Candace Owens has claimed that her husband came close to being shot by the Secret Service when he attended a National Rifle Association (NRA) event that she was speaking at.
The conservative commentator, who has been married to British-born businessman George Farmer since 2019, recounted the moment when she questioned the circumstances around the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on July 13.
Minutes into former President Trump's speech at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, loud popping noises were heard and Trump was struck on his right ear, leaving it bleeding. He was surrounded by Secret Service agents and led from the stage after defiantly raising his hand in a clenched fist.
Hours later, the FBI revealed the shooter to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania. One rally attendee was killed and two others were critically injured, according to the Secret Service, who killed the shooter.
Shortly after the shooting, witness Greg Smith told the BBC that he spotted a man with a rifle crawling on a rooftop near the rally venue minutes before shots were fired and attempted to alert the authorities of the imminent danger.
Smith estimated that he and others tried to draw attention to the gunman for three to four minutes before the shooting.
After watching a clip of the interview on a live special of her podcast, Owens expressed her astonishment as she remarked: "You have got to be kidding me. Let me say something right now. Take this to the bank. That person was allowed to scale that roof."
Citing her experience of having been in Trump's presence when he was in office, she said: "I was around him a lot—a lot. And let me tell you something, [with] the Secret Service, there is no person that can get around the perimeter of the Secret Service where Donald Trump is without them being aware of it.
"I am not kidding when I say that my husband once almost got shot by the Secret Service, because he came down a staircase. I was speaking at the NRA, and he snaked in and came down, and they didn't know who he was. They were like, 'Freeze, we will shoot you right now.'
"So you're telling me that guy walked up and was trying to get the attention, the Secret Service saw him, and he's pointing and he's saying, 'This guy's got a gun,' and they're pretending they don't know what's going on? I mean, am I crazy?"
Later in her podcast, Owens, who spoke at an NRA event in 2019, continued to express her doubts, saying: "I don't believe this, not for one second, having been around the president, having literally almost watched my husband get shot because he came down the wrong set of stairs at the NRA. Screaming at him... I jumped in front of someone like, 'Don't shoot him. That's my husband.'"
Newsweek has contacted representatives of the Secret Service via email for comment.
Amid questions about security decisions in the moments before the assassination attempt, Anthony Guglielmi, who is chief of communications at the Secret Service, took to X, formerly Twitter, on July 14 to share a statement.
"[There's] an untrue assertion that a member of the former President's team requested additional security resources & that those were rebuffed," he wrote. "This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo."
The FBI is leading the investigation into the former president's shooting, working alongside the Secret Service. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro said the investigation into the shooting of the other victims is being headed by Pennsylvania State Police.
During a March 2018 appearance on Fox & Friends, Owens shared that she had "just joined the NRA. I happen to fall into the window of people that knows my history. I'm a Black American and I know that the NRA was started as a civil rights organization training Black Americans to arm themselves and to defend themselves against the KKK."
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