Judging Freedom - Judge Andrew Napolitano - [SPECIAL] - J. Lawrence Cunningham , Fmr. Secret Service : Protecting POTUS
Aired: 2026-04-27
Duration: 27:18


=== Robust Screening and Barriers (15:03) ===

[00:00:03]  Undeclared wars are commonplace.
[00:00:06]  Tragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression, with no complaints from the American people.
[00:00:15]  Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government.
[00:00:20]  To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected.
[00:00:28]  What if sometimes, to love your country, you had to alter or abolish the government?
[00:00:33]  What if Jefferson was right?
[00:00:35]  What if that government is best which governs least?
[00:00:39]  What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong?
[00:00:43]  What if it is better to perish fighting for freedom than to live as a slave?
[00:00:49]  What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now?
[00:01:03]  Hi, everyone.
[00:01:03]  Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom.
[00:01:07]  Today is Monday, April 27th, 2000.
[00:01:10]  I can't hear you, Judge.
[00:01:12]  All right, you hear me now through the.
[00:01:14]  I put pro speakers.
[00:01:17]  We're good. Thank you.
[00:01:18]  All right, ready to go.
[00:01:19]  So our guest is J. Lawrence Cunningham.
[00:01:24]  Larry was a Secret Service agent for 20 years, he was a supervisor for many of those years, he was the lead advance agent.
[00:01:36]  For such people as President Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II.
[00:01:41]  Larry is, of course, an expert on security, having spent so much time in the Secret Service and having been engaged by the government and others to advise them on security issues.
[00:01:53]  Larry, welcome here.
[00:01:55]  It's a delight to have you, even though we're talking about the most unpleasant subject.
[00:02:01]  Was President Trump adequately protected on Saturday night at the White House Correspondents' Dinner at the Hilton Hotel?
[00:02:07]  Well, I would have to say in total, no, there were some missteps and candidly profound missteps on the outer perimeters, which allowed this person, Alan, to get close.
[00:02:22]  In some areas, they were following protocol, but the problem is the issue that I saw, there are many that contributed to this, but the outer perimeter is weak and the observation.
[00:02:39]  Tools that you have were not in place adequately.
[00:02:43]  The other problem I found is that they adapted the environment for screening, which was limited, but given that limited space between the entry and the metal detectors, there was limited space.
[00:02:59]  So to accommodate that, there should have been a few more buffer zones, a few more areas.
[00:03:04]  I'll go back to what you say is the outer perimeter.
[00:03:08]  As I understand it, the Secret Service operates, and I'll Try and make this simple for everyone listening with concentric circles of protection.
[00:03:18]  And what you're saying is the outer circle either wasn't strong enough or didn't go out far enough.
[00:03:23]  Is that a fair way to describe this?
[00:03:26]  I would say both, candidly.
[00:03:28]  There are a lot of tools.
[00:03:29]  Well, let's back up for a second.
[00:03:31]  In the context of the number of threats that the president currently gets on a daily basis, the elements that you do, as you describe in the parameters approach, the outer Middle and inner perimeters.
[00:03:43]  They need to be far more robust to deal with all the threats known and unknown.
[00:03:49]  And because of that, I'm faulting the, candidly, the somewhat porous outer and middle perimeter.
[00:03:58]  This person basically had a free rein and a free runway to get right to the metal detector.
[00:04:07]  And the metal detector really wasn't very far at all down the steps to the main dining area.
[00:04:13]  So, in my view, there should have been more robust.
[00:04:16]  Screening on the way in.
[00:04:18]  A couple contributing factors.
[00:04:20]  All you needed was a ticket to get into the event.
[00:04:24]  You didn't really need ID per se.
[00:04:27]  Anybody could have had a ticket.
[00:04:29]  There's a lot of remedies for that.
[00:04:30]  They did not have that.
[00:04:32]  There could have been trouble desks.
[00:04:33]  There could have been folks to verify ID, hire lots more people, get more staff, and do all that verification as far away from the inner perimeter as possible.
[00:04:45]  So, Judge, as you rightly point out, it is a perimeter's approach.
[00:04:49]  It has to be adapted to the circumstance and to the threat level, and frankly, the geography and the infrastructure.
[00:04:59]  Shouldn't someone have noticed him in the hallways, in an elevator, on escalators, if he was carrying a long gun?
[00:05:08]  I mean, I can understand you can hide a handgun under your jacket or your clothing, but you can't hide without being obvious as hell a long gun.
[00:05:19]  That's true.
[00:05:19]  Well, I've read the latest update, and apparently he came down a back stairwell.
[00:05:26]  With a black bag.
[00:05:27]  He assembled that weapon somewhere we don't know exactly, but you're absolutely right.
[00:05:32]  And that speaks to what I'm talking about with the outer perimeter assets.
[00:05:37]  There's a couple of assets that go with this.
[00:05:40]  Obviously, it's barriers and sort of tiered entry points, ID and tickets.
[00:05:48]  But to your point, Judge, there are other things that can be done.
[00:05:52]  They do it at the White House, and they're basically called counter surveillance units or roving intelligence units.
[00:06:00]  Ideally, under these circumstances, given the geography, given the threat level, and given the condensed geography there, there should have been numerous teams like that, not only in the outer perimeter, but in the middle perimeter, in the lobby area, and also before the metal detectors.
[00:06:17]  Because some team, usually paired with a local intelligent asset, would be able to see something suspicious, presumably.
[00:06:29]  And that speaks to another thing, which lots of folks have made a big point about.
[00:06:35]  I've developed some curricula for the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA on this very subject.
[00:06:40]  And it's basically called site protection.
[00:06:43]  And it's called lone wolves.
[00:06:44]  In this case, the service has a very robust study on behaviors of lone wolves.
[00:06:51]  And in general, their behavior exceeds the baseline.
[00:06:54]  It's just simply not normal.
[00:06:56]  Let me ask you a few specific questions.
[00:06:58]  Do you know what kind of a long gun he had?
[00:07:00]  Has the government revealed that?
[00:07:02]  Yes, he had a shotgun.
[00:07:05]  And his thinking in his manifesto, which I read, was he didn't want a rifled slug to go through walls.
[00:07:11]  He wanted it to be a scattershot.
[00:07:13]  So it was actually a shotgun with pellets.
[00:07:17]  He had a handgun and a couple of knives.
[00:07:22]  Chris, can you run the clip of him running past the magnetometer?
[00:07:30]  You've probably seen this, but I would like you to analyze it for us, Larry.
[00:07:37]  To me, it's odd.
[00:07:38]  It's almost as if the agents in pursuing him, A, fired but missed.
[00:07:44]  I know, unbelievable.
[00:07:45]  B, abandoned their posts.
[00:07:48]  It appears that way.
[00:07:48]  Maybe there were other agents to follow.
[00:07:51]  I don't know.
[00:07:52]  I mean, how did they not know that this guy was just a decoy to be followed by a dozen others?
[00:07:58]  So thanks be to God that didn't happen.
[00:08:01]  I'll address that as soon as we watch this one more time.
[00:08:05]  Okay.
[00:08:07]  You're making several points, and I have this in my notes, actually.
[00:08:11]  Here we go.
[00:08:12]  Okay.
[00:08:13]  That's him in the circle.
[00:08:16]  Yes.
[00:08:19]  Okay.
[00:08:22]  Are they, they can't just be pointing, they must be shooting.
[00:08:26]  Yes, they are shooting.
[00:08:28]  There were six rounds, apparently, six pops that we know of.
[00:08:31]  If you look in the lower left, there's a police officer who actually fires, it appears.
[00:08:36]  There's a little bit of a flashbang on that officer right there on the lower left.
[00:08:41]  And candidly, The assailant had a free runway up to the magnetometer point.
[00:08:49]  My issue with the whole thing is given that close proximity between the outer perimeter or middle perimeter and up to the magnetometer, there should have been a far more robust screening or barriers or personnel to minimize this kind of thing.
[00:09:07]  If I were setting the security up, I would have put up a trouble desk or several to verify ID and verify the tickets and maybe even given a second ticket.
[00:09:17]  To me, this is far too few.
[00:09:20]  Screening area and too anemic of a screening area to deal with all these attendees.
[00:09:27]  How does he get past that one agent there who almost seems to collapse or fall as Mr. Allen runs past him?
[00:09:36]  Well, the problem is, and this is an ongoing issue with agents and police, they have a tendency to look at the protectee.
[00:09:45]  So, whomever did the advance wasn't really strict enough or emphasized enough that you should be looking at the outer perimeter.
[00:09:53]  Not the inner perimeter.
[00:09:55]  And I'm struck by the fact that you have police officers on the left, and presumably, I haven't looked at the advanced plan yet, but presumably, other agents further out.
[00:10:06]  If they didn't, that's an egregious misstep.
[00:10:10]  Your outer perimeter being so close to the magnetometers and then have this person blow by you and then have them miss is just, to me, an egregious misstep.
[00:10:21]  It could have been resolved.
[00:10:22]  Do you know the make and model of the shotgun?
[00:10:25]  I mean, that it'd have a folding stock.
[00:10:27]  Could he have secreted it under his jacket or in a bag somewhere?
[00:10:32]  He may well have.
[00:10:33]  I don't know the specifics on that, but I would presume, as smart as he is and trying to be surreptitious, I would presume he probably did have a folding shotgun.
[00:10:44]  Is the job of the Secret Service to provide security for the event or security for its designated protectees, in this case, the principal of whom is the president?
[00:11:01]  Yes.
[00:11:02]  So that is a bit of a conundrum.
[00:11:04]  But when you do an advance like this, I've actually done a Capitol Hilton security advance.
[00:11:11]  The first thing you do is you talk to the manager of the hotel, and you also hook up with their security folks.
[00:11:20]  To do it correctly, you look at after actions of vulnerabilities from prior events, whether they involve POTUS or just another dignitary.
[00:11:28]  And then you pair up with The chief of security there, police from the Metropolitan Police Department, and other agencies, for example, State Department, Capitol Police, and others to protect the attendees there, the other cabinet members, and you collectively make it a team approach.
[00:11:50]  This looks like that was not done.
[00:11:52]  And so, to answer your question, yes, it involves you're in their house, for example, and so it involves consulting with them, explaining to them what you're.
[00:12:03]  Requirements are, what their capabilities are, and pair up accordingly.
[00:12:11]  Why didn't the Secret Service kill him or at least hit him with their weapons?
[00:12:19]  They fired six times and the bullets went astray.
[00:12:24]  I really can't speak to that.
[00:12:25]  All I can do is speak to the training that I had in my era.
[00:12:30]  Our folks were very.
[00:12:35]  Shall I say, trained ad nauseum for these kinds of things?
[00:12:39]  I do know that they have not done a lot of training in recent years.
[00:12:45]  And part of the reason that I've been given with some of my sources is the fact that they've been overwhelmed with other dignitaries, other protectees.
[00:12:54]  And so they really haven't been able to do PT, for example, and they haven't been able to do as many.
[00:13:00]  You say PT, you mean physical training?
[00:13:01]  Physical training?
[00:13:02]  Right.
[00:13:03]  Yes.
[00:13:03]  And also, why was the vice president also there?
[00:13:09]  And why was he removed from the scene before the president was?
[00:13:15]  Well, that's something that concerns me greatly, and I looked at that several times.
[00:13:22]  My conclusion, without having the benefit of being at their briefings, is the VP detail you see coming in there right away were in closer proximity.
[00:13:32]  So they were able to access the vice president and remove him expeditiously.
[00:13:37]  Now, on the left, on the screen here, you see the president.
[00:13:42]  It appears that his detail leader, And his supervisors were quite a distance from him, which increases time and reduces the efficiency and effectiveness of the response.
[00:13:58]  Now, watch what happens when President Trump stands up and is surrounded by these people.
[00:14:04]  Watch what happens to him.
[00:14:05]  I know you've seen this, but I'd like you to comment on it.
[00:14:11]  Okay.
[00:14:13]  They fell down.
[00:14:15]  Did they intentionally push him down?
[00:14:18]  So, as to be out of the view of a shooter, or did they trip over each other?
[00:14:23]  That's hard for me to tell.
[00:14:24]  The protocol is you alert, shield, and evacuate.
[00:14:29]  I don't know if he fell down or tripped or whatever, but the fact is he was there almost 30 seconds exposed longer than the vice president.
[00:14:40]  And the protocol calls for the following you alert, shield, and evacuate.
[00:14:45]  You don't wait around, even though the protectee may want to stay or look around.
[00:14:49]  It's been said that he wanted to see what was going on.
[00:14:51]  That's not the deal.
[00:14:53]  You remove him from the vulnerable area as soon as possible.
[00:14:58]  The textbook example is the removal of the vice president.
[00:15:02]  The other example with Donald Trump was it was too delayed.

=== Vulnerabilities in Protective Strategy (10:36) ===

[00:15:07]  I can tell you historically, in my era, the supervisors, the head of the details, wanted very close access.
[00:15:15]  In my era, if you look at the old films and the old events, A detail leader for the president and a detail leader for the first lady are in very close proximity.
[00:15:29]  They may be a seat behind in a tux for this very purpose.
[00:15:34]  It appears that the Presidential Protective Division agents were not near in close proximity enough to be responsive and effective in a timely manner.
[00:15:44]  Thank God there were no other compadres out there, no other shooters in the audience because he was exposed for too much of a time.
[00:15:52]  Let me expand this to the Two other threats in his life, one of which could have killed him just a matter of an inch in Butler, Pennsylvania.
[00:16:03]  How did that guy get up on the roof?
[00:16:06]  Okay.
[00:16:07]  I'm very familiar with that.
[00:16:08]  I actually wrote a 16 page, 17 page paper on it, which I will send you.
[00:16:12]  That was probably one of the most egregious abandonment, frankly, of the most basic protective principles, the basic advanced principles.
[00:16:24]  And the way I look at this is that.
[00:16:27]  Part of it was the assignment of the personnel.
[00:16:30]  The personnel that were assigned did not have protective experience.
[00:16:33]  The numbers of the personnel that were assigned was not commensurate with this level of a protectee, especially given the threat level.
[00:16:42]  They utilized Homeland Security investigators.
[00:16:46]  Nothing wrong with those people, but they're not trained in the nuances of presidential or candidate protection.
[00:16:54]  So, to answer your question, there were a series of missteps in terms of liaison with the police, partnering with their intelligence group, and basically having a one voice command post.
[00:17:07]  There are so many other issues that occurred, but those types of things, sort of doing the advance solo in a vacuum.
[00:17:16]  Is part of the problem.
[00:17:17]  The other issue is the folks that were doing that advance, and I don't take pleasure in talking about this this way, but I have to call it out, is that they really didn't understand how vitally important it is to create a cohesive team.
[00:17:31]  We're in Butler's house, we're not at the White House.
[00:17:34]  And there are many resources counter sniper, police, sheriff, state police that could assist in a very meaningful way.
[00:17:43]  The primitives were set up in a way that is completely counter.
[00:17:47]  To what we're taught.
[00:17:49]  The thought was the premises are covered, so they had personnel looking in to the site, not outside the site.
[00:17:57]  And they arbitrarily said the fence was the dividing line.
[00:18:00]  Well, threats can come from anywhere, miles away.
[00:18:04]  And so, to answer your question about how did this person get on the roof, candidly, they didn't have enough surveillance personnel, Secret Service personnel specifically.
[00:18:16]  It wasn't manned properly, so that person.
[00:18:20]  Crooks was able to get on the roof pretty much unnoticed, except for the police noticing that climbing on the roof and the assassin positioning himself on the roof.
[00:18:33]  If we go back to my concentric circle analogy, again in Butler, just like in Saturday night, the largest concentric circle wasn't big enough and it didn't go out far enough.
[00:18:45]  That's correct.
[00:18:46]  Exactly.
[00:18:46]  The same mistake.
[00:18:48]  And the same thing at his golf course in Florida, where that guy actually aimed.
[00:18:54]  A long gun at the tee where Trump was about to be putting.
[00:18:59]  And I can explain a couple of things here that this would not have happened in my era.
[00:19:03]  And I'm not saying because I was in that era.
[00:19:05]  I'm saying because we had very strict managers and very strict protocols and incredible accountability.
[00:19:12]  Let's use the Mar a Lago golf course as an example.
[00:19:16]  So that person, Ruth, was there for 12 hours.
[00:19:23]  That's impossible in our era.
[00:19:26]  When you have a site like that, The advance agent with a supervisor walks it a couple of times, day and night.
[00:19:34]  Hours before, you have dogs that do the perimeter.
[00:19:38]  You cut off the traffic.
[00:19:40]  And immediately before the advance, you do this again.
[00:19:43]  So to have someone like that sitting there for, camped out for 12 hours with no second supervisor going through this with the agents and with a counterpart and dog teams, to me, it's anathema.
[00:19:58]  It's just, I'm aghast at that oversight.
[00:20:01]  That just simply is not the way it works.
[00:20:05]  Why is it that no, and I realize you're retired from the service, Larry, but can you speculate, I'll call it an educated guess, as to why no substantial changes were made after the two threats on his life, the one in Butler that almost killed him, and the one in Mar a Lago?
[00:20:24]  God knows what would have happened if an agent hadn't seen the tip of the gun.
[00:20:28]  Why is it that as recently as two days ago, He's still inadequately protected.
[00:20:34]  And one of the people assigned to him, a young female, is half his size.
[00:20:38]  How could she be expected to pick him up when he fell?
[00:20:41]  Exactly.
[00:20:42]  And what I can tell you is that this gets back to training.
[00:20:47]  Jason Chaffetz, after the penetration of the White House several years ago, and after an armed felon was in the elevator with the president at the CDC many years ago, Jason Chaffetz and Lieberman did an extensive expose and study of the procedures.
[00:21:08]  Conspicuously absent from The whole paradigm, the security procedures, was consistent and effective training.
[00:21:18]  You go forward some more in terms of Butler, that still is the case.
[00:21:23]  They have not taken training seriously.
[00:21:26]  And whether it's funding or basically making agents available for that or scheduling for that, I'm not privy to that exactly, but I can tell you this is clearly a result of improper strategy application, protective strategy application, and A real lack of consistent training.
[00:21:45]  I know for a fact they haven't done PT in many years on a consistent basis.
[00:21:49]  But I wonder if Trump himself, you know, he was obviously exhilarated later in the evening that his life was spared.
[00:21:58]  But I wonder if he himself is aware of all these defects when he praised the Secret Service to the skies.
[00:22:06]  Well, I was talking to a couple of former colleagues, and candidly, he doesn't completely understand the perimeter's approach.
[00:22:14]  This is not.
[00:22:16]  I mean, this was a reactionary, thank God, successful reaction to an imminent threat.
[00:22:22]  Let's just say that up front.
[00:22:24]  But the effective mitigation measures, which I've mentioned and we would talk about some more, were not in place in the correct numbers and in the correct configuration.
[00:22:37]  And to answer your question from before, how is it now we keep having these missteps?
[00:22:45]  I have a couple of A couple of theories.
[00:22:48]  Number one, I don't think they're held to account the way the old days were.
[00:22:53]  In other words, physically walk the site ad nauseum, be a devil's advocate, put on a red team hat.
[00:23:02]  If I were an assassin, if I were a terrorist, or God forbid, if I was a group of terrorists, how would I penetrate this?
[00:23:09]  And candidly, it scares the daylights out of me because I'm looking at this, having studied many terrorist attacks and my other work, that this basically was sitting dock.
[00:23:19]  If one person could get in like that, And be a distraction.
[00:23:23]  Like you said, what to prevent four or five more coming in from different directions?
[00:23:27]  That is the part that flabbergasts me.
[00:23:31]  And so I'm thinking they don't look at terrorist attacks and how that matches the Secret Service's strengths and vulnerabilities.
[00:23:42]  I'll make another observation here very quickly.
[00:23:44]  In 2015, you recall the Paris attacks, and that was an ISIS simultaneous multi attack.
[00:23:54]  Right.
[00:23:55]  And the strategy there was to distract.
[00:23:59]  They had a theater, a couple of cafes, maybe a restaurant, and another area.
[00:24:04]  But they also had the Stade de Paris, which is the football stadium.
[00:24:08]  And that's where the president of France was.
[00:24:11]  So if you were a resource person, a supervisor, you couldn't handle this.
[00:24:16]  You would have to reprioritize every minute or so because these were almost simultaneous.
[00:24:21]  The baby face bomber, terrorist who went to the gates.
[00:24:27]  To get into the stadium, told one of the ticket takers his friend was inside and had the ticket.
[00:24:35]  Can I go inside and get my ticket?
[00:24:37]  Well, the senior ticket taker said, No, he can come out and give me the ticket.
[00:24:43]  So he said he walked away and tried to do it again.
[00:24:46]  So the whole point of this thing is that we need to be aware of simultaneous attacks.
[00:24:53]  In my paper regarding Butler, DHS, and I was part of it, and some of my other police instructors created a course called Coordinated Attacks.
[00:25:07]  We're not ready for that.
[00:25:08]  I'm just, I'm sad to say this.
[00:25:13]  I'm really concerned about it because if you look at that scenario and you had a very studied terrorist group that observed our operation several times in several different contexts and several different venues, you could see how vulnerable it is.
[00:25:28]  And, Judge, as you aptly, astutely observed, they weren't looking at that.
[00:25:34]  That could have been a diversion.
[00:25:36]  And then the next wave of several attackers.
[00:25:38]  Could have accessed the entire group.
[00:25:42]  Wow.

=== A Fascinating Conversation Ends (01:34) ===

[00:25:43]  Larry, we have to go, but thank you very much.
[00:25:45]  This has been a fascinating, fascinating conversation.
[00:25:50]  Will you come back again as we learn more about this, more about the weapon and more about the shooter and more about, I have to say this, the defects in the protective services around the President of the United States?
[00:26:05]  I'm happy to.
[00:26:05]  And this is done in the spirit of trying to improve.
[00:26:09]  Yes.
[00:26:10]  Absolutely.
[00:26:10]  I mean, I'm 100% red, white, and blue.
[00:26:13]  I want things to work.
[00:26:14]  But if you're going to take on that responsibility, you've got to pay the dues and do the training.
[00:26:19]  Right.
[00:26:19]  And I have to tell the audience how you and I met because the person who introduced us is a very, very popular guest on this show who's here twice a week.
[00:26:30]  And that, of course, is Larry Johnson.
[00:26:32]  I think you know Larry Johnson from back when the two of you were working in the government.
[00:26:36]  Very well.
[00:26:37]  Another great Larry.
[00:26:38]  Well, thank you for having me.
[00:26:40]  And I look forward to more.
[00:26:41]  And, um, I will send you some more documentation to help.
[00:26:44]  Okay, next slide.
[00:26:46]  I'm going to sign off and remind the audience of what we're doing tomorrow.
[00:26:49]  Would you stick around?
[00:26:51]  I want to ask you something off air.
[00:26:53]  Yes.
[00:26:54]  Thank you very much, Larry Cunningham.
[00:26:57]  Coming up tomorrow, Tuesday, at eight in the morning, Ambassador Chaz Freeman.
[00:27:03]  At nine in the morning, Professor John Mearsheimer.
[00:27:06]  At one in the afternoon, the Golden Boy, Max Blumenthal.
[00:27:10]  At two in the afternoon, Matt Ho.
[00:27:13]  At three in the afternoon, Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski.
[00:27:16]  Judge Napolitano for Judging Freedom.