In contentious interview, Cory Mills floats that ‘intentional’ failures contributed to Donald Trump shooting

U.S. Rep. Cory Mills. Screenshot via CNN.

During a somewhat contentious interview on CNN, U.S. Rep. Cory Mills said an investigation into the assassination attempt on Donald Trump must consider whether any security failures allowed the 20-year-old shooter to get into a building near a Pennsylvania rally and fire off multiple shots.

But Mills went further.

“The amount of negligence, the amount of mistakes that was made here, I have a very difficult time not leaning myself towards this was intentional, as opposed to fecklessness,” Mills said.

A former Sniper, Mills co-founded Pacem Solution International and Pacem Defense, which provide private risk management assessment, intelligence collection and security service. He said he has overseen security for thousands of events, and that the shooting on Saturday was a failure in proper advance work.

“If I have a building 160 yards perfectly adjacent to the stage, that’s an obvious threat,” he said. “Especially with an elevated position that has overwatch? That’s a sniper’s paradise.”

Mills said security should have done more to secure that building. He dismissed concerns about whether Secret Service and local law enforcement had enough resources, saying even under those circumstances, measures could have been taken to deter a shooter, like propping up dummy snipers to stop someone from considering a violent act.

The Secret Service killed the shooter, but not before one bullet hit Trump’s ear, a rally attendee was killed and two more were injured.

Mills’ interview became more tense when he suggested the potential of an intentional hole in security.

“I’m hearing two things from you. I don’t want to jump ahead of things, but I’m also hearing you jumping ahead of things,” said CNN reporter Kate Bolduan.

Mills took some issue but did suggest he had seen an “escalation” of actions against Trump.

“First we want to censor and silence you, then we want to indict and imprison you, now we’re attempting to kill you,” Mills said.

That’s similar to a social media post the day the shooting took place, where Mills wrote: “First they tried to silence him. Then they tried to imprison him.  Now they try to kill him.”

Bolduan said both Trump’s campaign and House Republican leadership have discouraged speculation, and explicitly said no one should blame the incident on President Joe Biden and Democrats.

“Actually, I didn’t say Joe Biden to be clear,” Mills said.

Who, then, was the “they” Mills referenced? Mills said that’s what an investigation should seek to explain.

“My point is this, from a perspective of someone who’s actually conducted these, these are not difficult advances,” Mills said.

He added that enough concerns exist to warrant an outside investigation by Congress, not just by law enforcement and Secret Service involved with the event.

“Let’s investigate and find out why this happened so it doesn’t happen anew,” he said. “This is not about a political thing. This is about, we had an attempt to assassinate a President. We really need to understand what a serious matter this is.”