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Okay, I'd really like TheMotte to talk me down from crazy-town and conspiracy-ville.
Exhibit A: Secret Service was warned of an Iranian (or Iran-backed) assassination threat against Trump (Source)
Which means that the Saturday shooting represents a high-water mark in Trump's security detail.
Exhibit B: Secret Service snipers spotted Thomas Crooks in position on the roof 20 minutes before the assassination attempt. (Source) Per the article's timeline:
Which means the Secret Service knew there was an active threat, 10 minutes before they allowed Trump to take the stage. This is separate from the 2-minute 'crowd pointing at guy with gun on roof' warning where the Secret Service failed to move Trump off the stage.
Exhibit C: Secret Service has stated that 'local police' were supposed to be responsible for covering the American Glass Research (AGR) building. However, both the county (Source) and city police (Source) have denied that they were so assigned.
Apparently, there were local police -- including snipers -- inside an adjacent or conjoined building in the complex (Source), but no one's been identified as responsible for the building itself or the roof itself. I've heard unsourced rumors that a SWAT team was supposed to be assigned to the specific roof the shooter used, but instead congregated within the building due to the heat (Source) but there's been no confirmation.
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I know my Hanlon's Razor:
However, at this point I'm gaining an appreciation for Grey's Law:
If the wildest conspiracy theories and worst nightmares were true, if US Secret Service did deliberately set out to create a hole in Trump's security to allow him to be assassinated... what would they have done differently? How much more could the USSS have f***ed up their protection before we'd be comfortable drawing a line between 'smoke' and 'fire'?
And if Hanlon's Razor does bears out and it was in fact merely incompetence... then we apparently live in a world where this is the best the US Secret Service can do while on high alert, actively preparing to defend their protectee against an Iranian-backed assassination attempt. Which leads me to wonder, how vulnerable are the rest of US leadership to enemy agents?
If there are this many layers of "they dropped you on your head as a baby, didn't they?" when the Secret Service has direct warning of a major threat, what the hell kind of protection does the President have, or the Vice-President, or any of the other notable names with a USSS detail?
If the US Secret Service was 'security theater' in the same vein as the TSA, what happens when the curtain is pulled back and everyone sees that the Wizard of Oz is just a sad little man in a booth? Should we expect to see more -- and more successful -- assassination attempts with actual muscle behind them in the near future?
And why in the name of all that is holy does Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle still have a job?!
Before now I thought it would take so many people to be in the loop that someone would turn, but as I wrote downthread it now seems entirely plausible that it would only take 1 person on-site to open the door, or prop up the ladder.
My major questions are these:
Short activity, some of the information in the tweets is wrong but the short interest was shooting up, there are plenty of reasonable explanations for that but not this one, last Friday was there in fact a major put acquisition with a fast expiry? If so, that's investigation-level suspicious
Sniper ROE, my assumption would be they have very broad rules for engagement, so if the rules changed, how long ago was it changed, and is there documentation? If that's wrong and they do have broad ROE, 2a, why didn't they shoot? 2b, why didn't they talk to the detail? Or radio to command? Or hell, if nothing else, why not just shout? Did they radio it in and it was ignored? If so, I would immediately assume conspiracy, and that someone's going to turn
I see people elsewhere saying there was an atypical amount of media presence at the rally, is this true, and if so, why?
Most significantly, allowing Trump to go on the stage. I've seen clips before of USSS being highly proactive about pulling the President. If this guy had been initially identified an hour before, then someone with the USSS confirmed "suspicious guy on roof" at 5:52, what is the minute-by-minute explanation for that information failing to reach his detail?
#1 meaning what? Just a general question if anyone notable made stock bets? #2 is a good question, though I'm not totally sure if they would disclose ROE to the public, for fear of malicious manipulation.
#3: Right in the middle of the veepstakes, battleground state, and near the convention. Also a bigger rally than expected. Specifically, he teased the VP pick in his rally only 2 days before, so I think some media thought it would happen at that rally so people would know going in to the convention. Though Vance wasn't there, so maybe not. Still doesn't seem too odd.
#4 is still being revealed. Per this timeline at least they have two sources including the sheriff who are claiming they didn't know he had a gun yet and the roof attention wasn't until 6:09, with less than 3 minutes to go. That one claims that video of "he has a gun!" and people running was only 4 or 5 seconds before the first shot.
Austin Private Wealth is the group in question, they're a fee-only fiduciary with just over $1B in assets managed. Their filing on Friday 7/12 listed 12,000 puts on $DJT. They put out a statement saying a third-party vendor caused all of their options positions to be multiplied by 10,000, and so the actual position was 12 puts. I don't know enough about the workings of actual investing groups to speak here with any definitiveness, but it seems unusual to me that they would buy 12 puts--assuming a $1 premium, that's $1200. That's nothing compared to their total holdings. Maybe there's a diversified spread and they had like $50,000 or $100,000 of puts, and I'm sure that'll come out if they did. Or maybe it was a hedging move if they have 1200 shares of $DJT, but I think they'd have probably included in their statement if they had such stock. "We didn't have this large short, in fact we hold $DJT." Simple.
But that also ignores a worse question, from my cursory research their holdings would be reported under SEC Form 13F. Maybe this is wrong, if it is the following can be crossed out, but if that's true: multiple people from APW should have, and possibly would have needed to sign off on it prior to its approval, so did they all fail obscenely in their fiduciary duty? Or did they fail it by only one person being charged with verifying and then approving. If the financial guy doesn't notice a position worth $1200 has been marked as $1.2 million, should he keep managing your money? Now multiply that by as many options positions as they had. It's insane. They should absolutely be investigated if for no other reason than the claimed lapse in duty, unless it's a regular thing for investment groups to give astronomically wrong filings to the SEC. But there is presumably a lengthy paper trail here, so if they're lying and they did have a 1.2 million share short, I assume it's a matter of time before someone with the proper finance bona fides uncovers what happened.
All this meaning: if APW did in fact have a 12,000 put position, then that combined with their statement now denying it and their attempted obfuscation, is clear evidence of conspiracy.
As for #3, sure, all plausible. #4 yeah remains to be seen. I don't think I emphasized enough, but that is the question above all other questions. When did they know? If people go to prison over this, it will be on that question. The CBS report says at 5:51 they had a suspicious person with a rangefinder, that's enough for me to say someone had a failure in duty worthy of prison. But that's criminal negligence, for failure to protect the President and the people around him, the death of Compertore. Whether it was malicious aforethought is the deeper question, and one that, again, remains to be seen.
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