The Secret Service’s “stunning” failures “directly contributed to” Thomas Crooks’s July 13 assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump, according to an interim Senate report released Wednesday.
A series of operational and communication failures by the Secret Service allowed 20-year-old Crooks to take multiple shots at Trump, leaving the former president with a bloody ear, one rally attendee dead, and two others injured, according to the bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“What happened here was really an accumulation of errors that produced a perfect storm of stunning failure,” said Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.). “A lot of these individual failings, if corrected at the time, might have prevented this tragedy.”
Despite being informed by local law enforcement that they lacked the manpower to secure the site, the Secret Service failed to adequately secure the building from which the gunman fired, according to the interim report.
Secret Service personnel were alerted about a suspicious individual with a rangefinder near the building about 27 minutes before the shooting, but the lead advance agent, site agent, and site counterpart all said they did not receive that information until after shots were fired, Politico reported.
A Secret Service countersniper observed several police officers with their guns drawn approaching the shooter’s location but did not think to notify Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage.
The report also found that the Secret Service denied the additional equipment and personnel requested by Trump’s security detail.
“Every single one of those failures was preventable and the consequences of those failures were dire,” said Sen. Gary Peters (D., Mich.), chairman of the Senate committee.
The committee also slammed the FBI for providing only a 27-page report of their investigation and said there remains a long list of questions unanswered.
“We’ve put a lot of meat on the bones here, but we are a long way from getting the information we need,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.), the lead Republican on the investigations subcommittee.
The interim report comes amid mounting scrutiny of the Secret Service following two assassination attempts on Trump in the last three months. Kimberly Cheatle, who served as the agency’s director during the July 13 shooting, stepped down two weeks later after widespread pressure from lawmakers.
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