A Senate interim report identifies failures in planning, communications and security in U.S. intelligence efforts at former President Donald Trump’s rally in July that “directly contributed” to the incident. assassination attempt against him.
The 94-page report, released Wednesday morning, cites nearly a half-dozen problems, including a lack of a chain of command, poor coordination with local and state law enforcement, inadequate resources and equipment and a failure to effectively secure the site and ensure the former president’s safety during the incident in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The preliminary findings are part of a joint investigation with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
“Each of these actions is directly related to a failure in planning, communications, intelligence sharing and coordination of U.S. intelligence efforts,” Chairman Gary Peters told reporters Tuesday before the report was released. “Each of these failures was preventable, and their consequences were disastrous.”
Shooter Thomas Crooks fired eight shots with an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle from the roof of an adjacent building before being killed by a sniper, grazing Trump in the ear, killing one person at the rally and wounding three others in the July 13 shooting.
The Senate report said several Secret Service officials had chronic problems with their radios. In one case, a Secret Service agent was given a local radio to help him communicate during the day, but he didn’t have time to pick it up because he was working to “fix” his own Secret Service radio. Because of radio failures at the Butler site, the special agent in charge gave his radio to a senior agent in the Vanguard and went without it for the rest of the day, the Senate report said.
A text message sent by a Secret Service employee to a supervisor an hour before the shooting warned: “I am not getting good comms on my phone or radio. I will try to stay on the line.”[.]”
At the same time, the Secret Service’s drone units encountered “technical problems” to the point that at 4:33 p.m., the Secret Service employee operating the drone system had to call a toll-free hotline for help. The report notes that the agent had only three months of experience working with the equipment and lacked knowledge about it.
The preliminary report also found that Secret Service personnel had been notified of the presence of a suspicious person using a rangefinder 27 minutes before the shooting, but the lead Secret Service agent and other officials at the site told the panel they had not received the information.
Two minutes before the shooting, a local police officer had already sent an alert to the Secret Service about a man on the roof of a building. That alert was followed by another alert that the man was armed, but the message was “not relayed” to senior members of the Secret Service, the report said.
“Leaving a rooftop unattended, just 100 yards from the podium with a direct line of sight, was an unacceptable and inexcusable mistake,” said Sen. Rand Paul, R-Kentucky, a ranking member of the committee. “Everyone thought this man was a suspect and no one thought to stop the proceedings and remove the former president from the stage.”
One sniper interviewed by the panel described seeing local law enforcement running toward the building where Crooks was positioned with weapons drawn, but he did not alert Trump’s security detail because he “wasn’t crossing the street.” [his] “spirit” to warn someone to get Trump off stage.
According to the report, counter-sniper teams were sent to Butler following “credible intelligence” about a threat, marking the first time such a team has been deployed to a protected individual other than the president and vice president. However, nearly all Secret Service personnel who spoke to the committee said they were unaware of the potential threat.
“Why am I hearing about threats on TV?” one officer wrote in a memo after the shooting that was included in the report.
Members of the Secret Service’s preparatory team were also denied additional resources, the report said, and “could not identify” who had final decision-making authority for the event.
“It was almost like an Abbott and Costello farce, with actors pointing fingers at each other about who was first,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blunmental, who heads the permanent investigative subcommittee. “It was really truth stranger than fiction.”
The Secret Service has not commented on the report. Last week, the agency released the findings of its own “Mission Assurance Review,” which found multiple communication problems and a lack of “due diligence” on the part of the secret service.
Acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe testified The committee was called before the commission in late July, shortly after it launched its investigation. So far, it has conducted 12 interviews, reviewed about 2,800 documents and conducted a site visit to Butler. More interviews are expected in the coming weeks, but committee aides have not said whether the investigation could extend to the second assassination attempt this month, which took place at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
The committee made several recommendations, including improving planning and coordination, communication and increasing intelligence capabilities and resources. It also suggested designating a “single person” to approve the agency’s security plans.
“We’ve put a lot of material on the bones here, but we’re nowhere near getting the information we need,” said Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, the ranking member of the investigations subcommittee.
Scott MacFarlane contributed to this report.
Nikole Killion
