The U.S. Secret Service had numerous security breakdowns on the day that a would-be assassin opened fire on former President Donald Trump at a political rally in Pennsylvania, according to senior U.S. officials leading the investigation into the agency’s failures that day.
The Washington Post reported that the officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the Secret Service had an “alarmingly slipshod strategy” to protect Trump that day from being shot at.
Secret Service officials planned to use flags to block anyone from having a clear line of sight on the former president as he spoke on stage in Butler on July 13. However, the resources that were deployed were not used to position the flags in a way that would block a line of sight on Trump.
Investigators found that there were significant discrepancies between how the Secret Service operates for political candidates vs. the sitting President of the United States.
Among the chief differences was that the Secret Service uses a “robust communication system” for presidents and vice presidents that is supported by the U.S. military whereas for political candidates, the agency just uses “a command post for event communications that is separate from local police assigned to the event.”
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The investigation found that the Secret Service command post had “no way to receive real-time alerts from local police surveilling the crowd and outer perimeter,” the report said. Police’s warning about the shooter prior to the event was only communicated to one Secret Service official and agents never heard police radio traffic about police trying to track down the suspect before he opened fire.
The forthcoming congressional report also reportedly found that the agency was “slow” to increase security for Trump even though there were intelligence reports that Iran had launched an operation to assassinate the former president.
The Post noted that numerous top Secret Service officials have resigned, retired, or are about to leave ahead of the report’s release, including former Director Kimberly Cheatle, Assistant Director of Protective Operations Mike Plati, and senior executive John Buckley.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said this week that the American people “are going to be shocked, astonished, and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president.”
“I think they also ought to be appalled and astonished by the failure of the Department of Homeland Security to be more forthcoming, to be as candid and frank as it should be to them in terms of providing information.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) said during a separate interview this week that the Department of Homeland Security was “leaning on the Secret Service not to comply with document requests to Congress.”
