Andrew McCabe Says Trump Assassination Attempt Is ‘Even More Glaring’ After Iranian ‘Threat’

Former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe said Tuesday that U.S. authorities reportedly being aware of an alleged Iran plot to kill former President Donald Trump makes Saturday’s assassination attempt “even more glaring.”

Intelligence on the alleged Iranian plot provided to U.S. authorities by a human source prompted the Secret Service to ramp up protections for Trump in the weeks leading up to the botched assassination, several people briefed on the matter told CNN. McCabe on “CNN News Central” said the apparent “mistakes” Secret Service made that enabled the Saturday shooting are increasingly conspicuous in light of their knowledge of the “threat environment.”

There is no known link between the alleged Iranian plot and the Saturday assassination attempt against Trump by Thomas Matthew Crooks, according to CNN. Crooks grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet while he was speaking at his rally, with critics decrying the incident as a failure by the Secret Service to secure the event.

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“If this threat was communicated to this Secret Service, which I have no doubt that it was, it makes the potential mistakes and missteps that we’ve all been talking about for the last few days even more glaring,” McCabe said. “Because when you receive threat intelligence like that, credible threat intelligence, which that’s what … has been reported, that is the time to step up your game and make no mistakes, to add additional resources, which it looks like they did and to make sure that every assignment is covered assiduously. So it does, if there were mistakes made on Saturday, which it seems like there were, it raises even more significant questions about how that could happen under the current threat environment.”

It’s uncertain whether details regarding the intelligence received by U.S. authorities were subsequently made known to the Trump campaign, which told CNN on Tuesday that it does “not comment on President Trump’s security detail.

Crooks allegedly shot Trump from the roof of a building fewer than 150 meters from where the former president was speaking, according to The Associated Press. The Secret Service killed Crooks swiftly after he shot Trump and killed an audience member named Corey Comperatore.

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