According to a damning bipartisan Senate report released on Wednesday, the Secret Service was alerted to a “credible” threat in the days preceding the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. However, they chose not to take appropriate action.
In an initial report on the incident, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs noted multiple “failures” by the Secret Service to protect the location and address threats.
“The Committee finds that 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,” the report stated. “The Committee also finds that siloed communications and coordination problems between federal, state, and local law enforcement officials remain unaddressed and were a contributing factor to the failures at the July 13 Butler rally.”
According to the report, on July 9, the Lead Advance Agent of the Secret Service was informed about a potential threat of “credible intelligence” against Trump. Despite this, she indicated in a security planning document for the rally that there was “no adverse intelligence.” A Secret Service counter-sniper squad was dispatched to the protest in response to the threat, but remarkably little was known about it beforehand.
The Lead Advance Agent informed the Senators that a Secret Service agent had informed her of the danger, but he was unable to comment on the nature of the threat.
According to the committee, only one of the two Secret Service agents they spoke with before July 13 “was informed that there was a credible threat related to former President Trump,” and the other did not know the threat’s underlying secret material.
For the first time, a Secret Service sniper team was dispatched to a rally by Trump in Butler instead of the president, vice president, or a candidate who had been formally nominated. On July 15, Trump received his official nomination at the Republican National Convention. The senators claimed that they had searched everywhere for additional details regarding the nature of the threat.
The investigation claims that the Secret Service neglected to lock down the American Glass Research building’s roof, allowing Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot eight shots at Trump, wounding the former president in the ear and killing one rallygoer while hurting two more.
According to the investigation, Crooks was also able to “bring two explosive devices within proximity of the rally site, fly a drone 200 yards from the site, and use a rangefinder capable of gauging the distance to the former president less than an hour before he began speaking.”
According to the study, local law enforcement alerted the Secret Service of the roof’s possible hazard but did not provide the necessary funds to secure it.
Moreover, the Secret Service was notified that Crooks was on the building’s roof for at least two minutes prior to the shooting incident, yet Trump remained on the platform. They were aware that a suspicious person had been loitering outside the AGR building for at least twenty-seven minutes prior to the shooting.
“Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, a local officer sent out a radio alert that the individual on the AGR roof was armed, but that was not relayed to key USSS personnel that the Committee spoke with,” the report stated.
A Secret Service counter-sniper observed local law police hurrying toward the building where Crooks was positioned just before gunfire broke out, but the investigation stated that “he did not alert former President Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage.”
When the sniper noticed the local police enforcement running with their rifles drawn, he reportedly told the committee that it “did not cross my mind” to alert someone to pull Trump off the stage.
The senators conducted interviews with numerous agents and local law enforcement authorities in addition to going through at least 2,800 pages of Secret Service documentation.
“Every single one of these actions is directly related to a failure in the U.S. Secret Service’s planning, communications, intelligence sharing and law enforcement coordination efforts,” Chairman Gary Peters said Tuesday. “Every single one of those failures was preventable, and the consequences of those failures were dire.”
