Absolutely unacceptable | Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

In addition to being a heinous political crime, the attempt on Donald Trump’s life was also a planned mass shooting.

Three spectators were also shot, and one of them died. Without an immediate response from the Secret Service, the shooter could have killed or injured more people.

Typically, high-profile mass shootings are followed by numerous press conferences and public statements by law enforcement and other officials. Crime scenes are sealed off and searched for forensic evidence, and the causes, circumstances, and response measures related to a mass shooting are subject to close scrutiny.

Questions are asked at almost every stage of an investigation, and investigators are expected to provide regular and timely updates.

The shooting of a former president and current candidate is highly unusual. The last time something like this happened, Trump’s vice presidential nominee, J.D. Vance, hadn’t even been born.

Such a singularity should require exponentially unusual, proactive communication and control, and yet the opposite has happened.

It would not be unreasonable to expect regular press conferences from the FBI, local law enforcement, the Secret Service, and even the White House or Congress. This crime of historic proportions was captured on camera by news organizations and individuals. There were an estimated 20,000 eyewitnesses. Media reporters and others are uncovering new facts and investigations every week, sometimes multiple times a week.

The puzzling questions continue to mount, yet the government remains silent. The Biden administration and its already wary federal departments couldn’t have stirred up more suspicions and conspiracy theories about the Deep State if they tried.

Many of the questions are easy and require simple answers, not government classification. If the shooter acted alone and there was no conspiracy, and the only casualties were private citizens, what national security interest is there in classifying anything in this case?

Where are the ballistics reports? Which guns fired, which bullets hit which victims? What does the forensic evidence say?

The more we learn, the more it seems that “national security” now includes covering up the mistakes of federal agencies and personnel in order to prevent damaging political backlash in an election year.

We know that law enforcement first identified a suspect in the area of ​​the gathering 90 minutes before the shooting. We know that a federal sniper spotted the shooter almost 20 minutes before the shooting. The informant alleged that the SS Counter Surveillance Division, which is responsible for conducting pre-event threat assessments at locations, failed to conduct its assessment at the Butler gathering.

According to the source, if the shooter had performed his normal duties, “he would have been handcuffed in the parking lot.”

Instead, inexplicably, the shooter was clearly filmed crawling and running across the roof before shooting Trump with a high-powered rifle.

The systemic flaw that led to the shooting was bad enough, but the failure to inform the public — or, as increasingly seems to be the case, the deliberate withholding of information from the public — is worse and has deeper consequences.

Understandably, Democrats generally don’t like to talk about the brutal crime that made Trump seem brave in the face of gunfire. That partly explains the wild “attack deniers” survey that found one in three registered Democratic voters believed the attack was staged in the days after the shooting.

Public attention focused on the investigation into the attack may be the last thing the Democratic Party wants. There is real danger to Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign if news cycles remind voters of how Trump took a bullet for his country.

But political ambition cannot be an excuse for the dereliction of duty resulting from a massive cover-up and concealment of the truth about an event that shook the very foundations of our free electoral system.

Joe Biden is the highest-ranking federal official. The president appoints the directors of the Secret Service and the FBI, and they serve at his discretion. He could single-handedly force transparency and press conferences from his subordinates.

Because the attack was directed at a direct political rival, the standard of investigative vigour, merit, transparency and reporting is even higher. The punishment for flagrantly failing to meet this heightened standard should also be harsher and swifter.

Biden’s delay on the matter justifies holding a real impeachment hearing, not a political one.

Conspiracies are always unlikely, as Occam’s razor tells us, but they are also always possible. The annals of world and US history are full of them.

The day Trump was shot, there was widespread bipartisan condemnation of violence against political leaders as completely unacceptable.

It is also completely unacceptable to cover up, conceal and cover up the facts that accompanied one of the most exhaustive criminal investigations of this century.

Democrats are in power in the executive branch. It’s been a month since the attempted coup. The shooter and his privacy rights are dead. This generational crime against our most sacred principles of self-government deserves unprecedented transparency from every agency.

It’s a sunny moment, but Biden, Harris and others are deliberately keeping Americans in the dark. Independents should remember that when they vote.

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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.