Trump assassination attempt: Senate finds multiple Secret Service failures

Lawmakers have determined that several Secret Service failures contributed to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

A report from a bipartisan Senate investigation looking into the July 13 incident found that the security failures before the Butler Farm Show rally were “foreseeable, preventable and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” The Associated Press reported.

Thomas Crooks, 20, fired eight shots toward Trump, wounding the former president and Republican candidate for the office. One rallygoer was killed and two others were wounded, The Washington Post reported. Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper.

The report was issued by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Council. There are also separate investigations including a Secret Service internal probe, a bipartisan House investigation, an independent investigation ordered by President Joe Biden and an investigation by the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security.

The Senate committee said there were failures in planning, communications, security and resources.

The investigation determined there was no obvious chain of command for the Secret Service and other agencies, no plan to cover the building where Crooks took a position to fire upon the former president, various teams were using separate radio channels that did not let them hear each other and an inexperienced drone operator had issues with the equipment and was on a helpline, the AP reported. The operator had only three months of experience working with the equipment, the Post reported.

“The consequences of those failures were dire,” Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chair of the committee, said.

There was also a lot of finger-pointing among those involved, the Post reported Either agents denied they were responsible or “deflected blame.”

“The thing that was frustrating as we dug into this event is that everybody pointed at each other,” Peters said, according to the Post.

“There was no one point of contact who said, ‘Yes, I signed off on this plan and it met all the criteria.’ People were critical of the plan, and when we asked, ‘Who’s in charge?’ everybody said, ‘It wasn’t me, it was somebody else,’” Peters added. “That’s simply unacceptable. There needs to be someone who’s there, who signs off on it and has checked all the boxes, and will be held accountable if there’s a spectacular failure.”

Sen. Rand Paul (R.-Ky.) said the issues were the result of “human error — not lack of resources,” the Post reported.

Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe Jr. has accepted the responsibility for the failures and added more security for Trump, who was the target of an apparent second assassination attempt earlier this month at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Florida, the Post reported. That attempted shooting was stopped when an agent spotted a rifle sticking out of a treeline near the golf course where Trump was playing. The man accused of trying to kill the former president has been charged with attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, CNN reported. Routh was originally charged with obliteration of a firearm’s serial number and possessing a firearm while a convicted felon. He also was charged with possessing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence and assaulting a federal officer.

The committee Is telling lawmakers to evaluate the agency’s budget and to require the Secret Service to provide leaders and candidates protection based on threats they face, not if they’re in office, the newspaper reported. The suggestion was also made to have the agency record radio transmissions at “all protective events.”

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