POLITICS

Veteran sniper from team with longest confirmed kill says roof used by would-be assassin Thomas Crooks was ‘the most f–king obvious’ risk

July 17th, 2024

A veteran of the sniper team with the world’s longest confirmed kill refuses to believe untrained gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks was so easily able to shoot former President Donald Trump — saying even “a seventh-grader” would know the rooftop he climbed onto was “the most f–king obvious” place to check.

“I’m very familiar with the layout of these types of things and what the job should be,” retired sniper Dallas Alexander said in an Instagram post Sunday of the previous day’s attempted assassination at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa.

“And yesterday what happened, I have no doubts in my mind that the shooter had help from somewhere within an agency, an organization, or the government,” Alexander stated firmly.

“The second I saw that aerial photo of what they say happened, it immediately made no sense to me,” he said of the rooftop Crooks climbed onto, within direct sight of where Trump was speaking roughly 400 feet away.

Alexander — a 14-year veteran of the Canadian unit with the world’s longest confirmed kill — said it would be one of the most obvious points to check for specialists sweeping the area long before Trump arrived.

“You don’t even need to be a sniper — it’s the most f–king obvious thing. The most obvious place in the whole world,” he said.

Alexander — a 14-year veteran of the Canadian unit with the world’s longest confirmed kill — said it would be one of the most obvious points to check for specialists sweeping the area long before Trump arrived.

“You don’t even need to be a sniper — it’s the most f–king obvious thing.

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The most obvious place in the whole world,” he said.

Matthew Murphy, a retired Green Beret and a sniper trained to the most elite level, also dismissed the suggestion that “some 20-year-old kid that looks like he played Dungeons and Dragons in his mom’s basement” was able to put Trump in his sights.

“You’re gonna tell me that that kid went through all those levels of security, somehow got into the closest building to the president and accessed the rooftop, then had the time to unpack his rifle, lay down and then take five to eight well-aimed shots at the president before he was decisively engaged?” he asked.

“There’s absolutely no way possible that kid was able to get up there and take those shots at the president without a lot of internal help,” he said.

The Secret Service has blamed local cops, insisting that the rooftop was “outside the perimeter the federal agency was tasked with protecting.”

Still, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas — who oversees the Secret Service — conceded on “Good Morning America” Monday that “a direct line of sight like that to the former president” should never have been possible.

“That’s why President Biden directed an independent review of the incident,” he said.

Curated By

Sarah Jenkins
Police Officer | Police Department Public Information Officer | Investigative Reporter/Crime Correspondent
Sarah Jenkins brings two decades of street experience to her reporting, offering blunt, no-nonsense perspectives from real police work. Her true crime and local governance coverage cuts through political posturing and academic theory to focus on what actually happens in communities. Known for critiquing ivory tower thinking, she prioritizes dogged investigation and common-sense analysis over pretty theories that don't hold up in the real world. Her cynicism reflects hard-earned wisdom from seeing how systems actually work. Readers trust her straight talk from someone who's experienced the messy truth of urban life firsthand. "Twenty years on the force taught me that the truth is rarely simple, but it's always worth fighting for."

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