WASHINGTON —
The multiple failures of the Secret Service before the July campaign event where a Gunman Shot Former President Donald Trump were “foreseeable, preventable and directly related to the events that resulted in the attempted assassination that day,” according to a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday.
Like the agency’s internal investigation and the ongoing bipartisan House inquiry, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s interim report found multiple failures at nearly every level before the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, including in planning, communications, security and resource allocation.
“The consequences of these failures were dire,” said Gary Peters, a Democratic senator from Michigan and chairman of the Homeland Security Committee.
Investigators found there was no clear chain of command between the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies, nor a plan to cover the building where the shooter stood to fire the shots.
Officers were operating on multiple independent radio channels, resulting in communications being lost, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a support line when his equipment began to experience problems.
Communications between security officials were a “multi-step game of telephone,” Peters said.
The report found that the Secret Service was notified of a person on the roof of the building about two minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight shots toward Trump, less than 150 yards away.
Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet or bullet fragment, one rally-goer was killed and two others were injured before the assailant was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
According to the report, approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired his gunshots, a local police officer radioed in to alert him of the presence of an individual at the building. But the information was not relayed to Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The committee also interviewed a Secret Service sniper who said he saw agents with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was holstered, but said it did not occur to them to call anyone to remove Trump from the scene.
The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing key findings from an ongoing agency report on what went wrong, and ahead of a hearing Thursday by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting.
The House committee is also investigating a second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month, when Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hidden on the golf course at the Republican presidential candidate’s Florida club.
In a statement Wednesday, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency had already implemented some of the committee’s suggestions and pledged to work transparently with Congress and other oversight agencies on the investigation into the July 13 attack.
He said the agency had already increased Trump’s security to “the highest level of protection the United States Secret Service can provide.”
“We are also diligently examining long-term solutions to challenges such as improving communications and interoperability with our federal, state and local partners to ensure our coordinated efforts in protective circumstances are seamless,” he said.
Connect with the Voice of America! Subscribe to our channels YouTube, WhatsApp and the newsletter. Activate notifications and follow us on Facebook, X e Instagram.
