Acting Secret Service Head ‘Cannot Defend’ Trump Rally Failures, Says Agents Didn’t Know Shooter Had Gun on Roof

Washington, D.C. – The acting head of the Secret Service admitted at a congressional hearing Tuesday that he “cannot defend” the security failures that allowed would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks to carry out the shooting at the former president’s rally earlier this month.

Acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe candidly discussed with Senate lawmakers the agency’s failures at the Trump rally and the various reforms he will implement to ensure nothing like it happens again, a contrast to former director Kimberly Cheatle’s refusal to answer basic questions when she testified before the House Oversight Committee last week. She has since resigned.

Rowe testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee alongside FBI deputy director Paul Abbate. In his opening statement, Rowe promised the Secret Service will increase vetting of event security plans, expand the use of unmanned drones, streamline law enforcement communications, maximize personnel at protective sites, and discipline the individuals who failed to secure the Trump rally after the mistakes have been thoroughly investigated.

On July 13, Crooks fired eight shots into the crowd of the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., wounding Trump and two others, and killing former fire chief Corey Comperatore. A Secret Service counter-sniper killed Crooks seconds after he fired the shots.

Before Crooks fired eight shots into the crowd, the Secret Service did not know he was on the rooftop with a weapon, Rowe testified. All the Secret Service knew was that local law enforcement was handling a “suspicious” person nearby, he said.

Local law enforcement sent Secret Service a picture of Crooks a half hour before the shooting, but they did not receive any information about him possessing a weapon. Crooks was deemed a “suspicious” person and law enforcement knew he had a rangefinder to assess his distance from the stage Trump stood on.

The communication breakdown between different law enforcement channels prevented the Secret Service from receiving the information sooner, Rowe said. In the future, he said, Secret Service will gain access to the communications channels used by local law enforcement partners. Law enforcement used text message chats and radio to make decisions at the rally, and Secret Service failed to record agents’s radio communications that day.

Another hinderance to the Secret Service’s communications was the poor phone service at the Butler rally, Rowe said. The lack of bandwidth delayed the Secret Service’s deployment of drones, and prevented them from detecting the drone Crooks flew around the perimeter of the rally at roughly 3:51 p.m. on the day of the shooting. Rowe said he will be trying to set up a wifi system to ensure the Secret Service will have a connection at future events.

Rowe could not explain how Crooks was able to fly his drone but the Secret Service could not, and he expressed regret for the agency’s choice to decline local law enforcement’s offer to fly drones overhead.

The FBI is leading the law enforcement investigation into who Crooks was and how he carried out the attack. His motive is currently unknown, and no evidence suggests he had any co-conspirators. He was a loner and fixated on public figures leading up to the rally, and even conducted research on the assassination of former president John F. Kennedy. There was nothing to alert the FBI to Crooks beforehand.

Abbate revealed at the hearing that the FBI discovered a social media account that appears to have belonged to Crooks and posted 700 comments from 2019-20. The comments featured antisemitic and anti-immigrant rhetoric, and embraced political violence. The FBI is working to confirm that the account belonged to Crooks. In addition, the FBI is trying to verify whether Crooks had an account on right-wing platform Gab, Abbate told Senator Marsha Blackburn (R., Tenn.) towards the end of the hearing. The Gab account appears to feature posts supporting coronavirus restrictions and President Joe Biden’s lax immigration policy.

Unlike Cheatle, Rowe visited the site of Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania where the shooting took place. He said he felt “ashamed” when he mimicked Crooks’s prone position on the roof of the AGR building next to the Trump rally to understand his positioning. Rowe later said the Secret Service believed local law enforcement had the roof covered, and admitted that the agency’s “failure of imagination” contributed to the security lapses at the shooting.

Moving forward, Rowe said that the Secret Service would ensure counter-snipers are deployed with the local counter-snipers, instead of deferring entirely to local law enforcement. Local snipers were inside of the AGR building and the FBI believes at least one of them left the building to look for Crooks.

The FBI is looking into whether Crooks carried his rifle in his backpack right before the shooting and assembled the weapon on the roof, Abbate said. Last week, FBI director Christopher Wray testified that Crooks purchased a five foot ladder but did not use it to climb up to the roof.

During his testimony, Wray answered many questions from House Judiciary Committee lawmakers and delivered a detailed timeline of how Crooks planned the shooting, beginning with his registration a week before the rally happened. Abbate provided more details about the timeline, noting that officers did not see him with a rifle until 6:08 p.m., minutes before he fired the shots.

Multiple Republican lawmakers Tuesday pressed Rowe on whether the Secret Service denied Trump additional security detail, and if he was involved in those decisions. He repeatedly rejected claims that he played a role in denying Trump’s campaign more protection, and did not give specifics on who made those choices.

The hearing became heated when Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) pressed Rowe on why he has not fired the agent who decided to leave the AGR building outside of the Secret Service’s perimeter. Acknowledging the person’s failure, Rowe told Hawley that he did not want to make a rushed decision and promised accountability.