Category: Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠

New York Magazine’s Olivia Nuzzi was invited to stare closely at the surface of Trump’s ear and see the aftermath of it being struck by a bullet.

Former first lady Melania Trump has raised questions around the law enforcement response to the attempted assassination of her husband, in a video she published on Tuesday to promote her new book.

In the 34-second video posted to her X account, Melania begins by describing the attempted assassination on her husband as a “horrible, distressing experience”. And now, she says in the video, which is overlayed with dramatic instrumental music, “the silence around it feels heavy”.

“I can’t help but wonder why didn’t law enforcement officials arrest the shooter before the speech?” she asks in the video. “There is definitely more to this story and we need to uncover the truth.”

The video then cuts to black and then ends with an image of the cover to her new memoir, Melania, and a link to buy copies.

Donald Trump himself has recently, without any evidence, blamed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for the assassination attempt and accused them of making it difficult for the Secret Service to have the staffing to protect him. Conspiracy theories around the shooting have spread in some Republican and rightwing circles.

There has been no evidence that the US president or vice-president were directly involved in or interfered with the Secret Service’s arrangements, or that there was any wider plot to attack Trump beyond the lone shooter, who was killed moments after opening fire.

On Melania’s website, it states her memoir, which she describes as “the powerful and inspiring story of a woman who has defined personal excellence, overcome adversity, and carved her own path” is available to pre-order for $40.

A signed edition is also available for $75, and a collector’s edition, which includes a signature, bonus photographs and a “digital collectable”, is on sale for $250.

Since the assassination attempt on the former president on 13 July in Pennsylvania, where 20-year-old Thomas Crooks opened fire on Trump as he spoke at a campaign rally, the FBI and Secret Service have come under intense scrutiny and criticism over security issues at the event.

Trump survived the shooting but sustained an injury to his ear, and one rally attendee was killed in the attack and two others were injured. The gunman was shot dead by a Secret Service officer at the scene.

The remarks by the former first lady on Tuesday come as investigations are under way looking into what happened that day, as well as the decisions and actions of personnel leading up to the event.

New details have emerged in the last two months regarding the lead-up to 13 July, apparent security and communication failings by and between law enforcement agencies, as well as new details on the shooter himself, such as his search history and preparations for the attack, but FBI officials have not yet uncovered a motive for the attack.

In late July, the director of the Secret Service resigned after a hearing where she was criticized by lawmakers over the apparent security failures around the shooting, and of failing to answer some specific questions about what went wrong. A day later, the House voted to form a taskforce to investigate the failings around the rally security and in late August, at least five US Secret Service agents were placed on leave in relation to the 13 July rally.

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A magazine reporter has revealed she was allowed to inspect Donald Trump‘s recently shot at ear during an interview, saying it was ‘normal and incredible and fine’.

A 20-year-old gunman attempted to kill the former president on July 13 at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, only to graze Trump’s ear, which was left bloodied.

New York Magazine reporter Olivia Nuzzi made the ear inspection when she profiled Trump in Florida a few weeks after the shooting but couldn’t help remarking upon the condition of Trump’s ear.

Trump tapped the spot where he was shot, which led Nuzzi to write: ‘An ear had never appeared to have gone through less’. 

‘The particular spot that he identified with his tap was pristine. I scanned carefully the rest of the terrain. It looked normal and incredible and fine’, she added.

She said in her New York Magazine piece that she could spot a small sliver of Trump’s ear that appeared to have been through the shooting describing the mark in almost doubting terms. 

‘An ear had never appeared to have gone through less. Except there, on the tiniest patch of this tiny sculpture of skin, a minor distortion that resembled not a crucifixion wound but the distant aftermath of a sunburn.’

Trump himself was in a somewhat philosophical mood about his wounds.

‘It’s a railroad track. They didn’t need a stitch. You know, it’s funny. Usually, something like that would be considered a surreal experience, where you sort of don’t realize it, and yet there was no surrealism in this case,’ he told Nuzzi. 

‘I felt immediately that I got hit by a bullet. I also knew it was my ear. It’s amazing. And the ear, as you know, is a big bleeder.’ 

Her words appeared to leave room to for liberals’ deranged conspiracy theories regarding the shooting shortly after it took place. 

YouTuber James Klug interviewed the public at Huntington Beach in California to ask them their views on the assassination attempt on Trump.

‘It was a false flag,’ one man told him. He replied: ‘Somebody died and two people were injured, what do you think about that?’

But the man just responded: ‘False flag.’

Another beachgoer said: ‘I thought it was magnificently staged. It was professionally done. It almost looked real.’

He was asked who it could have been staged by and he responded: ‘By Mr Trump of course.’

The man added that the death and injuries were a ‘small price’. ‘It doesn’t matter to Trump,’ he added. ‘Do you think he cares if people die for him to be elected? 

‘Death doesn’t mean anything to Trump.

‘I think that he walked away alive, perhaps a scratch on his ear. Behind the scenes that was all fabricated. 

‘They put a little scratch on his ear, threw a little blood on his face.’

Klug asked: ‘So you think they planned from 130 yards away to shoot off the corner of his ear?

The man replied: ‘They never shot off the corner of his ear. That was all done by the people hanging around him.’

‘I think this whole thing was staged,’ a third man claimed. ‘It could be [Trump] or the other side trying to make a scene.

‘But the fact it only got his ear and he stood up and said America, come on, it doesn’t feel normal. 

‘To me it looks like it was planned. Bless that soul for dying for this cause. I am so sorry for that person’s family. It’s just a feeling.’ 

Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight bullets at the crowd, striking Trump’s ear and hitting three rally attendees, one fatally. 

The Secret Service’s counter sniper team took out the shooter. They said the male shooter began firing from an elevated position outside the rally grounds before being killed. Two other people were critically-injured by the gunfire. 

Images on social media show the dead gunman laying on top of a beige building about 300 feet north of the stage where Trump was standing when he was shot.

The gunman opened fire from AGR International, a plastic container manufacturing facility. 

Trump was mid-sentence, saying ‘Take a look at what happened’ when the shots began to ring out shortly before 6pm ET, with terrified screams filling the air as he and onlookers dived to the ground.

In the moments after the shooting, voices could be heard screaming ‘The shooter is down’ as Trump dived to the floor and frightened rallygoers screamed with fear. 

The 45th president was seen ducking down with blood coming from his ear. Trump has since issued a statement on TruthSocial detailing what happened to him.

He wrote: ‘I was shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear. I knew immediately that something was wrong in that I heard a whizzing sound, shots, and immediately felt the bullet ripping through the skin. Much bleeding took place, so I realized what was happening. GOD BLESS AMERICA!’

It had previously been suggested that Trump was struck and injured by a piece of a shattered teleprompter.  

Seconds later, the blood-covered lawmaker pumped his fist in the air to indicate that he was fine, while surrounded by Secret Service agents, before being led away. 

Trump could also be heard repeatedly asking: ‘Let me get my shoes.’  

Realizing their hero was uninjured and that the immediate danger appeared to have passed, the crowd began chanting ‘USA, USA’ as he was rushed away and bundled into a Secret Service SUV. 

The former president quickly moved on from the shooting, appearing at the Republican National Convention’s first night, receiving a hero’s welcome with the ear bandaged. 

Trump’s remarks, made in a social media posting on Saturday night, represent the most overt signal yet that he may not accept the result in November if he loses.

Trump has a history of railing against election officials and raising unsubstantiated claims of fraud when his political fortunes appear uncertain, as they do now in his extremely close race with Vice President Kamala Harris. His comments are his most direct threats made against those who will administer elections this year.

In reality, illegal voting is exceedingly rare. But Trump appears to be replaying his efforts to sow doubt about the voting process ahead of the 2020 election — actions that contributed to the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

“WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump wrote on Saturday on his Truth Social platform. “We cannot let our Country further devolve into a Third World Nation, AND WE WON’T!”

Trump, who began his message with the words “CEASE & DESIST,” went on to threaten a wide range of the kinds of people who would face prosecution and prison time, including campaign donors and those involved in administering elections.

“Please be aware that this legal exposure extends to Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, Illegal Voters & Corrupt Election Officials,” he wrote, adding that such people will be “sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

David Becker, who founded the nonprofit Center for Election Innovation & Research, urged the public to reject Trump’s inflammatory language.

“I can’t begin to describe the abnormality and disturbing behavior that would cause a presidential candidate, a former president, to threaten public servants with mass arrest,” said Becker, who previously worked as a lawyer for the Justice Department for seven years.

Several election officials also called threats of violence “unacceptable.”

“Donald Trump will not accept the results of the election unless he wins,” said Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold (D). “This is another step in his campaign to undermine confidence in our elections, which has led to unprecedented threats of violence against election officials.”

A spokesperson for the Trump campaign did not reply to a request on Sunday afternoon for comment on Trump’s post.

On Sunday, Trump doubled down on his baseless claims of election fraud, saying on Truth Social that he expects to win the key swing state of Pennsylvania “by a lot, unless the Dems are allowed to CHEAT.”

Late last month, during a conversation with the conservative Moms for Liberty group, Trump conceded that he lost the 2020 election “by a whisker” — marking one of his most clear public acceptances that he lost the election to Biden. Days later, he once again publicly acknowledged that he did not win the 2020 presidential election, telling podcaster Lex Fridman that he “lost by a whisker.”

In the wake of the 2020 election, Trump and his allies pushed to overturn the election results through phone calls, speeches, tweets and media appearances in six swing states where certified results declared Joe Biden the winner.

Trump most recently began escalating his rhetoric about election fraud when Harris replaced President Joe Biden at the top of the ticket and pulled ahead in some polls. In remarks before the Fraternal Order of Police last week, the former president urged officers to patrol polling places because it would intimidate would-be cheaters.

“I hope you watch for voter fraud,” he said. “Watch for the voter fraud because we win without voter fraud. … You can keep it down just by watching because, believe it or not, they’re afraid of that badge. They’re afraid of you people.”

But while his post on Saturday falsely claimed that there was “rampant Cheating” in the 2020 presidential race, Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the last election faltered in multiple courts when his lawyers and allies could not produce evidence of widespread voter irregularities. In nearly four years since, Trump and his allies have failed to substantiate his claims that he lost the 2020 race due to fraud.

In one of those cases, U.S. District Judge Steven D. Grimberg, whom Trump named to the bench in 2019 in the Northern District of Georgia, wrote that the president’s attempt to block certification of Biden’s win in the state “would breed confusion and potentially disenfranchisement that I find has no basis in fact or in law.”

Election officials who are credibly found to have engaged in criminal activities are already prosecuted in the country. Last month, for example, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado and Trump ally, was found guilty of seven charges connected to allowing a purported computer expert to copy election data from her office as Trump and his allies searched for evidence to prove their baseless claims of election fraud. Another county election official, Misty Hampton of Coffee County, Ga., faces felony charges along with 14 others, including Trump, for their role in trying to overturn the 2020 result.

And, in the years after Trump began baselessly alleging fraud in the 2020 election, some states such as Iowa, Georgia and Arizona have passed laws beefing up penalties for some election-related offenses despite a lack of evidence that elections in their states were run unfairly. In some cases, these new state election laws effectively criminalize election workers’ errors, raising concerns about the possibility of unfair prosecutions like the kind Trump appeared to describe in his post.

Threats and harassment of election workers have skyrocketed since Trump and his allies began denying the results of the 2020 election, amplifying their false claims on television, podcasts and social media. The developments caused a mass exodus of veteran election administrators from their jobs, and prompted scores of election offices around the country to harden their physical workspaces with bulletproof glass, emergency buttons and extensive crisis training.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D), who was directly targeted by armed pro-Trump protesters who gathered outside her home after the 2020 election, on Sunday told The Washington Post that no threats from Trump will dissuade her from performing her duties this election year.

Benson said that her job — and the job of every election official in the country — is to “rise above this noise and focus on continuing to ensure our elections are fair, secure, accessible, and that the results continue to be an accurate reflection of the will of the people.”

Seth Bluestein, a Republican Philadelphia city commissioner, said that every election official he knows “is focused on doing their job well, which unfortunately now also includes preparing for potential threats and violence.”

And Jeff Greenburg, a former director of elections in Mercer County, Pa., said on Sunday that the “continued demonization of election officials is disappointing, disheartening, irresponsible and infuriating.”

“Words matter, and this does nothing but potentially put those dedicated public servants in harm’s way. It has to stop,” he said.

On Sunday, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, a Trump campaign surrogate, minimized Trump’s comments in an interview with NBC News’s “Meet the Press,” saying that the former president was “just putting people on notice” that the country must have “free and fair elections.”

But a Republican official in a battleground state who spoke on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about Trump’s comments found the former president’s post more alarming.

“He sounds like he is losing it,” the Republican official said. “Sad, someone should do something, like replace him as a candidate.”

Toluse Olorunnipa contributed to this report.