Florida Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has publicly alleged that the 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was an "inside job" carried out under President Biden's administration, a claim rooted in whistleblower testimony about Secret Service absences, an unsecured sniper position, and what she described as unresolved FBI questions about burner phones and evidence handling.
Luna made the allegation on the Pod Force One podcast, where she laid out a series of security failures she said bore "all the marks of intelligence" involvement and amounted to "intentional negligence." The congresswoman stopped short of naming specific officials but pointed the finger squarely at the Biden administration's chain of command.
The Butler rally shooting left Trump grazed in the ear and killed a bystander. It was followed by two more attempts, one in Florida linked to Ryan Routh and another at the White House Correspondents' Dinner involving Cole Thomas Allen. Three attempts on one president or former president in a compressed window. That sequence alone demands answers. Luna argues the country has not received them.
Luna's case rests on several specific claims. She cited whistleblower testimony alleging that Secret Service personnel were absent from posts they should have held at the Butler rally. She said a sniper location was left "open", a gap that, in her telling, no competent security operation would allow unless someone wanted it that way.
She also raised unresolved questions about the FBI's handling of evidence, including burner phones connected to the investigation. Luna framed these failures not as mere incompetence but as a pattern suggesting coordination, or at a minimum, deliberate neglect.
These are serious allegations from a sitting member of Congress. They deserve to be weighed against the evidence, not dismissed or inflated. What strengthens Luna's hand is that she is not the only lawmaker raising alarms about the federal investigation's integrity.
Reps. Mike Kelly and Pat Fallon, both of whom participated in the House investigation into shooter Thomas Crooks, have accused the FBI of withholding key evidence from congressional investigators. The New York Post reported that the bureau never shared files tied to Crooks' alleged violent social media posts, despite the House probe concluding he had little notable digital footprint.
Newly reported online activity allegedly linked to Crooks included endorsements of political violence, assassination advocacy, bomb-making research, and weapons-related content, material that, if authentic, would have been directly relevant to the congressional inquiry. The FBI's failure to share it has fueled calls for a renewed investigation.
Rep. Kelly put it bluntly:
"We were stymied so much by the feds on what we could look at, what we couldn't look at."
Rep. Fallon echoed the frustration, saying a new probe would be warranted:
"I don't think it would do any harm at all. You can't investigate these things enough."
When the FBI withholds evidence from the legislative branch investigating an assassination attempt on a former president, the word "stonewalled" is not hyperbole. It is a description of conduct. The bureau's troubled recent history with Trump-related operations only deepens the suspicion.
The Butler shooting did not happen in isolation. The text of Luna's remarks references two subsequent attempts, one by Ryan Routh in Florida and another by Cole Thomas Allen at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Three separate incidents targeting the same man in the span of months.
Trump himself has framed the repeated targeting as evidence of his political impact, likening himself to historic figures who were targeted for their influence. Whether one finds that comparison apt or self-serving, the underlying fact is undeniable: no modern American political figure has faced this volume of credible threats in such a short period.
The political environment around these events has drawn its own scrutiny. Democrats have faced questions about heated rhetoric that critics say contributed to a climate of political violence. Whether rhetoric causes action is a debate without a clean answer. But the question of whether federal agencies did their jobs in preventing and investigating these attempts has a much cleaner evidentiary trail, and the trail, so far, leads to gaps.
Pollster Sarah Longwell reported that focus groups across the political spectrum showed little organic discussion of the latest Correspondents' Dinner shooting. But beneath the surface, she found a strong undercurrent of distrust, a quiet skepticism about official narratives that cuts across party lines.
That finding should concern anyone who cares about institutional legitimacy. When ordinary Americans stop talking about assassination attempts on a president because they no longer trust the institutions investigating them, something has broken. The silence is not apathy. It is resignation.
The FBI's conduct has done nothing to rebuild that trust. The bureau's pattern of opacity, from the controversies involving former Director James Comey to the withholding of Crooks' online activity from Congress, has created a credibility deficit that no press release can fix.
Luna's "inside job" framing is, at this stage, an allegation, not a proven conclusion. The Step 1 material does not contain corroborating evidence from a second independent source that confirms deliberate orchestration by Biden administration officials. What it does contain is a series of documented failures and obstructions that, taken together, form a pattern no honest observer can ignore.
The specific whistleblower testimony Luna referenced has not been publicly identified in detail. The FBI's handling of burner phone evidence remains unresolved. The Secret Service's explanation for the open sniper position, if one has been offered, is not part of the available record.
These are not rhetorical questions. They are investigative ones. And the fact that Congress had to fight the FBI to get even partial answers tells its own story. The bureau's selective urgency in pursuing some threats while dragging its feet on others has become a recurring theme.
Rep. Fallon is right: you cannot investigate these things enough. The alternative, accepting incomplete answers about why a former president nearly died at a public rally, is not caution. It is negligence of a different kind.
Luna's allegation will be dismissed by some as conspiracy-mongering. That is the reflexive response whenever a lawmaker challenges the official account of a security failure. But the dismissal only works if the official account is complete, transparent, and consistent. On the Butler shooting, it has been none of those things.
Secret Service personnel were reportedly absent from their posts. A sniper position was left unsecured. The FBI withheld evidence from Congress. Violent online activity linked to the shooter went unreported. And three separate individuals attempted to harm the same political figure in a matter of months.
Those are not the ingredients of a conspiracy theory. They are the ingredients of a legitimate demand for accountability. The ongoing tensions between the FBI and those seeking reform only underscore how resistant the institution remains to outside scrutiny.
Whether Luna's specific claim of an "inside job" holds up under further investigation is a question only a thorough, unobstructed probe can answer. What is already clear is that the agencies responsible for protecting a former president and investigating the attempt on his life have not earned the benefit of the doubt.
When the people charged with finding the truth keep hiding the evidence, Americans are left to wonder what else they are not being told. That is not paranoia. That is the predictable result of institutional failure.