Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome back to the season finale of Going Underground, broadcasting all around the world from the UAE. On this day in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty entered into force creating NATO. NATO selected as its highest ranking military official the former chief of operations for Hitler's Nazi army. There would be much that was Nazi about NATO. Just take Yugoslavia in the 1990s when NATO illegally bombed civilians as they today support the neo Nazis of Ukraine. The dictator of Ukraine, Zelenskyy, has been keen to tie the NATO proxy war on Russia through Ukraine to the Trump Netanyahu war on Iran. Perhaps it's just to get into Trump's good books. Certainly Trump has appeared to believe that Iran is not just a war he has to get into because of the Epstein files. He sometimes appears to believe that Iran wants to him. Where did he get that idea? There certainly have been a number of close calls on his life, but links to Iran seem vague. All that seems certain is that personal security for Trump is only marginally better than for Maduro and Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and that Trump himself mysteriously shut down the investigation into his own attempted assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania. Joining me is the editor of Headline usa, Ken Silver. His latest book, the Trump Assassination what the Investigations Missed and why It Matters, examines the unanswered question and draws connections to Ukraine and Israel across the various plots, from Thomas Crooks grazing Trump's ear near Butler to Ryan Ruth at Trump International Golf Course to the FBI concocted Asif Merchant plot. Ken joins me now from Charlotte, North Carolina. Thanks so much, Ken, for coming back, coming on Going Underground. I mean, it's such a detailed book. Let's start with the best known attempts to assassinate Trump himself.
Because Trump has been saying about attacks on Iran. He's been saying I got him before he got me. He often says about his assassination of Ayatollah Khamenei and members of his family, as well as all the schoolchildren in Minab.
You don't appear from this book, appear to believe that Iran tried to kill him in Butler or Trump golf Course.
[00:02:22] Speaker A: Well, thanks for having me on. And that's right, there's absolutely no evidence for this, although I'm sure there are people, including in the Iranian government, who would like to see Trump dead.
There's been no evidence of any legitimate threat.
First of all, a lot of people in conservative media, the Israeli government and even Congress people like Mike Waltz have drawn disingenuous ties between Iran and the Butler shooting or the Ryan Ruth case. That happened two months later when they talk about the Iranian assassination threat, they'll have pictures of Trump at Butler, like raising his fist, trying to get people who don't, who don't read past the headlines just to make that connection.
If you talk to people who are serious about arguing that the Iranian threat is legitimate, though, they'll cite various cases where the FBI has arrested so called operatives working on behalf of Iran who were plotting to kill Trump, although there was no threat.
The most famous one of these was a guy who was bizarrely arrested the day before Butler on July 13, 2024. He was arrested July 12. The case was announced about a month later. And everybody automatically assumed that there was some connection to this case involving a Pakistani man named Asif Merchant.
And Butler. I mean, the timing is bizarre, but if you look more closely, this was a very highly controlled FBI sting operation where they were monitoring him before he Even entered the U.S.
israel gave the U.S. intelligence that this guy might be a threat, he might be working for the Iranian government. They let him into the country and on purpose connected him to an FBI informant who is driving him around, giving him money. The informant introduces him to two undercover FBI agents who were posing as hitmen and they took him to a strip club where they did have some sort of vague meeting about possibly assassinating U.S. politicians or committing other crimes. And the target, Merchant said, well, we'll give you the real plan in September. Meet me in Pakistan.
[00:04:36] Speaker B: And.
[00:04:36] Speaker A: And then the FBI arrests him when he's attempting to leave the country on July 12th. And so that's pretty much the most, the case that most people cite as a legitimate threat. He might have had intent, but he had absolutely no capacity. This was something totally manufactured by the FBI.
[00:04:55] Speaker B: Yeah, these sorts of agile provocateur operations, very, very common in Britain, where I'm from, arguably. Which leads me on now to of course ask you, who does it benefit that Trump himself personally believes that Iran did try that assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania and other ones that he might be being passed pieces of paper today about.
You mentioned Israel there.
Do you see that there is some concerted attempt on Trump to make him think that, to give him more passion for this war in this region?
[00:05:36] Speaker A: I would say so I think that's pretty reasonable to conclude. I mean, we've gotten another story in the New York Times where the Israelis told Trump that Iran is plotting to kill him again. And this is right before the war heated up yet again.
So there seems to be a pattern here. And this does date back to 2024.
Not only do we have the Merchant case. But after he's almost killed in Butler, and then there's another attempt on his life at his golf course in September 2024.
They tell him that the Iranians have smuggled surface to air missiles into the US and that they want to shoot down his plane, Trump Force One, which is just a ridiculous conspiracy. There's no evidence for this, no documentation, no witnesses, no arrests. You know, if this were true, the war would have started a lot earlier.
But nevertheless, the Secret Service had Trump start to use a plane owned by Howard Lutnick. He would fly with Lutnick and Susie Wiles over, you know, making all his campaign stops for the last two months while his staff continued to ride on Trump Force One almost as a decoy. And this was because of the supposed intelligence that the Iranians wanted to shoot down his plane. And. And because this is so dubious, I kind of speculate that it was almost a psyop on Trump. They're really trying to make him seem or think that this is a legitimate thing, that Iran's trying to kill him.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: I'm sure his staff must be very happy about being a decoy in a plane. I don't know how they persuade them of that, but, yeah. After the NATO summit, the plane was swapped in England. He suddenly appeared in Britain, and the British Prime Minister didn't even know until the last minute that Trump was arriving in Britain on the way back.
[00:07:29] Speaker A: And that was probably smart. It's my understanding that that jet from Qatar that he had been using didn't have proper missile defenses, you know, and the threat there supposedly was coming from an Iranian proxy in Iraq, which they're probably not. You know, they're probably more willing to roll the dice and actually try to kill Trump. So that seemed a little bit more legitimate. But nevertheless, you know, it's a similar theme.
[00:07:53] Speaker B: In any case, now the NDAA has passed Congress, the Israeli and American militaries are kind of merged. So all the threat level assessments, presumably, of assassination, coming across the desk of the dni, Is there a new one? I think after Tulsi Gabbard prematurely retired, they presumably will have one assassination after another.
[00:08:16] Speaker A: Well, what my book shows, the Trump assassination plots, is the title of the book, and it shows that there probably will be more attempts because there's been no reforms at the Secret Service. In fact, a lot of the people who were responsible for the failures at Butler and Palm beach and beyond, they received promotions. I mean, the former director of Trump's personal detail is now the director of the entire agency. It's got a bigger budget, more agents, more power.
So even if you don't want to get conspiratorial here, it's almost like built in incentives for these institutions to fail.
[00:08:55] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I mean, most sadly, I suppose. Helen Compratore, the widow of the firefighter killed in Butler, tragically killed, his name Corey Compratoria, the widow said, I believe it was an inside job. When the people who put this all together that day are caught and it comes out, that's going to give her closure. What did you make of her words? Is it because of all this nebulous nature of events rather than any proof of an active deep state conspiracy to kill Trump at Butler, Pennsylvania?
[00:09:31] Speaker A: Well, I don't know what she knows. I actually haven't talked to her. I worked with a documentary team that interviewed her, but I wasn't part of the personal interview. But I don't blame her for that sentiment because she hasn't been given any answers. Just like the American people.
I mean, when her husband was killed, the FBI held onto the phone until early 2025.
The documentary team, it's called A Butler Under Fire that I was working with, she talked to them about this saying like I would call them out. I even tried to ask Trump just give me my husband's phone. They finally did, and it turns out that the FBI didn't even examine the phone. They just threw it in a storage locker and were ignoring her. She got briefed about the case by former Deputy Director Dan Bongino when he was in office last year, and he told her that there's nothing to see here. The would be assassin, Thomas Crooks acted alone.
You know, despite all the things that I said when I was a podcaster, you know, there's nothing to see here. And he also promised her that the FBI was going to release the files on this case.
She talked about this last year and then the FBI never did. So, I mean, breaking a promise to a widow is pretty disgusting. And I'm sure it left a bad taste in her mouth.
[00:10:52] Speaker B: Dan Bongino did that same kind of u turn over Jeffrey Epstein, famously, but Thomas Crooks himself, I mean, just very briefly about him, who was he? Because I know Tucker Carlson revealed videos of him supporting Trump and then being against Trump.
And you told him he was possibly in contact with federal authorities before he nearly killed Trump.
[00:11:17] Speaker A: Well, my investigation was largely based off public records that I could get like his college emails and it didn't show much. Probably the most interesting thing was that it showed that in June 2024, he was still making plans to attend a four year anniversary or a four year anniversary university that fall, less than a month before he turns up dead on a roof, he's asking about getting his diploma from his community college.
So it's really bizarre, but I don't know what to make of it. The information from Tucker Carlson that you're referencing is social media data that he obtained from 2019 and 2020 when Crooks was only 16.
But Crooks is openly talking on YouTube videos about assassinating US politicians and bombing federal buildings and committing other acts of terrorism. And he's also conversing with an account called Willie Tepes, who is on a State Department terror watch list. They're talking back and forth about what's the best way for, you know, to overthrow the US Government, which tells you that he had to have been on federal law enforcement's radar in some capacity. And even though this is four years before the attack, you know, you don't get to make violent comments like that on a platform like YouTube without the FBI being notified.
[00:12:37] Speaker B: Meanwhile, Crooks had a drone and Trump Secret Service didn't have any drones on the day.
Anti drone, anti drone systems in Butler that day.
[00:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah, they were offered drones by the local cops and they declined. And then one of the first bizarre security failures, if you want to call it a coincidence, I guess that's all we can call it at this point, is the fact that their drone detection equipment was down all morning and early afternoon. Crook shows up to Butler around 3:30pm that day. The shooting was at 6:11. He flies his drone for about 15 minutes, returns it to his vehicle and then 20 minutes later the drone detection equipment finally gets up and running. Turns out it was like a faulty ethernet cable or something like that. So that's one of just the about a half a dozen, just incredibly, I guess we'll call them coincidental security failures that led to the shooting that day.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: Ken Silver, I'll stop you there. More from the author of the Trump assassination plots, what the investigations missed and why it matters after this break.
Welcome back to Going underground. I'm still here with the author of the Trump assassination plots, what the investigations missed and why it matters. Ken Silver, we will get on to why it matters, Ken, in a moment. I know in part one we were talking about irregularities, but we of course also mentioned Israel, which is busy with the United States bombing in this region. The autopsy on the shooter of Trump, the person who shot his ear in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks, after all the mistakes that were done it turns out the autopsy was done by someone who had previously been an identifier of victims on October 7th in Israel, Ariel Goldschmidt. And he had worked previously with the fabricator of the beheaded babies story, Chen Kugel. I mean, this just sounds unbelievable, obviously. How did you find this information and what does it signal?
[00:15:01] Speaker A: Sure. So obtaining Thomas Crooks autopsy and toxicology reports was kind of my first big exclusive scoop on this whole event. I got him in late 2024 after a long legal battle. And that's because the body was kept on the rooftop until the next morning. And then it was taken from Butler county to Allegheny county, where this Goldschmidt character is the medical examiner. And then they conduct an autopsy and immediately released the body for cremation before it can be examined by Congress.
So I'm reading about these sequence of events. I'm like, I got to get these reports. I request them from Allegheny and Butler county, and they both deny me for different reasons. Butler county said, we don't have the documents, while Allegheny county said, well, we did the autopsy, but it's Butler County's jurisdiction, so we're not going to give them to you. Did a big, long legal battle, finally won and got the reports, threw them up online.
And somebody noticed that the toxicology report was actually incomplete. They collected several specimens from Crooks, like his blood, urine, eye bile, an envelope of hair, but they didn't test them all, or they didn't include the results of the tests on the report, which these specimens would arguably have shown the presence of maybe psychotropic drugs or something like that.
[00:16:27] Speaker B: We have a whole program on MK Ultra that we did three years ago, I think. I mean, certainly these kinds of emissions clearly are going to make people wonder.
[00:16:36] Speaker A: Yeah, that's exactly right. And so that's. The toxicology report was incomplete. And then the autopsy report shows that he released the body for cremation with bullet fragments still inside of it. So really, it seems, I would argue, mishandling of evidence. And so I do we, we need to know who this Goldschmidt guy is. I mean, I'm not necessarily accusing him of being a part of an Israeli conspiracy, but because he's such a key player in this case, and because I do think he really botched this, it is worth noting that, yes, this is the same guy who after October 7th happened, he apparently volunteered to go over there and help with the IDF and the Israeli government in identifying these victims of the Hamas attack.
And he worked with a guy named Chen Kuggle, who was one of the sources of these dubious claims about beheaded babies. And then like nine months later, he's doing crooks as autopsy. It's. It's a bizarre coincidence.
[00:17:41] Speaker B: He volunteered to do crooks. And of course, the beheaded babies story was the kind of story, propaganda story that was spread through the NATO nations arming Israel before the genocide in Gaza. It has to be emphasized. I mean, I know it's been given. Oliver Stone has been on this show many times, and there's a lot of common currency about Jack Kennedy's assassination, for instance, and about intimations of Israeli involvement, but not to go on about that small country in West Asia. Tell me about Celebrite software, where that comes from and how it was used to identify evidence as regards the wounding of Donald Trump at.
[00:18:25] Speaker A: At. Sure, sure.
[00:18:27] Speaker B: In Pennsylvania, in Butler.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah, so I mentioned a dual citizen Israeli did the autopsy of crooks. Meanwhile, the FBI used Israeli spyware to crack into his phone. So we pretty much have Israeli.
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Does the United States not have. Have software like that? They don't have the technological know how.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: They use Celebrate. It's a contractor former like unit 8200, which is Israel's version of the NSA.
They just have a contract with the FBI. They do most of the phone hackings. But the interesting thing with the Crooks case is that they take his phone to the Pittsburgh FBI field office, and allegedly their version of Celebrite can't get into the phone. I mean, he's got a Samsung. He was kind of a technical savvy kid, so maybe he did have advanced encryption. But they say they can't hack into it. So they send it to Washington D.C. and the headquarters of the FBI for the latest and greatest version of Celebrate. That's what they said they needed to get into the phone, which I think should probably raise some eyebrows considering we haven't gotten any information about what's on this phone.
[00:19:38] Speaker B: Maybe Kash Patel by now has got that latest Israeli version of the software out to all the different states. Who knows?
Who is Nikita Kassap who also allegedly wanted to kill Trump?
[00:19:55] Speaker A: Yeah, that's the subject of chapter six of my book. And this is a troubled young teenager who was actually convinced online by two Ukrainians to kill his parents and steal a bunch of their money in to finance a plot to kill Trump. This again, early 2025, he's on these sketchy fringe chat rooms that are devoted to school shootings, mass shootings, things like that.
Two Ukrainians convince them to do this and they say wire us a bunch of money, a bunch of cryptocurrency. We'll give you coordinates to a safe house in California. You go there, you can get drones, other equipment to kill Trump, and we'll blame it on Russia and spark a world war. I mean, it's a pretty. If that sounds crazy, it's because it was a pretty harebrained plot.
It turns out the Ukrainians were apparently scamming this kid. The coordinates to the safe house didn't go anywhere. I think they were actually the coordinates to, like, a military base. Almost like they were trolling him. And then he was arrested a couple weeks later down in Kansas, I think when he realized, like, oh, crap, I killed my parents. I got scammed. What am I going to do? And he's serving the rest of his life in prison. But I think this case is important for several reasons. I mean, first of all, it's the social issues that, like, parents, you need to keep your kids off the Internet, it seems like. But also, you know, when we talk about crooks being manipulated into this plot, speculation about that. It doesn't have to be like a sophisticated MK Ultra thing where they had him in a lab and we're brainwashing him. The Cassip case shows you that these kids are online and they're very easily manipulated.
And, you know, we have a case example of this in Cassip, and I suspect that probably something similar was going on with crooks. The way I describe it is that there's maybe 0.1% of the population of teenagers are into these topics and are susceptible to manipulation, but they all gather online in the same chat rooms, and that, A, it normalizes their behavior with each other, but, B, they're all in the same place, and they can be manipulated by bad actors, foreign state actors, criminals, or, you know, federal provocateurs into doing these kind of things.
[00:22:20] Speaker B: And even if it is something to do with troubled psychology, after the attempt, or, heaven forbid, a successful assassination, it can be used by state actors to advance their geopolitical aims.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: And that's what we've seen here. I mean, again, when the Iran war started earlier this year, Trump said, I got the ayatollah before he got me. Pete Hegseth said Trump had the last laugh.
And, yeah, it's one of the many. It's one of the few reasons they've given for why the US Is now at war with Iran.
[00:22:55] Speaker B: I mean, as for the actual threat, John Bolton has been on this show many times. He came to a plea deal, of course, over his case with the Justice Department.
He didn't seem to mind too much coming on our show remotely via a connection from his home. But what do you think about the threat against John Bolton?
Was that faked in any way ahead of time? Of course, Trump withdrew his security as soon as he became president for the second time.
[00:23:29] Speaker A: Well, all of the threats against Trump are said to have stemmed from his assassination of Soleimani, the, you know, famous Iranian general.
And there's, and according to the government, the US Government and the Israeli government, they didn't only try to kill Trump, but they tried to kill Mike Pompeo and John Bolton too. But when you look into these cases, they're equally as dubious as the threats against Trump. I mean, John Bolton is another one of these things where in 2022 it's some guy in Iran talking to what he thought was a hitman about targeting Bolton. But the hitman turned out to be an FBI informant. They took some photos of Bolton's house with the full knowledge and consent of Bolton, the FBI informant did. They sent the pictures back to Iran and then they negotiated for the Iranian to send like 100 bucks to the FBI informant as a down payment. And then at that point, they wrapped up the case. They announced an indictment against the Iranian. But of course, they never have to prove this case because much like with the Russiagate indictments, you know, they're never actually going to take him to trial because he's in Iran. So just, just finally we're up with
[00:24:46] Speaker B: other, we're running out of time. Ryan Ruth, he was talking with Ukraine and he had Israeli connections. He was the second would be assassin hiding with a rifle at Trump International Golf Course.
[00:25:01] Speaker A: Yeah, he's hiding in the bushes at Trump's golf course on September 15, 2024. And we know a lot more about this guy than we do about Thomas Crooks. And all of it is highly suspicious. I mean, he's a multiple time felony. He was in Ukraine in early 2022 recruiting Afghans and Syrians to fight against Russia. And he says in his own self published book that his, quote, best partner in this initiative was an Israeli guy. I wasn't able to figure out who this was. But this activity gets put on the radar of at least seven different federal or international agencies. The FBI, Customs, Interpol, the CIA, the State Department even opened an investigation into him for arms trafficking regulation violations. And that investigation was open at the time of his assassination attempt. So to me, it raises grave questions about how he was able to operate with impunity and almost get a shot off at Trump again while he's on the radar of so many agencies who are investigating him.
[00:26:05] Speaker B: And he'd immersed himself in propaganda against Russia and pro Zelensky ahead of, ahead of time.
And of course, Trump is seen as wanting detente.
[00:26:17] Speaker A: His whole rationale for the attempt is he thought that he thought Trump would hand Ukraine over to Russia. And he was kind of one of these turbo liberal guys who was fighting for NATO and everything like that. I think he was probably radicalized by the pro NATO crowd while he was in Ukraine. He felt like he needed to kill Trump for the good of democracy. You know, we've got rhetoric about him wanting to kill Putin, too. So he seems to be a guy with delusions of grandeur, like he wanted to be a hero. And he'll be serving, you know, the rest of his life in prison for that.
[00:26:51] Speaker B: Ken Silva, thank you.
[00:26:54] Speaker A: My pleasure. Thanks again.
[00:26:56] Speaker B: And that's it for the show, the final show of this season, the Trump assassination plots. What the investigations missed and why it matters is out now. Our condolences to all those of you bereaved or affected by Washington's wars of aggression. That's it for the season, but we'll be back with a brand new one on the day after the anniversary of the CIA back coup in Chile, September 12th. Until then, keep in touch via all our social media, if it's not censored in your country. And head to our channel, going underground TV on rumble.com to watch new and old episodes of Going Underground. See you soon.
