Trump assassination attempt: Secret Service blames communication failures at Pa. rally

The Secret Service’s internal probe into what allowed a gunman to open fire on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally in July found that communication failures contributed to the security failure.

Trump was wounded in the ear when a gunman opened fire, shooting several rounds at the former president on July 13 as he spoke at the Butler Farm Show grounds, The Associated Press reported.

A rallygoer was killed in the shooting while two others were wounded, The New York Times reported.

The report summary, which consists of five pages, cited several “communications deficiencies” before Thomas Crooks pulled the trigger and was then shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

The report is the first released on the attack, The Washington Post reported. It was the 60-day internal review that was started immediately after the July 13 assassination attempt.

The Secret Service also found that the agency did not use technology that could have alerted them to Crooks hours before the shooting as he flew a drone over the venue. Trump’s protective detail was also not told that there had been a search for a suspicious person until the shots were fired.

The Secret Service did not tell local police snipers to cover the roof where Crooks was, despite snipers saying they would have done it, the Post reported.

The AP reported that a local team was on the second floor of a building in the complex where Crooks was, but while law enforcement questioned the effectiveness of the position, there was no follow-up discussion to change the position including adding a Secret Service team to the roof where Crooks was firing from.

The federal agency and state and local law enforcement were working on different radio frequencies and had been in separate locations during the campaign rally in Butler County which made it difficult to share information urgently, the investigation found. While local law enforcement was looking for Crooks, they didn’t know that the Secret Service was not able to hear their communications, the report said, according to the Post.

“If this information was passed over Secret Service radio frequencies it would have allowed (Trump’s) protective detail to determine whether to move their protectee while the search for the suspicious suspect was in progress,” the report said.

The Secret Service had called the site of the July 13 a security challenge because lines of sight could be used by an attacker, but nothing was done prior to the rally to remove the issues, the AP reported.

“It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13 and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another mission failure like this again,” acting director Ronald Rowe said before Friday’s report release, the Times reported.

Rowe said it was not a lack of resources but instead a failure to anticipate a possible threat, the Post reported. The agency has a budget of about $3 billion a year and has more than 7,000 employees and is asking for a “significant” budget increase according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

The report was released less than a week after another alleged gunman was spotted hiding in woods near Trump was playing golf in Florida. The man was arrested 45 minutes after an agent fired shots at him and the man drove away, according to the Times.

There are several investigations into the July 13 assassination attempt including ones being conducted by the FBI, Congress and the DHS inspector general, the Post reported.

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