The ability of a lone gunman to fire eight shots at Donald Trump during a campaign rally in rural, western Pennsylvania was partially the result of multiple failures by the U.S. Secret Service agents charged with protecting the former president, according to a new report.
The agency’s internal investigation into the attempted assassination targeting the one-time U.S. leader and current Republican presidential candidate, released Friday, identified problems with communication and coordination ahead of the July 13 rally, as well as an over-reliance on state and local law enforcement partners.
“We cannot abdicate or defer our responsibilities to others,” acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told reporters Friday in Washington.
“The Secret Service did not give clear guidance or direction to our local law enforcement partners,” he said. “While some members of the advance team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols.”
The attempted assassination shook much of the U.S., and it prompted the then-director of the Secret Service to resign.
Law enforcement officials have said the attempt was carried out by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who acted alone and saw Trump as a target of opportunity.
Despite the presence of Trump’s protective detail, advance teams, and local law enforcement, Crooks was able to climb to the top of a building overlooking the rally and set up with an AR-style rifle before being detected.
The shots wounded Trump and two rally goers, while killing a third.
The Secret Service report focuses on what the agency is describing as “communication deficiencies” at the rally, blaming agents for failing to make sure the site and surrounding areas — including the roof of the nearby building — were properly secured.
Rowe said that while there were discussions with local law enforcement about the building in particular, there were no subsequent conversations to make sure adequate protection was in place.
“We should have been more direct,” he said. “There was an assumption that they had it covered, but there clearly was not that follow-up to make sure.”
Other problems included a failure by the Secret Service to make sure local law enforcement knew how to communicate with agents on the ground, which prevented Trump’s protective detail from learning about the search for a suspicious person.
Had the detail been aware, a decision could have been made to relocate the former president to a safer location.
Rowe told reporters that Secret Service personnel responsible for the deficiencies will be held accountable, but he denied reports that some had been asked to resign.
“This agency has among the most robust table of penalties in the entirety of the federal government, and these penalties will be administered according to our disciplinary process,” he said.
The release of the Secret Service report comes less than a week after what officials have described as a second apparent assassination attempt against former President Trump.
Sheriff’s deputies in Florida arrested 58-year-old Ryan Wesley Routh, stopping him on a major highway Sunday, about an hour after he fled from the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
Officials said data gathered from Routh’s cellphone showed he lay in wait for 12 hours, hiding in bushes along a chain-link perimeter fence between the course’s fifth and seventh holes with an SKS-style rifle.
Routh fled without firing a shot after a member of the Secret Service advance team spotted his rifle sticking out from behind the bushes and fired several shots.
The agent’s reaction “is exactly how we trained and exactly what we want our personnel to do,” Rowe said Friday. “He identified a threat, an individual with a long gun, and he made swift decisions and took a swift action to be able to mitigate that.”
Rowe also said that since the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump, the Secret Service has been providing Trump and Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris with the same level of protection as President Joe Biden.
And he said that since Trump left office, his security detail has been “more robust than prior former presidents.”
But the acting Secret Service director said the increased levels of security are coming at a cost, asking U.S. lawmakers for more funding and personnel.
“We have finite resources,” Rowe told reporters. “We are burning through a lot of assets and resources. We are stretching those resources to their maximum right now.”
