Post #76620 by g0177325 on the US Policy board

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Is the Justice Department lying about Saturday's "shooting"?
A central point of the government's case doesn't add up.
Garrett Graff
April 28, 2026

So far, audio analysis by the Wall Street Journal and others seem to indicate there were six shots and Blanche now says the Secret Service officer fired five of those. According to Blanche, the Secret Service officer who was shot was hit in the vest by a single shot — authorities had previously used the word “bullet” to describe what shot him, which is what one would call something fired by a handgun or rifle, not a shotgun.

If Allen fired off a shotgun inside an enclosed space like the single-story terrace lobby of the Washington Hilton, one would expect plenty of evidence of that happening. Buckshot would have peppered a fairly significant area.

In one of the weird comments Blanche made, he said, “When you fire a bullet, the bullet ends up somewhere. Sometimes you find it, sometimes you don’t.” Huh? That might be true if you’re looking for a bullet fired outdoors, but inside a fully enclosed hotel lobby?

Similarly, if the officer was hit by a shotgun burst and taken, say, eight .33-caliber rounds in his vest as opposed to a single bullet, the officer would clearly know the difference and there would be clear evidence on his vest of that impact pattern. And if the suspect had fired a solid shotgun slug, the officer and authorities would clearly — and immediately — know the difference from a typical bullet. Solid slugs come with enormous stopping power and would be what you’d expect to use to try to take down a feral hog or a black bear; if it hit a human at close range, one would expect some serious blunt force injuries, perhaps even fatal blunt force trauma, even if the officer was hit in a bullet-resistant (they’re never really bullet-“proof”!) vest.

FBI Director Kash Patel speaks, alongside Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche and D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, and Acting FBI Assistant Director Darren Cox, at the Monday’s press conference. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

Then there’s the suspicious wording of the charging documents that were released yesterday, which seem to dance carefully around the question of whether the suspect opened fire. It uses a strange passive voice to indicate the gunfire:

“At approximately 8:40 p.m., ALLEN approached a security checkpoint on the
Terrace Level of the hotel leading to the location of the dinner. ALLEN approached and ran through the magnetometer holding a long gun. As he did so, U.S. Secret Service personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot. U.S. Secret Service Officer V.G. was shot once in the chest; Officer V.G. was wearing a ballistic vest at the time. Officer V.G. drew his service weapon and fired multiple times at ALLEN, who fell to the ground and suffered minor injuries but was not shot. ALLEN was subsequently arrested.”

“Personnel assigned to the checkpoint heard a loud gunshot”? Who fired it? Unclear from the charging documents.

That language to me strongly suggests that the Secret Service officer was hit by friendly fire from another officer or agent — presumably the single other unaccounted for shot.

There are two more circumstantial things that lead me to doubt that Allen fired any weapons Saturday night.

First, we have the lobby surveillance video posted by the president himself; in the video, Allen runs past the Secret Service magnetometer checkpoint at full sprint. The gunshot by Allen doesn’t take place on the video, nor does he appear to have the shotgun at the ready to fire, which means that if he did fire he would have had — in the presumably mere seconds that follow offscreen before he’s stopped and tackled — to both ready and bring the shotgun to bear and then fire, presumably at close range, at the officer as he approaches, which would have been challenging to do for someone even far more experienced with firearms than Allen appears to be.

Second, there’s also something suspicious in the “dog that didn’t bark” department. While it’s always possible that the Justice Department is moving ahead with a formal indictment that will add more and different charges, in this initial batch of three criminal charges there’s no “assaulting a federal officer” charge like one would expect to see in a case where, you know, someone fired a shotgun into the chest of a Secret Service officer.
...

Put all of that together and here is what to me is a more likely scenario than what the government is telling us so far:

An agent or officer close to the checkpoint that Allen blows past — perhaps even the one onscreen in the video who turns and draws his weapon at the fast receding Allen — fires once, hits the other officer in the vest, who then “returns” fire at Allen, firing five shots and missing them all.

This scenario also squares more closely with the audio we have of the shooting, which appears to my unofficial ear to have one shot by one gun, followed by five shots in quick succession from a second gun. (And for what it’s worth, none of them sound to me like a shotgun. I’ve heard shotguns fired inside — they’re loud!)

From https://www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/is-the-justice-d...

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No. of Recommendations: 9

Is the Justice Department lying about Saturday's "shooting"?

Could be. Some elements of the analysis you posted are persuasive.

But aside from proving that the agents need to spend more time at a shooting range, this analysis remains silent on the main issue- that the shooter (or would be shooter) still evidenced an intention to murder the president and any others close by- both by his actions and the “manifesto” that he wrote prior to launching his hapless attack.

Of course, as we know from the events of January 6th and its aftermath, had the target been a room full of Democrats, Trump would pardon him.

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