Mother Jones; Heritage Foundation; Rebecca Droke/AFP/Getty
Just hours after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, high-profile allies of the ex-president began promoting unfounded conspiracy theories and blaming President Joe Biden and Democrats, without evidence, for causing the horrific attack. Trump and his surrogates have continued nonstop ever since with this coordinated messaging, which security experts have told me could provoke retaliatory violence from pro-Trump extremists. In late August, backers of Project 2025 joined the effort pushing this dangerous propaganda.
On Aug. 29, podcast host Monica Crowley interviewed Trump and proposed without evidence that he may have been targeted for murder from within the Biden administration.
“The more we see what happened that day, the more suspicious it all looks,” said Crowley, a former Trump administration spokesperson and a credited contributor on the Project 2025 policy tome detailing a hard-right agenda for a second Trump presidency. “Does it look increasingly to you like this was a suspicious—maybe even inside job?”
“Well, it’s strange,” Trump replied. Then he speculated about the deceased gunman’s father hiring “the most expensive lawyer” and suggested a partisan conspiracy involving former Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann and Democratic election lawyer Marc Elias. Weissmann quickly denounced Trump’s comments as false on social media. A spokesperson for Elias Law Group told me that no one from the firm has had any involvement in any aspect of the case.
Trump further claimed in the podcast interview, first reported by Media Matters for America, that the FBI had failed to gather evidence from the gunman’s cellphone. That’s untrue: FBI Director Christopher Wray and other FBI officials have spoken publicly about the bureau’s extensive investigation into the gunman’s background and activity, including his various digital communications.
Trump and Crowley then riffed about the JFK assassination, with Crowley reiterating the baseless conspiracy theory about the attack on Trump: “You were shot five or six weeks ago, and the imperial media, the regime, they’ve all buried it. They don’t want anybody talking about it, which also lends credence to this idea that this is very suspicious and could have been an inside job.”
“Yeah, true,” Trump interjected. “They don’t wanna talk about it.”
“Of course not,” she said.
“Tells you bad things,” Trump said, starting to draw a connection with the broader conspiracy theory at the core of his campaign.
“It raises big suspicions,” Crowley agreed.
“Well they didn’t want to talk about the election of 2020 either,” Trump said. “They just don’t want to talk about it because they know they’re guilty as hell. And the only way you can stop it—it’s amazing. People that want to have a fair election are indicted. The people that cheated on the election are allowed to keep cheating.”
Three days prior, on Aug. 26, the Heritage Foundation—home of Project 2025—hosted the “J 13 Forum,” a faux congressional hearing on the assassination attempt. Billed as an “independent” investigation, it was led by Reps. Cory Mills of Florida and Eli Crane of Arizona and framed as a necessary circumvention of ongoing federal investigations, including a bipartisan congressional task force on the shooting convened by Republican Speaker Mike Johnson. In his opening remarks, Mills stated that he and his MAGA colleagues from the House were certain to uncover not just “criminal gross negligence” but “purposeful intent” attributable to the Biden administration.
“I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”
Participants in the testimony-style interviews included former Secret Service agent and right-wing media personality Dan Bongino, and former Blackwater CEO and Trump political operative Erik Prince. Attacks on DEI policy and its alleged role in the catastrophic security failure on July 13 were a focal point, also teed up by Mills from the outset. The hearing at Heritage, he said, “is a message to all of Congress, that if we are not selecting people based on meritocracy, that independent investigations such as this will continue to move forward.”
Project 2025 includes detailed plans to purge the US government of DEI policies. Midway through the hearing, Bongino went off on DEI as having supposedly led to unqualified agents working for the Secret Service. Citing unnamed whistleblower sources, he claimed that deficient personnel included trainees who had failed shooting tests and had filed “nuisance” employment complaints—and who were then given high-stakes jobs. “Many are out on protective assignments now,” Bongino said, without providing any evidence to support his claims.
“So what you’re saying is that DEI plays a major role, not meritocracy with regards to the current culture,” Mills said.
“No, the major role,” Bongino emphasized. “The Secret Service right now is dominated by DEI.”
Mills replied: “I think everyone’s heard me say before, ‘DEI equals DIE.’”
Project 2025 also calls for the mission of the Secret Service to be narrowed to protective operations only, and to have all of its criminal financial investigations moved under other law enforcement agencies—an argument Bongino also made in his remarks. Agents should be able to focus on protective work, Bongino said, “without running out cheap $20 counterfeit notes at Seven Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”
At the closing, Mills reiterated his takeaways, including on federal hiring policy. “Again, I think that we’re understanding that we’ve investigated the culture of the Secret Service and what needs to change, and why DEI is not healthy for our military, for our security services or otherwise.”
In his own closing remarks, Rep. Crane thanked the “witnesses” for participating, including a SWAT operator who had offered what he described as “secondhand” information about some of the tactical failures on July 13. “Any time you’re in law enforcement and you take the risk to come and testify before Congress,” Crane said to the small audience in the Heritage Foundation conference room, “it takes a lot of courage.”