Report: Multiple Secret Service agents on leave after Trump shooting

Multiple Secret Service agents have been put on leave during the investigation into the Donald Trump assassination attempt, a report suggests. The agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field officers is one of those involved, MSNBC said on Friday morning.

The shooting of the former president on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania , has sparked multiple probes that are ongoing. Republican Rep. Mike Waltz told DailyMail.com earlier this week that he wasn’t convinced the would-be assassin acted alone.

He said the gunman’s motivation is still unknown and he is worried a foreign entity or other third party could have been involved in the attack. Waltz queried how federal law enforcement can confidently say Crooks was a lone wolf if they can’t answer other questions like why he had multiple foreign encrypted messaging accounts.

His comments came after it was revealed that Iran was also plotting an attempt on the former president’s life around the same time that Crooks carried out his plan. ‘The more we get into it, the more questions I have,’ Waltz said. ‘It’s really what’s coming out around it that is so disturbing.

‘And for me, the thing that’s most disturbing is that we have ongoing plots from Iran to take out a former president, leading candidate, and that a Pakistani national was just arrested after making a down payment for hitmen, and it’s barely even being covered in the news.’ Crooks, 20, was able to create multiple explosives with remote detonators, another thing that raised Waltz’s eyebrows and makes him wonder whether he had help.

As the FBI, U.S. Secret Service (USSS) and Department of Homeland Security conduct their investigations into the massive security failure, Waltz and 12 other lawmakers on a House task force are also looking into the attempted assassination. ‘I don’t understand, and I don’t have any answers yet to help me understand how the [Secret] Service and DHS came out so quickly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I’ll have to check that – and said, he operated alone,’ Waltz said when speaking with DailyMail.com at Trump Tower in Chicago on Wednesday. ‘How do you know that mere days into your investigation?’

The Florida congressman added: ‘You can’t tell us his motive, but you could tell us he operated alone? You can’t get into these encrypted overseas accounts, but you can tell us he acted alone? So, I don’t buy that yet.’ Crooks was shot and killed by the Secret Service after he launched an attack at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.

A bullet fired from his AR-style weapon, bought legally by his father, grazed the former president’s right ear. Crooks killed one rally-goer and critically injured two others before he was taken out. The FBI also found explosives in Crooks’ car, which was parked near the rally site. And upon raiding his parents’ house, where he lived, they found more bombs.

‘I don’t know of many 19-year-old kids who could make multiple IEDs with a remote detonator on their own,’ Waltz told DailyMail.com. ‘Why didn’t that get picked up if he’s searching that online or buying literature on how to do that?’

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