Trump has plenty of enemies. And they’ve gotten way too close.
Now a breaking development in the Trump assassination case is raising eyebrows.
On July 13, 2024, a young man with a rifle climbed onto a rooftop outside a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and opened fire. Within seconds, a local police sergeant returned fire. More than two years later, the New York Post reports that the officer who did it has been snubbed by Washington. Whatever the full details of that slight, the story is a reminder of who he is and what he did.
The officer is Sgt. Aaron Zaliponi of the Adams Township Police Department, a member of Butler County’s Emergency Services Unit, the local SWAT team. His name became public when Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., identified him during the first hearing of the House task force investigating the attempted assassination.
The sequence of events matters. Crooks fired eight shots. According to the accounts, Zaliponi fired what became known as shot No. 9, only about four seconds after Crooks began shooting. The incident produced ten shots over roughly 16 seconds: eight by Crooks, one by the local officer and one by the Secret Service counter-sniper who k*lled him.
Zaliponi did it under conditions that would test any marksman. He was standing in an open field about 115 yards from the rooftop, between the shooter and the rally stage. “There you are,” he recalled thinking as he spotted Crooks on the roof, before he fired a single shot.
What did the shot accomplish? Higgins, who led the task force’s work, told The Blaze, “My investigation thus far leads me to conclude that Zaliponi’s ‘shot 9’ impacted Crooks in some way, effectively stopping him from ever squeezing the trigger again.” He added, “Zaliponi never took his red dot off of Crooks, and as Crooks rose up from shot 9, Zaliponi was a half-second away from pressing another round into Crooks when the USSS southern counter-sniper team ended the threat.”
Zaliponi himself has no doubt. “I know I hit him,” he said. He described what he saw: Crooks “jerked hard to the right and slumped over his weapon.” In his words, “It wasn’t like he was ducking or flinching. Something smacked him. Whether it was my round hitting the buttstock or the buttstock exploding in his face, I know I hit him.” His commander, Edward Lenz, told the panel he is certain Zaliponi’s shot “was on target.”
It is only fair to note that not every official account agrees. The FBI has said there was “no forensic evidence” that the ninth bullet hit Crooks or his rifle. Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said, “I don’t know if the officer actually hit Crooks and don’t believe he fired the neutralizing shot,” though he credited the officer’s action with interrupting Crooks’s attack.
That disagreement, over precisely where the bullet landed, should not obscure the wider consensus. Multiple analyses, including one by the Washington Post, found that the local officer’s return fire forced Crooks to recoil and produced a pause of about ten seconds in the shooting. A Republican congressman put it this way: “It’s very reasonable to say Aaron Zaliponi saved lives that day.”
The day was not a triumph. Corey Comperatore was k*lled shielding his family, two other rallygoers were wounded and Trump himself was struck in the ear. Zaliponi has said the event still haunts him. “I wish I would have just looked up to the roof sooner,” he told the Post. “Maybe everyone’s still here.” That is not the voice of a man seeking glory. It is the voice of a man who feels the weight of what he could not prevent.
That is what makes any perceived snub so galling. Washington has held hearings and issued reports about what went wrong in Butler, while a local sergeant from a township police department who ran toward the danger is described as having been overlooked. Federal agencies and Capitol Hill have not always been quick to honor the people who did their jobs.
Whether the snub was an oversight, a bureaucratic mix-up or something else is something Washington should explain. Congress has the power to award honors, and the president has the power to invite heroes to the White House. If either has yet to do so for Zaliponi, that should be corrected promptly.
There is a larger lesson about how America treats its local law enforcement. Small-town and township officers show up every day with fewer resources than federal agencies, and when they do the right thing under pressure, they deserve at least the same respect that is lavished on the powerful. A genuine thank-you costs nothing, and an honest accounting of what happened in Butler is still owed to the American people.
Sgt. Zaliponi will not ask for a medal. But those of us who watched that day, and who believe in recognizing courage when it is shown, should ask on his behalf. A man fired one round in four seconds that may have changed the course of American history. The least his country can do is say thank you.
