Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) announced that there are at least five assassination teams in the United States that are intent on assassinating former President Donald Trump, according to an interview published on Thursday.
The revelation comes in the wake of 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh's arrest after trying to assassinate the former president at a West Palm Beach golf course. Gaetz expressed concerns that Trump might not have the level of protection he needs to keep him safe from foreign and domestic threats:
“Tragic. Avoidable,” Gaetz said when asked for his thoughts on the second assassination attempt against the former president.
“I am starting to get the impression that we do not have enough force protection of supporting President Trump that we ought to have, given the threat environment,” he said, noting that he recently met with a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who said that there are at least five known assassination teams in the United States, “at least three of which are foreign that are out to kill Trump.”
“And, with that type of activity, I don’t think we should be allowing people to set up for an extended period of time and wait to take their shot outside of his golf properties or his other properties,” Gaetz said, expressing concern that the second suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was previously known to officials, encountered at the border upon his return to the country from Ukraine.
Gaetz further explained how Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) “thought [Routh's] story was so suspicious that he was recruiting freedom fighters all over the world to go fight in Ukraine, and when they asked him how he was financing this, he said, ‘Oh, well, my wife is paying for it.’”
The congressman was asked how these assassination teams could be in the United States. Gaetz responded, explaining that there is “insufficient scrutiny to stop them from doing so”:
“Three of these teams are foreign-inspired, from my understanding — Iranians, Ukraine, Pakistan — and, you know, the work is obviously challenging to protect — protective detail, like a presidential campaign that is vigorous and out campaigning,” he said.
Given this threat, Gaetz said they are investigating to see if they have the right protective detail, such as the correct sniper teams and the right tactical teams.
The lawmaker said there are suspicions among his colleagues that there could be a mole in the Secret Service. The agency has been under scrutiny since the first attempt on Trump’s life, which occurred in July:
“I have Republican colleagues who have not ruled out a mole inside the Secret Service of providing information about points of vulnerability,” he said. “I’ve not seen evidence of that, but I’ve got colleagues that are very, very smart at this who say they can’t rule that out, given some of the anomalies and the fact pattern here.”
More likely, Gaetz said, there is “such a sense of disdain for Trump, and there’s such a desire to diminish him within some of these agencies that giving him less protection, not having him surrounded by a bunch of strong men that appear authoritative in nature, that that type of a virtue signal to drain protective resources away is tolerated because, frankly, in their heart of hearts, they don’t think much of Trump.”
The efforts to assassinate Trump have added yet another dimension to the upcoming presidential election. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently said that whistleblowers brought to light some serious flaws in how the Secret Service is guarding the former president:
According to a whistleblower, protocol requires them to put agents at the areas of vulnerability that exist around the course. They normally put people there; they've done it many times before.
Yet they didn't this time, as the suspect lay in wait.
Hawley said the whistleblowers told him, "That's strange. That's out of protocol."
"It's not even clear Secret Service swept the perimeter before Trump took to the course," Hawley said. If they had, they likely would have found the suspect.
Meanwhile, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced that state authorities have launched their own investigation into the second attempt to kill Trump. “Clearly, there were multiple violations of Florida law. We also, I think, have an interest in vindicating the truth about where this guy came from, what his motivations were; the people of our state deserve that,” the governor said during an interview.