Senate report blasts Secret Service for ‘preventable’ lapses in Trump assassination attempt

WASHINGTON – The Secret Service had no plan for security coverage of the building where a gunman perched to shoot former President Donald Trump during a political rally, and an inexperienced drone monitor had trouble getting his equipment to work properly, according to a new Senate report on the assassination attempt.

The report reiterated security lapses such as a lack of a clear chain of command at the July event in Butler, Pennsylvania, with the Secret Service and local law enforcement officers using different radios that allowed Trump to be shot in the ear and a spectator to be killed.

The Wednesday report from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the agency’s “failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources” for the rally “were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt.”

The report revealed new problems, such as technical issues encountered by the agent assigned to detect drones around the rally. After having trouble activating his equipment, the agent moved away from satellite trucks he thought might be causing interference, before calling others within the agency for help and eventually an 888 tech support helpline, according to the report.

By the time the rally began, the only drones he detected were being flown by local law enforcement. The Secret Service previously revealed that the gunman flew a drone at the site hours before the rally began.

“From planning missteps, to the siloed and flawed communication to the lack of effective coordination between law enforcement, to the breakdowns in technology, the Secret Service’s failures that allowed an assassination attempt on former President Trump at his July 13 rally were shocking, unacceptable, and preventable – and they led to tragic consequences,” the committee chairman, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., said.

The report was bipartisan, with lawmakers saying they aimed to provide transparency about the Secret Service’s performance and resources to prevent another attack in the future.

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the top Republican on the committee, criticized the agency’s “egregious failures” such as not delaying the rally or removing Trump from the stage despite knowing 27 minutes before the shooting began that a suspicious individual with a rangefinder had been seen near the building with a direct line of sight to the former president.

“Our initial findings clearly show a series of multiple failures of the U.S. Secret Service and an inexcusable dereliction of duty,” Paul said.

The gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots at Trump from the roof of a building less than 150 yards away. A Secret Service sniper shot and killed Crooks.

‘Credible intelligence’ of security threat not passed along: report

The Secret Service’s planning failures included before the rally included not sufficiently coordinating with state and local law enforcement, not securing the AGR building where the gunman shot from the roof and not blocking visibility of the stage where Trump would be speaking from the buildings farther away.

Communications problems included the agency using different radios from local officers, which meant relaying information such as warnings about the suspect being seen with a rangefinder. The Secret Service sniper team saw local officers running toward the AGR building with guns drawn, but didn’t contact the team around Trump to remove him from the stage.

A Secret Service sniper told the panel that seeing officers with guns drawn “elevated” the threat level, getting Trump off the stage “did not cross [his] mind,” the report said.

An agency official was aware for “credible intelligence” of a security threat, but wrote in a planning document that there was “no adverse intelligence” before the rally. The lead agent in charge of advance planning for the rally told the committee the sniper team was provided for the event because of the “credible intel,” but details about the threat were not passed along.

The report came days after Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe released a five-page interim report on the investigation, which also cited significant failures in the agency’s performance.

“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service,” Rowe told reporters Friday. “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.”