Failures that “directly contributed” to the assassination attempt against Donald Trump on July 14. The US Senate published a highly critical report on Wednesday, September 25, on the failures of the US Secret Service during the now infamous rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which the Republican candidate nearly died and a spectator was killed.
According to the 93-page document, the product of bipartisan work between six Democratic and seven Republican senators, the circumstances that allowed the shooter, Matthew Crooks, to open fire from a rooftop next to Donald Trump’s rally were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly linked to the events that led to the assassination attempt that day.”
“An accumulation of errors”
The U.S. senators are highlighting a variety of failures that, when combined, opened the door for the shooter to fire eight rounds with an assault rifle and hit Donald Trump in the ear. “What happened was an accumulation of errors that produced this stunning failure,” said Connecticut Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Democratic member of the committee.
First, there was a clear communication problem on site. Several members of the Secret Service reportedly experienced major malfunctions in their radios. One sniper from the agency was reportedly offered a radio on site to help him communicate during the day, but he didn’t have time to take it, too busy trying to “fix” his own equipment provided by the agency. Another Secret Service employee sent a particularly revealing message during the day to one of his superiors, an hour before the shooting: “I don’t have good communications on my phone or my radio. I’ll try to stay on the line.”
These malfunctions had a significant impact on the anticipation of the danger posed by the shooter, Thomas Crooks. Thus, according to the report, members of the Secret Service were informed of the presence of a suspicious person equipped with a rangefinder 27 minutes before the shooting, without this information being received by the agency’s managers. Another alert concerning an individual posted on the roof of a building was also transmitted by a local police officer to the Secret Service only two minutes before the shooting, followed by another signal informing that the latter was armed, without this being “relayed” to the decision-making personnel of the Secret Service. Officials were also very vague; several Secret Service agents questioned by the American senators said they “could not identify” who really had the final decision-making power during the event.
Other hardware issues also contributed to such an incident. For example, while the radio systems were malfunctioning, the drone system also encountered a “technical problem” at the same time. The employee in charge of piloting the device – who had only three months of experience with this equipment – would have had to… call a toll-free hotline for help, which would have taken him “several hours”.
Problems “left unanswered”
While Donald Trump was targeted a few days ago by a second assassination attempt, at his home in Florida, the report of the American Senate committee also points out that the security problems identified have so far “remained unaddressed” by the Secret Service. Following the publication of the report, the latter affirmed that these conclusions aligned with their own internal report, and that these two investigations were “essential” to prevent such an event from happening again.
The agency’s acting director, Ronald Rowe, had already acknowledged last week “failures” on the part of their services, ordering that they wanted to “engage in a significant paradigm shift that will redefine the way we conduct protection operations.” As a symbol, Donald Trump announced on Wednesday that he would reorganize a rally in Pennsylvania on October 5, exactly one month before the presidential election. An event where security should this time be more than monitored.