Kent questions efficacy of U.S. Secret Service
During an Aug. 26 independent forum hosted by a group of House Republicans investigating the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, Rep. Eli Crane of Arizona read aloud a text from 3rd Congressional District candidate Joe Kent.
In the text, Kent criticized House Speaker Mike Johnson’s U.S. Secret Service detail during a visit to Vancouver for a Kent fundraiser.
“The Speaker’s detail was incredibly lax,” Kent wrote. “(They) failed to seal off all entrances to a very small venue. Johnson wasn’t secured, and very easy to access.”
Crane and Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., held the forum to discuss their independent investigation into the Trump assassination attempt. The lawmakers were not selected to sit on the official House task force.
The forum featured Blackwater founder and former Navy SEAL Erik Prince; conservative radio host and former Secret Service agent Dan Bongino; and Ben Shaffer, a regional SWAT operator who was onsite at the Pennsylvania rally.
Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Chip Roy (Texas) also participated.
Throughout the forum, speakers questioned whether political motivations led to security failures at Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. In his text, Kent questioned the efficacy of the Secret Service.
Johnson visited Vancouver on Aug. 17 for a Kent fundraiser at El Gaucho on The Waterfront Vancouver. Kent texted Crane on Aug. 19.
“His detail was inside the restaurant just BS’ing. No control over the two entrances at all,” Kent wrote. “Once the event started, they put on a good show and looked the part. I can’t interpret their intent, but they failed a basic simple task: Secure the two entry points. A shocking level of incompetence. The event was in Vancouver, in the shadow of Portland, Ore.”
It is not the first time Kent has floated theories about the Secret Service.
During a virtual town hall hosted by the Conservative Ladies of Washington in July, Kent suggested that Secret Service agents may have been “in on” the assassination attempt against Trump.
“I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say it seems like there’s some degree of a plot to kill President Trump that was noticed by people in the Secret Service, and they either let it happen or some of them were in on it,” he said. “There’s no other way to look at it until they prove us wrong. And maybe they will. Maybe that’s what the investigation will get to the bottom of. It just needs to be investigated.”
Kent is running to unseat Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, D-Skamania, in the 3rd Congressional District.
Perez co-sponsored legislation to create a bipartisan task force to investigate the shooting. In a statement from July, she argued that Kent “wants to turn a tragedy” into a political opportunity.
“To him, anything in the news is one big conspiracy theory, with the deep state pulling the strings,” she said. “What we actually need to do is get the facts about what went wrong, which is why I cosponsored the bill this week creating a task force to investigate the assassination attempt against former President Trump.”
