WASHINGTON (AP) — Communication breakdowns with local law enforcement hampered the Secret Service’s performance during a July campaign rally where former President Donald Trump was shot and wounded, according to a report released Friday that lays out a litany of missed opportunities to stop a gunman who opened fire from an unsecured roof.
A five-page document summarizing the key conclusions of a yet-to-be finalized Secret Service report lays bare the cascading and wide-ranging failings that preceded the July 13 shooting at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally at which Trump was struck in the ear by gunfire.
Those include an absence of clear guidance from the Secret Service to local law enforcement, the failure to fix line-of-sight vulnerabilities at the rally grounds that left Trump open to sniper fire and “complacency” among some agents, said Ronald Rowe Jr., the agency’s acting director.
Though the failed response has been well documented through congressional testimony, news media investigations and other public statements, the summary document released Friday marks the Secret Service’s most formal attempt to catalog the errors of the day and comes amid fresh scrutiny of the agency following Sunday’s arrest of a man who authorities say stalked Trump at a Florida golf course.
“This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service. It’s important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13th and that we use the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another failure like this again,” Rowe said at a news conference accompanying the release of the summary.
The report details a series of “communications deficiencies” before the shooting by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper after firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction from the roof of a building less than 150 yards from where Trump was speaking. That building had been identified as a possible hazard before the event, Rowe said, yet officials didn’t take appropriate steps to correct the potential problems.
“Line-of-sight issues were acknowledged, but not properly mitigated. Issues were encountered the day of the visit with respect to line-of-sight concerns, but they were not escalated to supervisors,” Rowe said. “While some members of the advanced team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols.”
Among the other problems: Some local police at the site were unaware of the existence of two communications centers on the grounds, meaning officers did not know that the Secret Service were not receiving their radio transmissions.
Law enforcement also overly relied on cell phones, instead of Secret Service radio frequencies, to communicate vital information. As officers searched for Crooks before the shooting, details were being transmitted “via mobile/cellular devices in staggered or fragmented fashion” instead of through the Secret Service’s own network.
“The failure of personnel to broadcast via radio the description of the assailant,