A Senate report on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump cited “a cascade of preventable failures” by the Secret Service that allowed a would-be assassin to target him.
The report, released Sunday by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, accused the Secret Service of denying several requests from Trump’s protective detail to increase his security during the 2024 campaign.
“Agents and officers chose not to retrieve radios from local and state law enforcement, limiting coordination at a critical time,” the report said. “Known line-of-sight vulnerabilities were identified in advance but not addressed. An inexperienced operator was tasked with managing counter-unmanned aerial systems. Personnel who were vital to mission success were not requested.”
The committee found that the Secret Service “denied or left unfulfilled at least 10 requests” from Trump’s security detail asking for “additional resources” such as counter snipers, a counter drone system, and counter assault team personnel.
The Secret Service did finally grant requests for a counter sniper, which Committee Chair Sen. Rand Paul said on Sunday’s Face the Nation prevented the shooter from getting off more shots.
“On that day, in Butler County, Pennsylvania, that was the first time he was allowed counter snipers,” Paul said. “If he had not had counter snipers, that assassin would have popped up again. He did pop up again to continue firing, and that’s when he was taken out.”
Six members of the Secret Service received disciplinary action, such as suspension without pay, following the assassination attempt, but none have been fired. Committee members expressed disappointment at “the lack of disciplinary action for other individuals involved,” including a Secret Service officer who “failed to relay critical information he obtained… regarding a suspicious individual with a range finder” to the agents assigned to Trump. Had this information been conveyed, Trump’s protective detail could have stopped him from taking the stage, the report said.
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“[The Secret Service] did not want to assess blame,” Paul said. “They did not want to look internally, and they wanted to discount any of their actions that might have led to this. This was a cover your ass sort of moment.”
Paul accused Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle of lying in her congressional testimony when she said the agency had not gotten any requests to increase Trump’s security before the Butler rally.
“There was a cascade of errors,” Paul said. “When we talked to the people in charge of security, everybody pointed a finger at someone else.”
Cheatle denied the allegation, saying that when she appeared before Congress, “the information provided to me by personnel from Headquarters and the Trump detail, to include the current agency Director, confirmed my statement that no requests for additional support had been denied to our agents at Butler.”
“Any assertion or implication that I provided misleading testimony is patently false and does a disservice to those men and women on the front lines who have been unfairly disciplined for a team, rather than individual, failure,” she said.
The report did not shed light on the motives of the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks.
From Rolling Stone US
