Donald
Trump lays blame for assassination attempt on Biden and Harris
Ex-president
claimed Biden administration weaponized justice department and caused staffing
shortages at Secret Service
Robert Tait
Wed 28 Aug
2024 09.37 EDT
Donald Trump
has blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for last month’s failed assassination
attempt against him by accusing them of making it difficult for the Secret
Service to protect him.
The
Republican presidential nominee’s claim – for which he offered no evidence –
was made on the television talkshow Dr Phil, hosted by Phil McGraw, on Tuesday.
The remarks follow disclosures that several Secret Service agents from the
Pittsburgh field office had been placed on administrative leave after the 13
July shooting.
At a
campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month, Trump was grazed on the ear
by a bullet after a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from the roof of a nearby
building. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed and two others were
seriously wounded. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the
scene.
“When this
happened, people would ask, whose fault is it?” Trump told McGraw. “I think to
a certain extent it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. And I’m the opponent.
They were weaponising government against me, they brought in the whole DoJ to
try and get me, they weren’t too interested in my health and safety.
“They were
making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.”
The Secret
Service admitted in the days after the attempt on Trump’s life that the former
president’s security detail had complained about a lack of security and
personnel in the previous two years, acknowledging that they denied some
requests.
The agency’s
protection of Trump has been stepped up since the episode, with agents being
diverted from Biden’s previous campaign security detail.
The agency’s
director, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned after a heated Capitol Hill hearing in
which Republican members of Congress assailed her for failing to adequately
answer questions over possible security failings leading to the attempt against
Trump.
However,
there has been no evidence that Biden and Harris, who both condemned the
attempt, were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s
arrangements.
Biden, who
was still the Democratic presidential nominee at the time of the shooting
before later withdrawing, made several public statements in its aftermath and
called for a cooling down of the political rhetoric.
In his
interview on Tuesday, Trump appeared to blame Biden and Harris for that
rhetoric and suggested it may have inspired the attempt on his life.
“They’re
saying I’m a threat to democracy,” he said. “They would say that, that was
standard line, just keep saying it, and you know that can get assassins or
potential assassins going. That’s a terrible thing … Maybe that bullet is
because of their rhetoric.”
The FBI has
said the gunman acted alone and that it has found no evidence that he was
driven by ideological motives.
Trump’s
comments were his most direct yet about the Biden administration’s supposed
responsibility for the episode. He previously wrote on a post in his Truth
Social network that it failed in its duty to protect him.
“The
Biden/Harris Administration did not properly protect me, and I was forced to
take a bullet for Democracy. IT WAS MY GREAT HONOR TO DO SO!” he wrote 10 days
after the shooting.
Trump
previously made unfounded claims that Biden was weaponising the government
against him, accusing the president of unleashing the justice department and
orchestrating the multiple criminal investigations he has faced since leaving
office.
He also
accused FBI agents of being “locked and loaded” and ready to kill him in a 2022
raid on his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida to retrieve classified documents. The
bureau said the raid had been timed to ensure the former president was not
present and that its agents had been armed in line with standard operation
procedure.
The Harris
campaign has been contacted for comment.
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