Senate panel blames Secret Service failures in Trump rally shooting attempt

By Myles Miller

 

A “cascade of preventable failures” within the US Secret Service nearly cost President Donald Trump his life during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania last year, according to a Senate committee report released Sunday.

 

The Republican-led Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which oversees the Secret Service, found that a series of lapses in planning, communication and coordination allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to climb undetected onto a rooftop overlooking the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and open fire on July 13, 2024.

 

“It is a miracle that President Trump survived,” Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, the committee’s chairman, said in the report. “What happened was inexcusable, and the consequences imposed so far do not reflect the severity of the situation.” 

 

The findings were released on the one-year mark of the shooting, which jolted the 2024 presidential campaign. Trump, who was grazed in the ear, moments later raised his fist and chanted, “Fight, fight” — an image his campaign capitalized on.

 

According to the Secret Service, six agents were suspended for up to 42 days without pay.

 

The committee probe, which included 17 interviews and more than 75,000 pages of documents, showed that repeated requests for additional security were either denied or left unfulfilled in the months before. 

 

Numerous questions remain about the shooting, including Crooks’ motivation. Democrats on the committee did not immediately comment on the report. 

 

Agents assigned to Trump’s protective detail told investigators they often refrained from submitting further requests because they were convinced headquarters would deny them, according to the report. 

 

Just 25 minutes before Crooks fired toward Trump, local law enforcement reported a suspicious man carrying a rangefinder outside the rally perimeter. But the Senate report says a Secret Service supervisory agent failed to broadcast the warning over the agency’s radio network, and the message failed to reach agents on Trump’s protective detail.

 

The report found significant gaps in how agents were briefed. One counter-sniper assigned to the Butler rally testified he had not been told about any intelligence suggesting a potential long-range threat. That agent chose not to report a suspicious person because he assumed someone else would act.

 

“I’m not the only one that’s observing that area,” the sniper told investigators. “Someone else could’ve also put out the radio call.”

 

Crooks fired eight shots, killing Corey Comperatore, a local firefighter, and wounding two other attendees before he was shot and killed by a Secret Service sniper.