Current Secret Service leader Ronald Rowe has admitted he had no defense as to why the roof where Thomas Matthew Crooks shot former President Trump was left open.
“I went to the roof of the AGR building where the shooter fired and lay face down to assess his line of sight. What I saw embarrassed me as a career law enforcement officer and 25-year veteran of the Secret Service. I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,” he told Congress on Tuesday.
The gunmen fired eight shots toward Trump, killing veteran firefighter Corey Comperatore, seriously wounding two others and grazing Trump in the ear with a bullet.
Acting Director Rowe and Deputy Secret Service Director Paul Abbate testified at a rare joint Senate hearing on Tuesday.
Thirty seconds before Crooks fired, local police had radioed the Secret Service that there was a man with a rifle on the roof. About three and a half minutes earlier, they had “observed him on the roof.”
Acting Director Rowe and Deputy Secret Service Director Paul Abbate testified at a rare joint Senate hearing on Tuesday
Rowe said that since the shooting he had implemented a number of changes at the Secret Service, including having security plans go through multiple supervisors before implementation, expanded use of drones, more resources for communications at protective sites and “expedited” approval of requests for personnel at protective sites with heightened security environments.
Rowe and Abbate spoke before the Judiciary and Homeland Security committees after their boss, former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, resigned last week following a six-hour hearing in which Republicans and Democrats accused her of obstructing the process.
In his opening statement, the top Republican on the Homeland Security Committee, Rand Paul, revealed that local law enforcement had told his office that they had warned the Secret Service about the vulnerabilities of the rooftop where Thomas Matthew Crooks shot the president.
“Local law enforcement told my staff that they had specifically alerted the Secret Service to the vulnerability of the building and that they would take care of it. It is clear that those vulnerabilities were not addressed.”
On Monday, new text messages revealed that local police officers working former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were severely short-staffed ahead of the assassination attempt.
During the tragic rally, Trump was shot in the ear and a former volunteer firefighter was killed after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from the roof of a nearby building, just outside the security perimeter.
New explosive text messages between Beaver County emergency services personnel from the days leading up to the rally show they were understaffed.
On July 8, five days before the rally, an anonymous team leader wrote in a text chat that Butler had “asked them to help” with the Trump rally and that they needed six people for the 12-hour shift. Two offered to do it for the entire time and two more offered to split the Saturday shift.
The law enforcement leader wrote in the thread that he only had a few people available to work the event because “everyone else is either working, on vacation, or injured.”
The previously unseen messages also describe a nearly 90-minute timeline between Crooks’ identification and his fatal fire.
Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who is overseeing the event, obtained new messages, body camera footage and police reports.
The messages showed law enforcement was aware of Crooks, who was spotted more than an hour and a half before Trump took the stage.
At 4:26 p.m., a Beaver County sniper finished his shift and left the AGR building, where Crooks was able to gain access and fire.
As the sniper left the building, he texted about a suspicious person he had seen, who turned out to be Crooks.
“Someone followed our lead and snuck up and parked next to our cars, just so you know,” one message read.
“I’m just letting you know because you saw me come out with my rifle and put it in my car, so he knows you guys are up there.”
The officer said he was sitting at a picnic table “about 50 yards from the exit.”
“That bike wasn’t there when I left. Maybe they should get that car checked out,” they continued.
Officers later exchanged photos of Crooks, who had then been flagged as a “suspicious person,” at 5:38 p.m., more than 30 minutes before Trump was shot.
‘A boy is learning in the building we are in. I saw him with a rangefinder looking at the stage. For your information. If you want to warn the SS snipers, they should be careful.’
Another officer asked which direction Crooks was headed, to which an unnamed officer replied, “If I had to guess, backwards. Away from the scene.”
This comes after a whistleblower revealed last week that the Secret Service interfered with the use of drone technology to survey the scene of the Butler rally where an assassin attempted to shoot former President Donald Trump.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revealed last week that a whistleblower had told his office the night before the rally that the Secret Service “repeatedly rejected offers from a local law enforcement partner to use drone technology to protect the rally.”
The whistleblower said that after the shooting, the Secret Service “changed course and asked the local partner to deploy drone technology to monitor the scene after the incident.”