The incompetence surrounding the Secret Service assigned to President Trump during the Butler assignation attempt is going for worse to “you’ve got to be kidding me” level of insanity.
Folks, when you read the report – which we’ll link to below – the level of incompetence is so bad one wonders if the crap really hit the fan and a firefight broke out if the agents themselves would have been able to survive it.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committees released a stunning bipartisan report Wednesday morning that paints a troubling picture of the U.S. Secret Service’s (USSS) catastrophic failure to protect former President Donald Trump from an assassination attempt during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. The detailed, nearly 100-page report exposes a series of glaring security lapses and miscommunications that tragically resulted in the death of one attendee and left others seriously injured.
In his statement, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters called the USSS’s shortcomings “shocking, unacceptable, and preventable,” emphasizing that the failures spanned from poorly coordinated planning to the breakdown of communication between federal, state, and local law enforcement. His sentiment was echoed by Senator Rand Paul, who condemned the USSS for what he called “an inexcusable dereliction of duty.”
According to the report, the attempted assassin, Thomas Crooks, was able to roam the rally grounds for a staggering 27 minutes, armed with a range finder, before scaling the unsecured roof of the AGR building. Despite being a known risk due to its direct line-of-sight to the stage, this building was left poorly monitored, allowing Crooks the opportunity to position himself for a fatal shot. The tragic result: Trump was injured, and 50-year-old rally-goer Corey Comperatore was killed. Two others sustained life-threatening injuries.
The timeline outlined in the report is as jarring as it is heartbreaking. USSS personnel had been aware of the risks posed by the AGR building but failed to secure it adequately. Shockingly, the Counter Sniper Team Leader did not inspect the building or its roof before the event. This lack of vigilance allowed Crooks to remain undetected until it was too late. Alarms had been raised about a person on the roof just two minutes before the shooting, but no action was taken to remove Trump from the stage or escalate security measures.
The report also highlights not just the chaotic communication failures but the incompetence and lack of leadership given to the Agents on the ground.
From Fox News: “Among the key failures, an agent inexperienced with drone equipment called a toll-free tech support hotline for help after a request ahead of time for additional unmanned assets was denied, according to a preliminary summary of findings made public Wednesday. According to the committee, he had just an hour of informal training with the device.”
It’s hard to even get mad at the Agent it’s not their fault they were assigned the drone and at least took some initiative to figure out how the heck to use it.
It was a total lack of leadership from the very top down:
“Multiple foreseeable and preventable planning and operational failures by USSS contributed to [Thomas] Crooks’ ability to carry out the assassination attempt of former President Trump on July 13,” the preliminary report read. “These included unclear roles and responsibilities, insufficient coordination with state and local law enforcement, the lack of effective communications, and inoperable C-UAS systems, among many others.”
