Details Emerge In Obama Assassination Plot

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by: Colorado Pols

We’re not certain that a pack of neo-Nazi meth fiends with guns and the wacky notion that they could somehow get within rifle range of Barack Obama during Thursday night’s acceptance speech amounts to a “credible threat,” but the Los Angeles Times breathlessly reports:

More details emerging from Denver as we write this in the predawn hours on the now suspected plot to assassinate Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama with a high-powered rifle on national television during his outdoor acceptance speech at Invesco Field Thursday night.

Authorities have reported a fourth arrest in the unfolding plot that The Ticket first wrote about here a few hours ago at the end of Monday night’s Democratic National Convention events at the Pepsi Center.

Tharin Gartrell, a convicted felon, one of four arrested in Denver in a reported plot to assassinate Senator Barack Obama on national TV during his nomination acceptance speech at Invesco Field Thursday night…

According to Brian Masss of Denver’s KCNC Channel 4, under questioning Gartrell implicated two other men — Nathan Johnson, who is 32, and Shawn Adolph, who is 33 — and Johnson’s girlfriend, Natasha Gromack. Johnson also reportedly confirmed the plot to FBI and Secret Service interrogators.

One of the men, Adolph, reportedly wore a ring with the Nazi swastika. He was injured when he jumped out of a hotel window fleeing Secret Service agents. All are now in custody on drug and weapons charges.

The U.S. Atty. Troy Eid declined to elaborate on Monday but said there is no credible threat to the party’s convention or to the freshman Illinois senator, who was campaigning in Kansas City Monday and traveling to Montana today.

But the television station reports that under questioning the men admitted there was indeed a plot to kill Obama during his speech before some 70,000 supporters and a nationwide television audience.

Our view: everyone is on the edge of their seats hoping something like what’s described here doesn’t happen, and certainly an abundance of caution is justified, but we see nothing to indicate that these would-be “assassins” had a serious chance of doing anything to Sen. Obama. There won’t be a single vantage point overlooking Invesco Field Thursday that isn’t swarming with law enforcement. That said, a half-baked plot to pull something like this was probably inevitable, and that’s why we have the Secret Service.

13 thoughts on “Details Emerge In Obama Assassination Plot”

dwyer says:

August 26, 2008 at 5:56 pm

Let us give credit where credit is due.

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1. redstateblues says:
  
  August 26, 2008 at 6:40 pm
  
  Great job by all involved in foiling this plot–no matter how “credible” it was.
  
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divad says:

August 26, 2008 at 6:45 pm

…AKA John McCain’s base.

Just imagine, we didn’t have to invade another country to stop these terrorists (and that’s what they ultimately are), just used some good police work.

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1. parsingreality says:
  
  August 26, 2008 at 6:56 pm
  
  …and your average mouth breathing voter went beserk.
  
  Truth is a bitch. Most people can’t sort out Truth (where it might actually exist) from emotions. “Man is a rationalizing being.” Which of our Polsters said that??? How true.
  
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  1. Laughing Boy says:
    
    August 26, 2008 at 7:00 pm
    
    Meth-addled mouth-breathers are McCain’s base?
    
    Neo-Nazis are McCain’s base?
    
    Is it mutually exclusive that we have both domestic and international terrorists?
    
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    1. Yokel says:
      
      August 26, 2008 at 7:35 pm
      
      Don’t kill their “See? Republicans really are evil” buzz. Have a heart.
      
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    2. parsingreality says:
      
      August 26, 2008 at 7:56 pm
      
      …I said nothing about meth addled mouth breathers in regards the public’s respons to Kerry’s message that tarism needs to be treated primarily with policing, not militarily.
      
      All I said is that the voters who bought into the lie were mouth breathers, but not meth addled.
      
      There is a difference! (And I’d bet that most meth heads and Nazis aren’t even registered to vote.)
      
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2. redstateblues says:
  
  August 26, 2008 at 7:06 pm
  
  The top domestic terror groups, according to the FBI, are environmental and animal rights activists. They are bad, I agree, but you’d think that after Oklahoma City, and now this, they’d say anti-government white supremacists are just as dangerous.
  
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  1. ajb says:
    
    August 26, 2008 at 7:47 pm
    
    How many people have been murdered by environmental and animal rights activists? Yes, we have lunies on the left, and they break the law and damage property, but how many people do they kill?
    
    In recent weeks we’ve seen one addled conservative kill 2 people in a Unitarian Church, another gun down the chairman of the Arkansas Democratic party, and now this.
    
    They’re all crazy, but the crazies on the right have been killing people.
    
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    1. redstateblues says:
      
      August 27, 2008 at 9:20 am
      
      That was what I meant to say.
      
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WesternSlopeThought says:

August 26, 2008 at 7:28 pm

checked to see if these scumbags were on Bob Schaffer’s son’s facebook friends list.

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1. Half Glass Full says:
  
  August 27, 2008 at 12:23 am
  
  Good one.
  
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2. Sir Robin says:
  
  August 27, 2008 at 8:15 am
  
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