Secret Service official owns lapses leading to Trump shooting

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and Judiciary Committees on Tuesday grilled FBI and Secret Service officials about the attempt on Trump’s life. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified about the FBI’s ongoing investigation about the would-be assassin. Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe admitted to security failures that exposed former President Donald Trump to an assassination attempt. On July 13, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks snuck onto rooftop near a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. and shot at Trump while he was on stage, authorities have said.

Crooks hit Trump’s right ear, injuring him. He also killed one rally attendee, and severely injured another two people at the rally, officials said. A Secret Service countersniper fatally shot Crooks moments after the young man opened fire. Other Secret Service agents hustled Trump off the stage, into his motorcade, and off to a nearby hospital.

Why wasn’t Crooks stopped sooner? Rowe told lawmakers that he believed agents protecting the former president did not observe Crooks before he fired on Trump. Even so, the agents should have seen him, Rowe acknowledged. He could not defend why agents did not better secure that roof, Rowe said.

What has the FBI learned about Crooks? The FBI was investigating the event as an attempted assassination and an act of domestic terrorism, Abbate told lawmakers. Agents conducted roughly 460 interviews and searched the shooter’s residence, he said. Crooks had looked up how far away Lee Harvey Oswald was from President John F. Kennedy when he fatally shot the president, Abbate said.

Years before the Trump shooting, a social media account possibly associated with Crooks had posted anti-Semitic, anti-immigration rhetoric online, Abbate said. The account also espoused political violence as an appropriate form of behavior, he added.

Did either Rowe or Abbate explain how the Secret Service didn’t stop a 20-year-old? Agents had a failure of imagination, Rowe said. Staff at the agency forgot that they lived in a dangerous world with people who wanted to harm their protectee, he said. Agents assumed that everything was working properly with the security apparatus surrounding the event, and failed to challenge their assumptions, Rowe added.

How are federal agencies going to prevent problems like this going forward? Rowe testified that several experienced Secret Service agents would review every security plan for events going forward so that multiple minds could foresee possible issues. The deputy director also said that he was going to push Secret Service agents to communicate with each other better using radios while at events. Text chains among numerous agents sharing information about threats were helpful, but using radios would push information to all personnel at the same time, Rowe said.

How did Rowe come to be in charge of the Secret Service? He stepped into the acting director role last week when former U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned, shortly after she testified before the House of Representatives.