WASHINGTON — Multiple secret service failures ahead of the July rally for former President Donald Trump, where a gunman opened fire “foreseeable, preventable and directly related to the events leading up to the attempted assassination that day,” a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday found.
Similar to that of the agency itself internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan investigation by the House of Representatives, the interim report by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found multiple deficiencies at nearly every level prior to the Butler, Pennsylvania to shootincluding in the areas of planning, communication, security and resource allocation.
“The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel.
Investigators found that there was no clear chain of command between the Secret Service and other security agencies, and no plan for covering the building the gunman climbed to fire the shots. Officers were working on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a helpline after his equipment malfunctioned.
According to Peters, communication between security officials was a “multi-step telephone game.”
The report revealed that the Secret Service was notified of a person on the roof of the building approximately two minutes before the shooting. Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire, firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction less than 500 feet from where the former president was speaking. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was hit in the ear by a bullet or bullet fragment In the assassination attempt, one participant was killed and two others were wounded before the shooter was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
About 22 seconds before Crooks fired, the report found, a local officer radioed a warning that an armed individual was in the building. But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were being interviewed by Senate investigators.
The panel also interviewed a Secret Service sniper who said they saw agents running toward the building where the shooter was, guns drawn. However, the person said they didn’t 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 pending Secret Service report. report about what went wrong, and ahead of a hearing Thursday to be held by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting. The House panel is also investigating a second assassination attempt about Trump earlier this month, when Secret Service agents arrested a man with a gun hiding on Trump’s Florida golf course.
Each investigation has yielded new details that point to a massive lapse in the former president’s security, and lawmakers say they want to know much more because they want to prevent something like this from happening again.
“This was the result of multiple human errors by the Secret Service,” said Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, the top Republican on the panel.
The senators recommended that the Secret Service better define roles and responsibilities before a protective event, including by designating one person responsible for approving all security plans. Investigators found that many of the individuals responsible denied responsibility for planning or security failures, and deflected blame.
Foremen interviewed by the commission said “planning and safety decisions were made jointly, with no specific person responsible for approval,” the report said.
Communication with local authorities was also poor. Local law enforcement had expressed concerns about the security coverage of the building where the shooter was located two days earlier, telling Secret Service agents during a tour that they did not have enough manpower to secure the building. Secret Service agents subsequently gave investigators conflicting accounts about who was responsible for that security coverage, the report said.
The internal investigation 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 address line-of-sight vulnerabilities at the rally site that left Trump vulnerable to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents.
“This was a failure of the United States Secret Service. It is important that we hold ourselves accountable for the failures of July 13 and that we use the lessons learned to ensure that we do not experience such a failure 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 at protective events and improve intelligence sharing. They also recommended that Congress evaluate whether more resources are needed.
Democrats and Republicans have disagreed about whether the Secret Service should receive more funding in the wake of the failures. A spending bill that is on track to pass before the end of the month includes an additional $231 million for the agency, but many Republicans have said an internal overhaul is needed first.
“This is a management problem, pure and simple,” said Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the top Republican on the Homeland Panel’s investigating committee.