The House task force investigating the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump in July released a scathing report Monday detailing law enforcement’s planning failures and the communication breakdown leading up to the shooting.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight shots at Trump and his supporters during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa from an American Glass Research building near the stage where Trump spoke.
Crooks shot Trump’s right ear, leading the former president to famously pump his fist and chant “fight!” in the face of violence. Crooks also shot and killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore and wounded two others.
“Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic events of July 13 were preventable,” the report concludes.
The task force found that shaky lines of communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement prevented information about Crooks from flowing as quickly as it should have. Moments before the shooting, a local officer warned that Crooks was on the roof of the AGR building with a firearm, but the message was not transmitted to Trump’s detail, according to the report.
The officer transmitted the warning after Crooks pointed his rifle at him as another officer lifted him up to the roof. Around that time, witnesses at the rally became aware of Crooks’s presence atop the AGR building and watched law enforcement try to engage him. He spent roughly 6 minutes on the roof from 6:05 to 6:11 p.m. during the rally.
Once Crooks started shooting, a local officer fired a shot in his direction, potentially causing him to stop shooting. A Secret Service sniper’s bullet killed Crooks seconds after he began his shooting spree.
Before the rally, the Secret Service did not put the AGR building complex in its perimeter, even though it is an elevated surface with a clear line of sight to the stage at the Butler Farm Show grounds. Secret Service personnel also failed to conduct a joint meeting with state and local partners the day of the rally. Without the day-of briefing, state and local law enforcement were not entirely sure of their responsibilities and stations on the day of the Trump rally.
Crooks visited the Butler Farm Show grounds multiple times prior to the rally to scout out the area. On the day of the event, he flew a drone around 4 p.m. for eleven minutes to gain a view of the podium from about 200 yards away. Afterward, Crooks walked about half a mile away from the AGR building area and engaged with vendors before returning to the site. The details of Crooks’s behavior were first made public by the FBI during its ongoing investigation into Crooks.
Inside the AGR building, snipers were tasked with conducting overwatch of the rally site, not securing the building, preventing them from monitoring the areas where Crooks ventured. The Secret Service did not give the snipers any guidance about their assignment and never ordered snipers to be placed on the AGR roof.
For communications, the Secret Service and its state and local partners had separate command posts without a radio link between the two. Poor cell phone service also made it difficult to pass along information. The task force report chronicles the confusing series of events that took place when multiple local officers noticed Crooks near the AGR complex around 5 p.m. and were slow to relay the message.
One officer texted another that he spotted Crooks around 5:15 p.m. holding a rangefinder, but the message was not transmitted until 25 minutes later. From 5:38 to 5:51, text messages and phone calls about Crooks notified the Secret Service of his presence. At least one Secret Service agent in its command post received a photo of Crooks by 5:51 p.m., but it is unclear if the information was transmitted to the Secret Service agents tasked with managing security.
The task force’s interim report is based on interviews with 23 law enforcement personnel, classified and non-classified briefings, thousands of pages of documents, and a public hearing last month. Its details are similar to a lengthy Senate report released last month documenting top-to-bottom Secret Service failures leading up to Crooks’s shooting rampage.
It follows a similarly damning report from a bipartisan Department of Homeland Security task force released last week calling for the Secret Service to overhaul its management practices. The DHS panel identified similar Secret Service miscues to the task force and observed systemic leadership and cultural problems plaguing the agency tasked with protecting America’s highest-ranked leaders.
The assassination attempt in Butler remains the subject of multiple ongoing investigations and is considered one of the most significant law enforcement failures in American history. The FBI has not determined a motive for Crooks’s attack, although he did research Trump and other public figures extensively beforehand.