The bipartisan Senate committee called for stronger disciplinary actions for the agents present at the July campaign rally in Butler, where Trump was targeted.
The US Secret Service failed to prevent the assassination attempt on President Donald Trump last year during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania, a Senate report leaked on Sunday found.
The bipartisan Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said that a series of “multiple, unacceptable failures” by the security agency allowed 20-year-old Thomas Crooks to evade detection by the USSS.
“This was not a single error. It was a cascade of preventable failures,” the Sunday report noted.
Exactly a year ago, Crooks scaled a building and used an AR-15 style rifle to fire eight shots at Trump during a presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The president had a bullet graze his ear, but was otherwise unharmed. One attendee, Corey Comperatore, died, and two others were injured.
A sniper was able to kill Crooks, but the event led to questions on how he was able to remain undetected by agents for nearly 45 minutes before shots were fired.
A 2020 High School yearbook shows the photo of Thomas Matthew Crooks, named by the FBI as the ”subject involved” in the attempted assassination of former U.S. President Donald Trump, in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, US July 14, 2024. (credit: REUTERS/AARON JOSEFCZYK)
Senate says Secret Service botches operation to kill Trump gunman
The Senate committee conducted interviews with 17 Secret Service staff members and reviewed thousands of pages of law enforcement documents over the past year to come to the conclusion that the agency had botched its operation.
The Sunday Senate report comes after a December House report, which found that the shooting was “preventable.”
The report said that the USSS did not properly internally communicate information, or the whereabouts of a “suspicious person” who was later identified to be Crooks. The committee’s investigation uncovered conflicting reports about who knew what about the shooter, and where he was at what time.
“The lack of structured communication was likely the greatest contributor to the failures of the USSS,” the report said.
The Senate committee found that the Secret Service’s security room agent, who remained unnamed, did not properly communicate that a local tactical team was looking for Crooks, who was armed with a range finder outside of the venue’s security perimeter. The report stated that the guard learned of the suspicious individual at 5:45 p.m., some 25 minutes before shots were fired.
A Pennsylvania State Police officer who was in the security room testified that he told the unnamed agent that there was an active search for a person with a range finder within the perimeter. He said that he did not know if the USSS agent relayed that information over the radio.
“I got a distinct impression that there’s, like, a lack of urgency,” he said, as reported by The Washington Post.
The officer later told the agent that the suspect was seen on top of a roof, but he did not know if the information had been disseminated to USSS agents. The agent told the officer that he had not received information about a suspect on a roof, but that he had heard that local officials were working on a security issue a few hours before.
Despite all of this, no one stopped Trump from walking onstage at the rally at 6:15 p.m.
The agency also ” denied or left unfulfilled at least 10 requests” by Trump’s team for additional resources.
All of this revealed a “disturbing pattern of communication failure and negligence that culminated in a preventable tragedy.”
The Senate committee criticized the agency for not taking enough accountability after the attack.
“What happened was inexcusable, and the consequences imposed for the failures so far do not reflect the severity of the situation,” the report said.
NBC reported last week that six USSS agents were put on suspension without pay after the July rally, but that it was unclear if they were formally suspended.
“Not a single person has been fired,” the Senate report noted. “The Committee believes more than six individuals should have received disciplinary action as a result of their action (or inaction) on July 13, 2024. Those who were disciplined received penalties far too weak to match the severity of the failures.”
In a Sunday statement, USSS Director Sean Curran said that his agency would continue to cooperate with the Senate and that “the Secret Service took a serious look at our operations and implemented substantive reforms to address the failures that occurred that day.”
