Trying For More Votes? Trump Camp Not Backing Down On ‘Assassination Attempt’ Claims
Austyn Crites held up a sign and not a gun when Trump was bundled off the stage. Clearly it was no assassination attempt, but his people are trying to play it to his advantage, Vox is reporting.
When Donald Trump was cut mid-sentence and rushed off the stage by the Secret Service Sunday in Reno, Crites, a self acclaimed lifelong Republican, was arrested and later released when he was found with no weapon.
According to the 33-year-old, he was at the campaign rally with a sign saying “Republicans Against Trump,” a stance that did not go down well with pro-Trump supporters who tried to seize his placard. Crites, who is voting for Hillary Clinton, said he was punched, kicked, placed in a choke hold and even felt someone grab his testicles while he feared he might die.
“All of a sudden because they couldn’t grab the sign or whatever happened, bam I get tackled by all these people. And somebody yells something about a gun, and so that’s when things really got out of hand…I was in survival mode. I knew I could die at that moment.”
Austyn Crites said he was grateful to the Secret Service who responded quickly because he was on the verge of being beaten to death by the uncontrollable crowd. Donald Trump resumed his speech, thanking law enforcement for handling the situation. The 70-year-old also thanked his supporters who subdued his supposed attacker before the Secret Service stepped in.
“You were amazing fellas…I saw what you were doing. That’s a tough group of people right there…Nobody messes with our people right?”
Many attendees at the rally seized on the idea that there was an assassination attempt on Donald Trump. His surrogates, rather than debunk the notion, saw it as an opportunity to curry more votes in the final stretch to the elections.
In a series of tweets shortly after the commotion, Jack Posobiec, a self-proclaimed “recovering political operative” and activist with “Citizens for Trump,” made unproven claims about the incident on Sunday night. He tweeted an image of the assassin and connected him to a black ops group. Posobiec’s proof was that Crites was named in documents made available by WikiLeaks.
His part in the conspiracy was that he bought a book from Stratfor, a U.S. government-linked covert group. The Citizens for Trump activist, again without any substantiated claims, said Crites was working undercover for Hillary Clinton, tweeting a picture captioned, “Stop Democrat Violence.”
He also tweeted, “Hillary ran away from rain today. Trump is back on stage minutes after assassination attempt.”
Within minutes, Donald Trump Jr. and social media aide Dan Scavino had retweeted Posobiec’s claims that Trump had survived an “assassination attempt.”
Trump Jr., had suggested that the Democratic Party was to blame for the violence at Trump rallies, linking his theory to a Project Veritas video and tweeting it to his 760,000 followers. At Trump’s next campaign stop in Denver, hours after the incident in Reno, Father Andre Mahanna addressing attendees said Trump had survived “an attempt of murder.”
Even 12 hours after the incident had occurred, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway was still playing up the assassination idea and that Crites was a “Democratic plant.” Conway said it was harrowing to watch the Secret Service agents bundle Trump off stage, attributing it to the dangers of the closing days as polls tightened.
According to a CNN report, the 49-year-old campaign manager downplayed the retweeted comments of Dan Scavino and Donald Trump Jr., alleging that there was an attempt made on Donald Trump’s life.
Austyn Crites is mentioned at LEAST 6 times in Wikileaks emails. #PodestaEmails33 #Reno pic.twitter.com/mDVRZeE0PF
— John doe (@juhhhjgghk) November 6, 2016
“If you’re Don Jr. and you’re on a live TV set while you’re watching this unfold, it’s pretty rattling to think of what may have happened to your father, so I’ll excuse him that.”
Conway, referring to Crites, said he canvassed and donated to the Hillary Clinton campaign and was not a Republican. She described him as a Democratic plant who tried to disrupt the rally. She hailed her boss, Donald Trump, for taking back the stage and not allowing the incident to deter him in his push to the White House.
“People saw a nimble, resilient Donald Trump, who would be nimble and resilient as president as well, take back the stage.”
Crites’ name does come up in WikiLeaks Global Intelligence Files in a bunch of documents stolen from Stratfor in 2013. His name comes up in a mailing list of people who bought an Amazon book called The Next Decade by George Friedman.
Does ordering a book give him a pass into a “black ops” unit and make him a hit man?
[Featured Image by John Lochner/AP Images]
