it out.”
More likely, Gaetz said, is that “there is such contempt for Trump in some of these agencies and such a desire to weaken him that they are offering him less protection and not surrounding him with a group of forceful men with authoritarian characteristics. This kind of virtue-mongering, which serves to siphon off protective resources, is tolerated because, frankly, deep down in their hearts, they don’t think much of Trump.”
The effort to assassinate Trump has added another dimension to the upcoming presidential election. Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently said whistleblowers have brought to airy some earnest flaws in the Secret Service’s surveillance of the former president:
According to a whistleblower, protocol requires them to place agents in vulnerable spots around the course. They usually place people there; they’ve done it many times before.
This time, however, they did not do so because the suspect was lying in wait for them.
Hawley said the informants told him, “This is strange. This is against protocol.”
“It’s not even clear if the Secret Service searched the area before Trump entered the course,” Hawley said. If they had, they likely would have found the suspect.
BREAKING NEWS: Whistleblowers tell Senator Josh Hawley that “it’s not even clear whether the Secret Service searched the area before Trump entered the course.”
This is a massive and inexcusable failure.
But that’s just the beginning of the problems that have arisen. Whistleblowers also revealed… pic.twitter.com/XyDJDWVY1a
– The Vigilant Fox 🦊 (@VigilantFox) 19 September 2024
Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that state authorities had launched their own investigation into the second assassination attempt against Trump. “There were clearly multiple violations of Florida law. I think we also have an interest in finding out the truth about where this man came from and what his motives were; the people of our state deserve that,” the governor said in an interview.
