Multiple Secret Service failures ultimately led to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in July, an investigation found.
The bipartisan Senate investigation, released today, concluded that the failures leading up to the rally were “foreseeable, avoidable, and directly related to the events leading up to the attempted assassination that day.”
Similar to the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan inquiry in the House of Representatives, the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s interim report found multiple failures at nearly every level before the Butler, Pennsylvania, shooting.
This included planning, communications, security and resource allocation.
“The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland Security panel.
Multiple Secret Service failures ultimately led to the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a rally in July, an investigation found
The bipartisan Senate investigation, released today, concluded that the failures leading up to the rally were “foreseeable, avoidable, and directly related to the events leading up to the assassination attempt that day.” Pictured: Secret Service agents gather to cover Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024
Investigators found there was no clear chain of command between the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies and no plan to cover the building the shooter climbed to open.
Officials were operating on multiple separate radio channels, resulting in communications losses, and an inexperienced drone operator was stranded on a helpline after his equipment malfunctioned.
Communications between security officials were “a multi-step game of telephone,” Peters said.
The report found that the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building about two minutes before shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire, firing eight rounds in the direction of Trump less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking.
Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was hit in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment in the assassination attempt; one rally-goer was killed and two others were wounded before the gunman was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
About 22 seconds before Crooks fired, the report said, a local officer sent out a radio alert that there was an armed individual in the building.
But that information was not passed on to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators.
The panel also interviewed a Secret Service sniper, who said he saw officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was, but the person said they did not think to alert anyone to get Trump off the stage.
The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing key findings from a still-unfinalized Secret Service report on what went wrong, and ahead of a Thursday hearing by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting.
The House panel 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 Trump’s club in Florida.
Trump reacts after an assassination attempt at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13
Police snipers return fire after shots were fired as Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump spoke at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Each investigation has uncovered new details that reflect a massive failure in the former president’s security, and lawmakers say there is much more they want to uncover as they try to prevent it from happening again.
“This was the result of multiple human failures by the Secret Service,” said Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, the top Republican on the panel.
Senators recommended that the Secret Service better define roles and responsibilities before any security event, including by designating a single person to approve all security plans.
Investigators found that many of those responsible denied responsibility for planning or safety failures and shifted blame.
Advanced officers interviewed by the committee said that “planning and security decisions were made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for their approval,” the report said.
Communication with local authorities was also poor. Local law enforcement had expressed concerns two days earlier about the security coverage of the building where the shooter was located, telling Secret Service agents during a tour of the site that they did not have enough personnel to close it down.
Secret Service agents then gave investigators conflicting accounts of who was responsible for that security cover, the report said.
The internal review released last week by the Secret Service also detailed multiple communications failures, including a lack of clear guidance for local law enforcement and a failure to patch line-of-sight vulnerabilities at rally sites that left Trump exposed to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents.
“This was a failure by the United States Secret Service. It’s important that we take responsibility for the mistakes of July 13 and use the lessons learned to ensure we don’t have another failure like this again,” Ronald Rowe Jr., the agency’s acting director, said after the report was released.
In addition to better defining responsibility for events, the senators recommended that the agency completely overhaul its communications operations in protective events and improve intelligence sharing.
The Butler Farm Show, site of a campaign rally for Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, seen on July 15, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.
They also recommended that Congress evaluate whether more resources are needed.
Democrats and Republicans have been at odds over whether to give the Secret Service more money following its failures.
A spending bill expected to be passed before the end of the month includes an additional $231 million for the agency, but many Republicans have said an internal review is needed first.
“This is a governance issue, plain and simple,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the Homeland Security panel’s investigations subcommittee.
