Donald Trump’s effusive praise for the Secret Service after a would-be assassin stormed the White House Correspondents’ Dinner last weekend is creating stress at the Department of Justice, where officials are leery of contradicting him.
Reacting to new reporting that the FBI has been unable to turn up the bullet fragment that struck a Secret Service agent, leading to questions over whether he was the victim of “friendly fire,” MS NOW’s Jonathan Lemire said fear of the president is complicating the case against of Cole Tomas Allen.
On Wednesday’s “Morning Joe," Lemire was asked how the Trump administration is dealing with the aftermath of attempted assassination.
“So a couple of things here,” he began. “So what I have heard, people I've talked the last couple of days, it is an open question. They don't know yet if it was friendly fire or not. But in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, there was, investigators wrote and even put in a report that the suspect did get at least a couple shots off, and they believed it had hit the agent. Since then, that has called into question.”
“I think it leaves two outstanding questions,” he reported. “One is simply is this –– another moment, the Secret Service’s conduct since Butler has come under question a number of times. I think obviously they performed bravely here, but still there will be things that will be looked at.”
“I think that's number one,” he added. “And secondly, more than anything, it could just be another example of the administration refusing to ever contradict anything the president says. He said Saturday night that an agent was shot by the suspect. So therefore, that has to be gospel instead of just saying, ‘Well, the investigation actually led us another way.’ And again, we don't know that it will. But even as a hypothetical, they can't acknowledge that things could have changed, that Trump could have been wrong.”