Sweeping failures by the Secret Service directly contributed to a gunman’s ability to carry out an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at his July 13 rally, according to an interim Senate report released Wednesday.
The bipartisan report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee pointed to multiple critical failures by the Secret Service, including ones related to planning for the event, communications and crucial security decisions.
“Every single one of those failures was preventable and the consequences of those failures were dire,” Chair Gary Peters (D-Mich.) told reporters.
The panel accused the Secret Service of failing to clearly lay out responsibilities or plan security. Agency personnel denied to the committee that they were individually responsible or deflected blame, according to the report.
The committee added that the communication failures between the various layers of law enforcement “remain unaddressed” and that they were a “contributing factor” to the attack on July 13. Secret Service agents were working with local law enforcement to provide security during the rally.
In one example included in the report, the Secret Service special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office did not have a working radio with him during the July 13 rally, after giving the lead advance agent his original radio because hers was malfunctioning.
The committee also found that the Secret Service did not properly ensure that the building where the gunman accessed the roof was secured during the rally; one counter sniper had an obstructed view of the roof. Local law enforcement, according to the report, told the Secret Service in advance of the rally that they did not have the manpower to cover the building.
A Secret Service official responsible for countering unauthorized drones told the Senate committee that he also requested additional equipment and personnel but those requests were denied. Trump’s Secret Service detail, according to the report, also requested certain assets for July 13 that were not approved.
“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.”
According to the committee’s interim report, Secret Service personnel were notified of a suspicious person with a rangefinder around the building roughly 27 minutes before the shooting. But the Secret Service’s lead advance agent, site agent and site counterpart all told the committee that they did not receive that information until after shots were fired.
And a Secret Service counter sniper told the committee that they also saw local law enforcement running toward the building where the shooter was located with their guns drawn, but that it “did not cross [his] mind” to alert Trump’s protective detail to get him off the stage.
As part of its interim report, the committee is making a series of recommendations, including increasing planning for protective events and designating a single individual responsible for approving all plans. They are recommending that Congress require the Secret Service to record radio transmissions for all protectee events, as well as having the agency send additional resources and assets to future events.
Countersnipers were sent to the rally in response to a “credible intelligence” of a threat, according to the report. But the committee noted that “nearly all” of the Secret Service personnel interviewed by the committee said they were not aware of any credible intelligence of a threat.
Even as the committee released its interim report, it made clear that it still has a long list of questions that it wants answered. It also knocked the FBI, which it said had only produced 27 pages of documents. And they are still seeking information from Trump’s team, more information on known threats before July 13, and information related to the crime scene.
“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 top Republican on the investigative subcommittee.
