Washington.- Communication failures with local law enforcement hampered the U.S. Secret Service’s response ahead of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in July, a new report released Friday revealed, laying out a litany of missed opportunities to stop the gunman who opened fire from an unsecured rooftop.
A five-page document summarizing the USSS report’s key findings finds fault with both local and federal law enforcement, and lays bare the wide-ranging and serial failures that preceded the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump was hit in the ear by a bullet.
While the botched response has been well documented through congressional testimony, media investigations and other public statements, the report marks the USSS’s most formal attempt to catalog the day’s mistakes and comes amid renewed scrutiny following the arrest Sunday in Florida of a man who authorities say was intent on assassinating Trump.
“It is important that we take responsibility for the failures of July 13 and use the lessons learned to ensure that another failed mission like this one does not happen again,” USSS Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said in a statement accompanying the release of the report on the agency’s internal investigation.
The report details a series of “communication failures” before 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired at Trump from the roof of a building less than 150 yards away and was subsequently shot dead by a USSS sniper. The document makes clear that the USSS knew even before the attack that the rally site posed a security concern.
Among the problems identified was that some local police officers on site were unaware that there were two communications centres on the premises, meaning officers were unaware that the USSS was not receiving their radio transmissions.
Police also communicated crucial information outside of USSS radio frequencies. As officers searched for Crooks before the attack, details were transmitted “via mobile/cellular devices in a staggered or piecemeal fashion” rather than through the USSS’s own network.
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