An audio forensic analysis by Catalin Grigoras, director of the National Center for Media Forensics at the University of Colorado in Denver, and Cole Whitecotton, a senior professional research associate at Media Forensics, based on audio recorded in Butler, Pennsylvania, may show the possibility of a second shooter.

According to these experts, “The first three shots were consistent with alleged weapon A, the next five were consistent with alleged weapon B and the final ‘acoustic impulse’ was emitted by a possible weapon C.” We know that one of those was the identified shooter and another was a Secret Service sniper. We don’t know to whom the “possible weapon C” might have belonged. A second shooter? The armed spotter on the government sniper team?

Only one shooter has been identified and the FBI says he acted alone. The bureau may want to reconsider its conclusion.

Obviously this controversial audio forensic analysis needs peer review. But there are other questions beyond the audio forensics that need attention.

Below I review some of what we know, and a lot we don’t know, and I ask questions where the information we have so far leads.

I, among thousands of others, became a sort of student of the John F. Kennedy assassination. I have read tens of thousands of pages from books and articles.  But what turned out to be most impressive, as far as I am concerned, are two things.

Firstly, in my opinion there was a massive coverup that still continues sixty one years after Kennedy was killed.

Secondly, apparently President Trump withheld releasing some documents even though he had pledged to release everything still in the archives on the Kennedy killing. He allegedly told Roger Stone that he (Stone) “would not believe what is in the [still] classified [and unreleased] files.”

That tells me Trump thought it was too dangerous to walk that plank.

What is worrisome now in 2024 is whether we will get a proper investigation and whether all the evidence will be properly preserved. Apparently President Biden has ordered some sort of investigation. I personally would prefer a solid FBI investigation with Congressional oversight. The FBI has the forensic capability to do the job, but it takes leadership and oversight which, one would hope, will be forthcoming. It won’t be easy to sell the American people on a sloppy or politically biased review.

The gun

We have not been shown the weapon used by the identified shooter. No pictures of it. We don’t have a model number or manufacturer’s name.

AR-15s can be modified to make them more accurate. There are a number of websites that feature instructions.

It isn’t known if the gun had a telescopic sight or other aiming device. It was probably too far from the target for a laser pointer, although some claim a range of 500 feet in daytime. (The shooting distance to Trump was less than 400 feet from the location of the shooter.) In an environment where there is bright sunlight and artificial TV lighting, it seems too much. Moreover, no one saw any evidence of a laser on Trump.

We don’t know if the gun was modified. My personal guess is it was used out of the box.

The gun will need to be forensically tested. Whether that has happened, we don’t know, and if it was we do not know the results.

In fact, we don’t know if any of the bullets have been recovered.  Fired and recovered shells, if found, could potentially be matched to the weapon or weapons. This will also be important in determining if there was a second shooter. It is important to note that the whole area was cordoned off by law enforcement as a crime scene. The hunt for shells and other evidence is likely underway.

We don’t know if the gun had an over-the-shoulder carrying sling. Since eyewitnesses saw the shooter and the gun, they could clarify how it was carried and whether it was in any way concealed, which does not seem to be the case.

The shooter also purchased a five-foot ladder at Home Depot. We are not sure what model, or its weight but we do know that aluminum ladders, while clumsy to haul around, are very light. There also are ladders made with plastic fibers that also are light. There is at least one photo of the ladder up against the building (assuming, for the moment, it was the Home Depot-purchased ladder).

We also don’t know if the two police who came to the building after being yelled at by the crowd that a shooter was on the roof used the same ladder, but probably so.  When the first police officer poked his head above the roof line, the shooter turned toward him with his gun pointed at him and the officer said he “jumped” or fell to the ground.

It could be that the ladder was put in place the day before the rally. The shooter reportedly was on the scene and was seen hovering around the metal detectors at the site, exactly why we don’t know because he did not enter the rally’s security perimeter. There is no report he was hauling a ladder around.

Some witnesses say the shooter crawled from one building to the next on the rooftops.  But that does not appear to align well with the position of the ladder as reported. We need to know more.

Many think this was well planned and the shooter had to have help.

He certainly needed extraordinary luck to be able to climb a ladder in broad daylight onto a rooftop. Lots of people saw him but the response took too long, was lethargic and ineffective.

We don’t know if the eyewitness warnings were relayed by radio or cell phone, but it seems to me that the Secret Service snipers were told where to look, in which the answer would be that the location of the shooter was transmitted to the sniper team. It is reported by Larry Johnson and Chris Whitcomb, the latter a former FBI HRT sniper, that the Secret Service sniper team looked at the shooter on the roof with a telescope before taking aim.

There is no information that any gunshot detectors were in use at the rally. A good gunshot detector can, in a millisecond, triangulate and locate a shooter when a shot is fired.

The gun was “legally purchased” by the shooter’s father, according to the FBI. Since the shooter was at a gun range last Friday, “practicing,” it is clear he had access to the gun. Was it bought for the purchaser’s son? The son could legally buy a gun in Pennsylvania as he was 20 years old (minors in Pennsylvania under 18 cannot buy a gun, although there are some permitted gun activities allowed with supervision).

We do not know when the gun was actually purchased, so it is possible it was bought for the son when he was a minor. When he was in high school he tried out for the school shooting team but was rejected as being inaccurate in aim and unsafe in gun handling. Does the gun trace to that time?  Maybe students who saw him could identify the gun used then.

According to reports, the shooter was identified by DNA, meaning that family members would have needed to make DNA samples available (spit into the test tube). There are facilities in nearby Pittsburgh and perhaps elsewhere where, once DNA samples were delivered, they could check for a match within 90 minutes. It is also highly likely that the gun serial number traced to the father.

Did the police take body samples for drug testing? The shooter, who saw the policeman climb up before he turned at fired at Trump must have been incredibly brazen and calm. Did drugs play a role?

No effort was made by the shooter to scrub out the serial number of the weapon so far as we know. If that had been done the gun would not have been traceable to the father.

The shooter bought 50 rounds of 5.56 ammunition on Friday. It is likely the weapon clip held 30 rounds, as this is allowed in Pennsylvania.

Preliminary acoustic evidence (see above) says there possibly were three people firing.  There was an initial burst of gunfire coming from the shooter’s location, a second burst but the location isn’t clear and not the same as the first burst, and possibly a third shooter firing one shot.  The forensic acoustic experts suggest there may have been two shooters.

The identified shooter could have moved location for the second round, but there was little time and no one has reported any change of location.

We do not know how many shots came from the Secret Service agent sniper team on the rooftop behind Trump on stage. Most accounts say it took only one shot to neutralize the shooter. The agents were equipped with sophisticated sniper weapons, one mounted on a tripod and one on a small stand for a prone shot.

Firing commenced after the shooter started firing, we are told, but that does not align exactly with the acoustic evidence. The acoustic evidence may suggest that the last single shot, if confirmed, may have come from the snipers. The shooter was dispatched by a single headshot.

There are a few possibilities (perhaps more). One is that the sniper round was interspersed with the first or second firing rounds aimed at the podium and Trump.  The problem with this theory is that the microphone on the podium may not have heard the sniper round, or would have heard it differently from the shots fired from some distance away. If it was interspersed with the first, then the second volley would have to come from somewhere else.

That leaves the third alleged shot unaccounted for. Alternatively, the third shot was fired by the Secret Service. That would mean that around 9 shots in two volleys had already been fired, a huge, potentially fatal delayed response. (One person was killed trying to protect his family; two others were critically wounded.)

As the recording of the ballistic blast of the rounds picked up by the podium microphone is available for further examination, we need to see if the initial determination by the Media Forensics team holds up to scrutiny.

The shooter

The only candidate for the actual shooter is the 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks. If there was a second shooter, he or she got away and is not being pursued – or at least we don’t know of any effort in that direction. The Secret Service and FBI both concur there was only one shooter, having made the declaration before the evidence (including ballistic evidence) was reviewed. If you think that sounds a lot like the Kennedy Assassination, you may not be far off the mark.

To me, it was premature and amateurish to make any concrete statement about the extent of the threat before there was any credible investigation. Unfortunately, all too often law enforcement puts out statements that are wrong or incomplete. If there was a second shooter, or if there were other accomplices, they are long gone (which means there could still be an active threat against Trump).

Crooks is said to have been a good employee and reliable.  Fellow students said he was a loner and was often bullied at school.  Whether this amounts to any sort of motive is hard to judge, but often disgruntled, bullied students turn on their school or fellow students and not on presidential candidates. It seems too much of a reach to be credible.

There is no social media record on the young man, which is very unusual. Most wannabe murderer-assassins want publicity to air their grievances and get sympathy from the public. Some no doubt understand they may not survive, so the social media postings (including videos and manifestos) serve as last wills and testaments.

Sadly, the police have been known to withhold some things, as they did in Nashville after March 27, 2023, when a mass shooting occurred at the Covenant School. The shooter, Audrey Hale, was a transvestite. Hale’s plan was to target “white privileged cr***ers” and “f****ts” before turning the gun on herself.

No actual friends of Crooks have appeared so far, assuming he had some. Former students who talk about him say that they really did not know him, that he stayed to himself.

It is worth asking whether Crooks was someone ripe for exploitation. A person without friends can be open to manipulation and can feel a sense of protection, even of inviolability.  There is at least a supposition to be considered that Crooks did not expect to die when he shot at Trump.

Reportedly there were bombs or IEDs in his old van that he parked across the field, suggesting he may have planned a “spectacular” escape. While the explosives devices in the van have been reported, they have not been seen. The van was towed away by law enforcement.

Security

There is a general consensus that security at the Trump rally was poor. The main argument for that is the lack of coverage of buildings in the line of sight of the podium where Trump stood. The shooter had an unobstructed view of Trump’s head when he fired from a prone position (which improves accuracy by making the shooter stable).

In a high-security event involving the Secret Service, the Secret Service is not only in charge but it is supposed to lay out all the protection ground rules and coordinate other law enforcement supporting the events.

The Secret Service said it was the responsibility of local law enforcement to protect the outer perimeter, which is partially true but also intentionally misleading since the Secret Service had to approve all the security measures. We do not know if this was done, and if the Secret Service actually approved all the security measures, and we wonder, like millions of others no doubt: How could they overlook the rooftops?

We also do not know anything about the communications setup.  Surely there was a Secret Service command center (that’s why these folks have clear plastic earphones connected to secure radios). One would also think there is a recording or recordings of the communications channels. The recordings are vital evidence.

Reports say that the Secret Service was undermanned, only got to the fairground the day before, and that its personnel were cobbled together because the “regulars” were out protecting Jill Biden and Kamala Harris. If true, and it may well be, it would suggest that the preparations were rushed and fell below professional standards.

There also has been criticism of the team assigned to physically protect Trump. They did their job, but sending short ladies to body-protect a big, 6 foot 3 inch VIP does not make sense, as the video shows clearly.  Of course, miracle de Dieu afforded Trump a chance to fist-pump the crowd and yell “Fight, Fight”  because the lady was too short to cover him. Not much planning there.

Let’s face it, Secret Service protection sometimes blunders. They let President Reagan get shot (March 30, 1981) at the side entrance outside of the Washington Hilton, almost fatally. In the killings of both Kennedys, the Secret Service failed to protect either the president in a Dallas motorcade (November 22, 1963) or his brother running for president and murdered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles (June 5, 1968).

We also need to mention that President Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas consistently denied Secret Service protection to Robert Kennedy Jr, despite repeated requests. Mayorkas finally relented on July 15 after he was told to do so by Biden.  Two hours before the Mayorkas announcement Trump, having met with Kennedy, called on Biden to provide protection to Kennedy.

It is important to point out that Trump praised the Secret Service protection.

It is likely the Secret Service will be subjected to serious scrutiny by Congress.  Given the attitude of her director, who blames others for her failures, there is no hope of an internal investigation of any worth. Thus a good start to improving the service would be for its director, Kimberly Cheatle, to step down as she is the person responsible for the debacle in Pennsylvania. She can go out the door with her boss Mayorkas, the man who denied protection to Kennedy.

I want to qualify Cheatle’s fate in a certain way. She is a highly qualified and deeply experienced Secret Service agent. But she is responsible for the mess.

The Secret Service needs a fresh start, beginning with dumping all the woke nonsense that corrupts its mission. It is supposed to be tough, military, highly trained and its agents willing to sacrifice themselves. Selfless attention to duty in terms of protecting Donald Trump was certainly on display at the Trump rally in Butler.

The Secret Service sniper team did its job, but there are still questions about the timing as the threat could have been eliminated much sooner and lives perhaps could have been saved. Bullets flying around the shooter but not instantly killing him also could have been a partial deterrent. Any argument that the Secret Service has to wait until actual harm has been done will not protect anyone, including the American president.

The Secret Service needs a fresh start.  The agency has already had too many outright failures as well as drunk agents, and other problems that needed attention and fixing.

New operating rules may also be needed regarding training for counter-assault teams and counter-sniper teams. You should not have to wait for bodily harm to happen before you take out a threat.

Unfortunately the instinct of government organizations, just as in the civilian world, is to protect and cover up failure.  This is not the time for that.

Stephen Bryen served as staff director of the Near East Subcommittee of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a deputy undersecretary of defense for policy. 

This article was first published on his Weapons and Strategy Substack and is republished with permission.