WASHINGTON (AP) — Multiple Secret Service failures ahead of the July rally for former President Donald Trump where a gunman opened fire were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” according to a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday.
Similar to the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan House probe, the interim report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found multiple failures on almost every level ahead of the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, including in planning, communications, security and allocation of resources.
“The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel.
Investigators found that there was no clear chain of command among the Secret Service and other security agencies and no plan for coverage of the building where the shooter climbed up to fire the shots. Officials were operating on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a help line after his equipment wasn’t working correctly.
Communications among security officials were a “multi-step game of telephone," Peters said.
The report found the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building approximately two minutes before shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire, firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was struck in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment in the assassination attempt, one rallygoer was killed and two others were injured before the gunman was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, the report found, a local officer sent a radio alert that there was an armed individual on the building. But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The panel also interviewed a Secret Service counter-sniper who reported seeing officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was perched, but the person said they did not think to notify anyone to get Trump off the stage.
The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing the key conclusions of a yet-to-be finalized Secret Service report on what went wrong, and ahead of a Thursday hearing that will be held by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting. The House panel is also investigating a second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month when Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hiding on the golf course at Trump’s Florida club.
In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency had already implemented some of the committee's suggestions and vowed to work transparently with Congress and other oversight bodies investigating the July 13th shooting. He said the agency had already raised Trump's security to the “highest level of protection that the U.S. Secret Service can provide.”
"We are also diligently examining long-term solutions to challenges such as enhancing communications and interoperability with our federal, state and local partners to make sure our coordinated efforts during protective events are seamless," he said.
Each investigation has found new details that reflect a massive breakdown in the former president’s security, and lawmakers say there is much more they want to find out as they try to prevent it from happening again.
“This was the result of multiple human failures of the Secret Service,” said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the top Republican on the panel.
The senators recommended that the Secret Service better define roles and responsibilities before any protective event, including by designating a single individual in charge of approving all the security plans. Investigators found that many of the people in charge denied that they had responsibility for planning or security failures, and deflected blame.
Advance agents interviewed by the committee said “that planning and security decisions were made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for approval,” the report said.
Communication with local authorities was also poor. Local law enforcement had raised concern two days earlier about security coverage of the building where the shooter perched, telling Secret Service agents during a walk through that they did not have the manpower to lock it down. Secret Service agents then gave investigators conflicting accounts about who was responsible for that security coverage, the report said.
The internal review released last week by the Secret Service also detailed multiple communications breakdowns, including an absence of clear guidance to local law enforcement and the failure to fix line-of-sight vulnerabilities at the rally grounds that left Trump open to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents.
“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service. It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13th and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” said Ronald Rowe Jr., the agency’s acting director, after the report was released.
In addition to better defining responsibility for events, the senators recommended that the agency completely overhaul its communications operations at protective events and improve intelligence sharing. They also recommended that Congress evaluate whether more resources are needed.
Democrats and Republicans have disagreed on whether to give the Secret Service more money in the wake of its failures. A spending bill on track to pass before the end of the month includes an additional $231 million for the agency, but many Republicans have said that an internal overhaul is needed first.
“This is a management problem plain and simple,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the Homeland panel's investigations subcommittee.
Ronald Rowe Jr., Acting Director of the U.S. Secret Service, leaves after speaking to journalists at the agency's headquarters in Washington, Friday, Sept. 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, Pool)
FILE - U.S. Secret Service agents respond as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded on stage by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The acting director of the Secret Service was incensed at what had happened that July evening. “What I saw made me ashamed,” Ronald Rowe Jr. said. “I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
The unguarded roof, easily within shooting distance of the rally stage, is just one of the myriad questions behind the worst Secret Service security failure in decades. The more that investigators unpack from that day, the more missed opportunities that could have prevented the attack are revealed.
As the United States grapples with a second attempt on Donald Trump’s life, in Florida, there remains a reckoning to be done from the Pennsylvania shooting on July 13 that killed one man and wounded three — the ex-president among them.
The Secret Service is a well-funded, historically elite force with a mission to keep presidents and other higher-ups safe — whether they're out for a bicycle ride, attending a world summit, visiting a war zone or campaigning.
But at the farm show grounds, a young nursing home aide with a rifle he borrowed from his dad outmaneuvered authorities for more than 90 minutes before firing the shots that came millimeters from killing Trump.
There are plenty of unanswered questions. Including a key one: What possessed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to try to kill the former president?
This anatomy of an attempted assassination is based on an AP review of dozens of documents, text messages and video, plus interviews on the record and from law enforcement officials who spoke to AP on condition of anonymity to discuss investigations that are still getting going.
Rowe’s voice grew louder at the July 30 Senate hearing as he squared off with lawmakers who wanted him to fire somebody — anybody — who had been on the ground that day. It wasn’t enough for them that the agency's chief, Kim Cheatle, had resigned a week earlier. But Rowe dug in.
“I will not rush to judgment," he said, snapping at a senator. “People will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity.”
Last week, the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing conclusions in a report not yet completed. Among the findings: The Secret Service did not give clear guidance to local law enforcement partners at the rally. It did not correct line-of-sight problems that left Trump open to sniper fire. And some of the agents on duty that day were complacent.
A bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee made public Wednesday was more blunt if not scathing. It found “USSS failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the July 13, 2024, Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.”
Butler County, on the western edge of a presidential swing state, is a Trump stronghold. It was designed to be a typical Trump rally — outdoors at the Butler Farm Show grounds with big red barns, wide-open fields and bleacher seating.
Three days after the rally was announced, Crooks registered to attend. He also searched online for “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy?”
Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963, while he was riding in an open convertible. Oswald concealed himself on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. The Warren Commission determined he was 265.3 feet from Kennedy when he fired the fatal shot.
Crooks would fire from about double that distance. But guns have evolved since then, and the AR-style weapon Crooks borrowed from his father shoots faster and more easily than anything Oswald had on him.
There were roughly 155 law enforcement officers at the rally that day. That included a Secret Service counter-sniper team, a Butler County SWAT team and uniformed officers. Hundreds of Trump supporters gathered to hear him speak.
The FBI says that after Crooks turned up at the site on that sunny Saturday afternoon, he flew a drone for about 11 minutes up and around the area and was getting the view directly on the controller he used. The Secret Service did not deploy its drone-detection system until later in the afternoon.
The first reported sighting of Crooks was at 4:26 p.m., more than 1½ hours before Trump would begin speaking.
At 5:38 p.m., a Beaver County sniper, stationed inside the building where Crooks would later shoot from the roof, sent photos of Crooks to the local team’s group chat. Secret Service sniper teams were posted on the roof closest to where Trump was to speak, but officials say the teams were never notified.
Bystanders eventually saw Crooks again. They took mobile phone video of him pulling himself up to the top of the roof and slithering into position. They called the cops. By 6:08 p.m., law enforcement had eyes on Crooks again.
Three minutes later, a local officer was hoisted up the squat roof by another officer, who saw Crooks with the rifle, laying down and pointing the weapon toward him. “He’s armed,” the officer radioed to his squad. “He’s got a long gun.”
That message did not get to the Secret Service. The shots were fired 30 seconds later.
Days after the shooting, Trump spent more than 10 minutes of his speech to the Republican National Convention giving vivid detail of what happened to him on the “warm, beautiful day in the early evening in Butler Township in the great Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.”
The crowd was rapt. Some in it would later don ear bandages like his in a show of support. Even some of Trump's fiercest critics conceded his turn on the stage in Butler had been masterful — raising his fist as blood trickled down his face, mouthing “fight” as he was hustled away.
Trump told his convention “the assassin’s bullet came within a quarter of an inch of taking my life.”
Those who tuned in at the start of his speech saw a man trying, for once, to reach a wider audience than his MAGA millions. “The discord and division in our society must be healed,” Trump said. “We must heal it quickly.”
That didn't last long. Most of the rest of his speech returned to standard operating procedure — the bombast, the falsehoods, the depictions of a United States rotting under Democrats.
The temperature has not cooled since. After the second attempt at his Florida golf course, Trump and his allies now are trying to lay blame directly on Democratic rhetoric for making him a literal target.
In that case, officials said, the suspect did not get off any shots, never had Trump in his line of sight and fled from the scene after a Secret Service agent spotted and fired at him. He was later captured.
FILE - The Butler Farm Show, site of a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, viewed July 15, 2024 in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - A campaign rally site for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is empty and littered with debris July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Law enforcement officers gather at the campaign rally site for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa.(AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - A view inside a tent at a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump shows a video monitor after Trump was the target of an assassination attempt Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - A campaign rally site for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is empty and littered with debris July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - People react during a campaign rally with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is escorted into a vehicle at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Members of the crowd react as U.S. Secret Service agents surround Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE -Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump gestures as he is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents as he is helped off the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - Police snipers return fire after shots were fired while Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump was speaking at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - U.S. Secret Service agents respond as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded on stage by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - U.S. Secret Service agents converge to cover Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump reacts following an assassination attempt at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump speaks at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Supporters cheer as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - A motorcade with Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - A crowd waits for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump to speak at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILERepublican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign event in Butler, Pa., July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump arrives for a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pa. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
A tale of crushing security lapses and missed chances to stop the man who shot Trump
A tale of crushing security lapses and missed chances to stop the man who shot Trump
