# Greg Shaffer **Greg Shaffer** — retired FBI special agent (a ~20-year career, and a former member of the FBI **Hostage Rescue Team**), founder/CEO of **Shaffer Security Group (SSG)** in Texas, and principal of the **Active Shooter Prevention Project (ASPP)**. He was **Turning Point USA's and Charlie Kirk's security director for seven years — from 2015 to 2022** — the **predecessor** to the team that was guarding Kirk when he was killed. See [[Kirks Security Detail]]. ## Why he matters Shaffer is the vault's most visible **predecessor** voice on Kirk's protection: he ran the detail for seven years, so he can describe how these events were actually staffed — but he **left the contract in 2022 under acrimonious circumstances**, which colors how he talks about the men who replaced him. Weigh both sides of that. ### The handover / rivalry (Shaffer → Flood / Harpole / Rockhouse) - Shaffer's SSG held the TPUSA contract **2015–2022**. **[[Brian Harpole]]** worked *for* Shaffer for about seven years; **Dan Flood** (Harpole's best friend) also came up through SSG, guarding Kirk at events like CPAC 2020. - Around 2022–2023 the two **left and the contract moved with them**: Flood became **TPUSA's own head of security** (later "Head of Risk Strategy"); Harpole founded **Rockhouse Integrity Group, dba Integrity Security Solutions**, in 2023 and it **took over TPUSA's protection**. That is the firm on stage at UVU on Sept. 10, 2025. - Shaffer has framed this publicly as a **betrayal**. He told *Headline USA* that Harpole and Flood **"shorted"** him on the TPUSA contract and **"stabbed [him] in the back"**; asked if he'd had a falling-out with them, he answered with a chuckle: *"No, just got stabbed in the back by some friends."* He also, in a since-deleted post, publicly **named** Integrity Security Solutions as the firm guarding Kirk that day and stressed **his** firm *"has not been affiliated with TPUSA since 2022"* and *"was not in Utah on 9/10/2025."* ### His day-of commentary (Sept. 2025 news interview) On [[2025-09-12 - Greg Shaffer News Interview|NTD News, the day the suspect was named]], Shaffer described how Kirk's "prove me wrong" campus events were run and where he thinks the accountability will land: - **The format and detail.** Kirk was a private citizen and TPUSA a private company, so the events had **no federal or police protection** — all security was **TPUSA-paid, private**. Under the tent Kirk had a **~5-man close-perimeter detail**; campus police (he cited **~6 officers**) were mostly **crowd/traffic control**, "not really there for security at Charlie Kirk." - **The 200-yard point.** A shot from *"like, 200 yards away … is almost impossible to defend against"* without **countersniper teams** and Secret-Service-level manpower and money — *"protecting somebody from 200 yards away is incredibly difficult, if not impossible."* - **Where blame will fall.** *"Private security is gonna be the first one … somebody's gonna have to take the brunt of the blame … it's gonna be his private security company."* He said he knows *"the private security firms out of Texas"* and expects investigators to probe their operations plan and authority in Utah. - Kirk *"always knew he had a target on his back,"* but Shaffer doubts Kirk would have called himself an assassination target. ## Weighing his account (balance note) Shaffer is an **interested source** — a **predecessor with a personal/business grievance** against the very men (**[[Brian Harpole]]**, Dan Flood) who replaced him. That cuts **both ways** and should be kept visible: - His **"impossible to defend from 200 yards"** point actually cuts **against** the "security failure = complicity" reading pushed in [[Security Knew It Was Coming]] and [[The Security Detail Was Israeli]] — by his own expert account, a lone long-range rifle shot is the hardest thing for a private close-protection detail to stop, and its **absence of countersniper coverage is a resourcing/jurisdiction gap, not evidence of a plot**. - But his **"blame the private security company"** framing is **colored by the rivalry** — he is describing the conduct of a successor firm he says betrayed him. Treat the blame-allocation as **his opinion in a dispute he is a party to**, not a neutral finding. Note that Harpole's own account ([[2025-11-17 - Brian Harpole on the Shawn Ryan Show]]) pushes the rooftop/overwatch responsibility onto **UVU police**, not the private detail. - The Shaffer–Flood–Harpole falling-out is a **personal/business dispute over a contract** — **not** evidence about the assassination. It matters here only because it explains *why* a former insider is publicly critical of the current team, and because it establishes that the men on stage were **his former employees with U.S. law-enforcement / SSG backgrounds** (bearing on [[The Security Detail Was Israeli]]). ## Note on secondary commentary (low weight) A widely-shared **YouTube "deep dive"** ("TriggerSmart," ~37 min) reconstructs this rivalry and builds a *"what are they hiding?"* narrative around **[[Dan Flood]]**'s bio page being removed from the TPUSA website. It has **little evidentiary value**: the narrator states on camera that his facts come from **ChatGPT "deep research"**, and the video carries internally inconsistent dates and headcounts. Its only primary-quality element is an **embedded clip of Shaffer's own voice** stating he was TPUSA's security director *"for seven years from 2015 to 2022"* — which merely corroborates what his [[2025-09-12 - Greg Shaffer News Interview|on-record interview]] already establishes. The video's motive claims (cost-cutting, "underbidding") and cover-up innuendo are **speculation** and are not adopted here. (Raw transcript archived internally; not published.) See [[Dan Flood]]. --- **Related:** [[Kirks Security Detail]] · [[Brian Harpole]] · [[2025-09-12 - Greg Shaffer News Interview]] · [[Security Knew It Was Coming]] · [[The Security Detail Was Israeli]] · [[People Index]]