Senate issues scathing report on Secret Service failures to protect Trump
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee issued a scathing report Wednesday on the multiple failures by the Secret Service to protect former President Trump at his July rally in Butler, Pa.
The report found agents had multiple opportunities to prevent the shooting that killed one person and injured several others, including Trump.
The failures that put Trump’s life at risk were “foreseeable” and “preventable” and grew out of a breakdown in communication and coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement, the committee said.
Secret Service failed to define responsibilities for planning and security at the rally, failed to secure the building from which the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, targeted Trump, and failed to effectively coordinate with state and local law enforcement, according to the report.
The report found that the Secret Service failed to provide key resources that could have helped security, such as drones or a countersurveillance unit. Secret Service officials denied requests for additional counter unmanned aircraft systems.
And it found that the agency failed to convey information about Crooks to key security personnel after he was identified as a suspicious person, noting Secret Service officials knew the shooter was on the roof of a nearby building two minutes before he fired.
Some of the security breaches that led to the shooting, which killed Corey Comperatore, a Trump supporter who attended the rally, have been previously reported by media outlets, but the Senate committee’s report offers one of the most detailed accounts so far of how Crooks was able to fire multiple shots at Trump, including one that grazed the former president’s right ear.
Committee investigators found that Secret Service personnel were notified of a suspicious person with a range finder around the American Glass Research building adjacent to the rally venue about 27 minutes before the shooting. And they found that the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building two minutes before Crooks fired at Trump.
A Secret Service countersniper saw local law enforcement running toward the building with their guns drawn but failed to alert Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage. The countersniper later said it “did not cross [his] mind” to tell Trump’s detail of the possible need to evacuate him.
Senate investigators say local law enforcement alerted the Secret Service two days before the event that the proximity of the American Glass Research building was a security threat and that they did not have enough officers to lock it down. And they said Secret Service agents later interviewed by the Senate committee gave “conflicting accounts” about the discussions about how to secure the building and said it was local law enforcement’s responsibility to secure the “outer perimeter.”
Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director of the Secret Service, told senators during a joint hearing of the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees that the attempted assassination of Trump on July 13 “was a failure on multiple levels.”
But committee investigators wrote that Secret Service supervisors later “declined to acknowledge individual areas of responsibility for planning or security as having contributed to the failure to prevent the shooting that day.”
Committee investigators reported that several “key requests” for information to the FBI; Department of Homeland Security; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives; and Secret Service “remain outstanding” and that the majority of documents provided by the Secret Service and Homeland Security Department were “heavily redacted.”
“These overly burdensome redactions, including of communications related to the same individuals who the committee interviewed, only served to delay the committee’s ability to conduct these interviews and carry out its investigation efficiently and effectively,” the committee stated in its report.
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), the panel’s ranking member, announced on July 15 that their committee would conduct a bipartisan investigation.
“Our committee is focused on getting all the facts about the security failures that allowed the attacker to carry out this heinous act of violence that threatened the life of former President Trump, killed at least one person in the crowd and injured several others,” Peters said two days after the shooting.