Former US president Donald Trump protected by US Secret Service agents during the shooting in his election rally in Pennsylvania.
Credit: Reuters Photo
Washington: The Secret Service failed to give clear and crucial directions to its local law enforcement partners at a July campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, allowing a would-be assassin to climb onto a warehouse and shoot at former President Donald Trump, an agency internal investigation has found.
The lapse was one of several damning findings in the summary of an internal investigation report the Secret Service released Friday in response to the shooting July 13 at a Trump campaign rally, where the former president was grazed by an assailant’s bullet. Three attendees at the event were wounded, one fatally.
During a news briefing Friday in conjunction with the release of the summary, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., the acting director of the Secret Service, ticked off several other failures, including complacency by some advance team members charged with securing the site and technological breakdowns that, if better managed, could have thwarted the gunman.
Rowe said that while he could not discuss individual personnel matters, there would be consequences for agents responsible for deficiencies in the security plan and its implementation. Already, the agency has placed five agents on restricted duty and parted ways with its director.
The assassination attempt by Thomas Crooks, who fired eight rounds, was the first shooting of a current or former president since 1981.
The Secret Service’s summary findings were released after a monthslong inquiry. The complete report is not yet finished.
The review pointed to an array of shortcomings in the preparation and security of the July 13 event, including gaps in communication and a failure to follow through and address concerns about the unguarded warehouses that ultimately became a critical point of vulnerability.
The most glaring of the agency’s lapses that day centers on how Crooks was able to climb onto a roof of one warehouse, owned by AGR International, giving him a clear line of sight to Trump.
“Multiple law enforcement entities involved in securing the rally questioned” the location of a local team of snipers that had positioned itself in the warehouse area, but without a clear view of the rooftops, the report said. “Yet there was no follow-up discussion about modifying their position.”
Secret Service countersnipers were assigned to position themselves in strategic places to detect a would-be sniper. But no one was posted on the rooftop from which Crooks eventually lay prone with his rifle.