Former President Donald Trump, speaking at a rally in the swing state of Pennsylvania, seemingly narrowly dodged certain death after gunshots sounded, apparently clipping his ear.
An inexperienced Secret Service agent was stuck on a drone helpline during the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a rally, a Senate investigation has found.
Multiple Secret Service failures during the July rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were “foreseeable” and “preventable”, according to the bipartisan report released.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee inquiry found failures on almost every level, including in planning, communications, security and allocation of resources.
“The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Gary Peters, the Democratic senator for Michigan and chairman of the panel.
Thomas Crooks, seen in a yearbook photo, was killed after firing shots at a Donald Trump campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Trump was speaking at a rally on July 13 when gunman Thomas Crooks climbed on top of a building and fired a volley of shots that grazed the former president’s ear, injured two others, and left one man dead, in addition to Crooks.
In addition to the inexperienced drone operator whose equipment was not working correctly, investigators interviewed a Secret Service sniper who observed officers running toward the building where the gunman was perched with their guns drawn but failing to alert Trump to exit the stage.
Communications among security officials were a “multi-step game of telephone”, Peters said.
The report also 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. Officials were operating on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications.
The committee found the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building approximately two minutes before he opened fire, less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking.
Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, a local officer sent a radio alert that there was an armed individual on the building, the report found. But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarising the key conclusions of an internal investigation into what went wrong.
A further panel is investigating both the shooting and 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 the former president’s Florida club.
“This was the result of multiple human failures of the Secret Service,” said Rand Paul, the senator for Kentucky and 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.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump pumps his fist as he is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13. Photo / Getty Images
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 ($369 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 Ron Johnson, the senator for Wisconsin and a leading Republican on the Homeland Panel’s Investigations Subcommittee.
