Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) said during an appearance on Breitbart News Daily that there are currently five known assassination teams in the United States, three of which are foreign and out to kill former President Donald Trump.
“Tragic. Avoidable,” Gaetz said when asked for his thoughts on the second assassination attempt against the former president.
“I am starting to get the impression that we do not have enough force protection of supporting President Trump that we ought to have, given the threat environment,” he said, noting that he recently met with a senior official in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who said that there are at least five known assassination teams in the United States, “at least three of which are foreign that are out to kill Trump.”
“And, with that type of activity, I don’t think we should be allowing people to set up for an extended period of time and wait to take their shot outside of his golf properties or his other properties,” Gaetz said, expressing concern that the second suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, was previously known to officials, encountered at the border upon his return to the country from Ukraine.
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“And the Customs and Border Patrol [CBP] thought his story was so suspicious that he was recruiting freedom fighters all over the world to go fight in Ukraine, and when they asked him how he was financing this, he said, ‘Oh, well, my wife is paying for it.’ And that seemed odd, and, so, the CBP officials referred Ryan Routh to the Department of Homeland Security’s investigations unit to determine what was going on, and they declined to even proceed with an investigation,” Gaetz said. “They just stopped and let the guy in the country. And we’ve got a lot of questions about that.”
Host Mike Slater pressed Gaetz on the claim of five assassination teams existing in the country, and Gaetz reiterated that they are “aware of at least five teams in-country that are geared toward killing Trump. ”
“And I think, you know, three of them that we know are foreign in nature. Two of them we know are domestic in nature, and that calls for a force protection that we do not have around the former president right now,” the Florida congressman said, reemphasizing that a senior DHS official met with him and relayed that information, explaining that “they were aware of this and were concerned that the Secret Service was not providing sufficient support.”
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When asked how it would even be possible to have assassination teams walking around, Gaetz said there is simply “insufficient scrutiny to stop them from doing so.”
“Three of these teams are foreign-inspired, from my understanding — Iranians, Ukraine, Pakistan — and, you know, the work is obviously challenging to protect — protective detail, like a presidential campaign that is vigorous and out campaigning,” he said.
Given this threat, Gaetz said they are investigating to see if they have the right protective detail, such as the correct sniper teams and the right tactical teams.
“And we’ve seen a few times where resources have been pulled off of the Trump detail for the Jill Biden detail or for the John Bolton detail. And we’re going to question whether or not that was sound, given what we knew about the efforts to kill Trump,” he added.
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. Eastern.
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