- Erik Prince, founder of Blackwater, said a 5mph wind was enough to move a bullet two inches.
- Donald Trump was “not saved” by the “brilliance” of the US Secret Service, the former Navy SEAL said.
- The prince criticized the Secret Service for allowing a shooter within 150 meters of the pre-planned event.
Former President Donald Trump may only be alive because of the shooter’s ill-advised forecast, according to Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL and founder of the private military firm Blackwater.
In X’s post on Sunday, Prince joined those criticizing the Secret Service’s handling of the assassination attempt on Trump, saying Trump may only be alive because of “ill-advised predictions by a would-be rogue assassin.”
Prince pointed to a map of the protest location in Butler, Pennsylvania, which he said came from an unnamed SEAL sniper instructor at Red Sky LLC.
The map shows a 5mph wind blowing west in a bullet path.
“As the graph shows, a full-speed wind of just 5 miles per hour was enough to move an unconfirmed but likely lightweight 55-grain bullet two inches from DJT’s forehead to his ear,” Prince said, using Donald John Trump’s initials.
“DJT was not saved by the brilliance of the USSS,” he added.
The prince and Secret Service representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The former president was shot above his right ear during a campaign rally in Butler on Saturday.
According to a statement shared by Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the gunman “fired multiple shots toward the stage from an elevated position.”
The shooter, who is armed with “AR style” rifleonly about 450 feet (about 137 meters) from Trump, as shown by satellite imagery.
Video footage of the shooting shows the former president clutching his hand bloody face and then raised his fist in triumph as he was escorted off the stage by the Secret Service.
Trump later thanked the US Secret Service and law enforcement for their “rapid” response.
However, the assassination attempt has raised questions about why the US Secret Service did not find Trump’s shooter earlier, with former intelligence officers criticizing Secret Service procedures.
Prince, who reportedly served as a Navy SEAL from 1992 to 1996, pointed to several alleged shortcomings by the USSS, including allowing a gunman armed with a rifle within 150 meters of a pre-planned event and failing to kill the gunman immediately.
“The only positive action was a 488-yard shot by a USSS sniper, which successfully disabled the assassin, but only after the assassin had fired at least 5 rounds, wounding DJT and killing and wounding several others in the crowd,” he wrote in X.
In his previous role as founder and CEO of Blackwater, a security firm that played a large and controversial role in the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Prince said they were “expected to do the basics, or we would be fired.”
“Clearly, the USSS failed in the basics of a secure perimeter, and once shots were fired, their extraction was bungled and left the DJT extremely vulnerable to follow-up attacks,” he said.
On Sunday, Guglielmi said claims that the agency had denied requests from the Trump team for additional security were “completely false.”
“In fact, we’re adding resources & technology & protection capabilities as part of increasing the tempo of the campaign,” Guglielmi said at X.
