Secret Security Malfunction

"[The multiplicity of Secret Service failures leading up to the July rally for former president Donald Trump were] foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day".

Bipartisan Senate investigation conclusion

 

"Every single one of these actions is directly related to a failure in the U.S. Secret Service's planning, communications, intelligence sharing and law enforcement coordination efforts." 

"Every single one of those failures was preventable, and the consequences of those failures were dire."

Senate Committee Chairman Gary Peters

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The monumental failures of all police and intelligence agencies combined at that dramatic July rally event utterly belie the proud professionalism of American agencies tasked to protect the well-being of politicians at the very time of tense and angry divisions within the American voting public. Multiple investigations into the event when a gunman opened fire at the former president even while his suspicious presence had been seen and that information conveyed to different levels of public safety officers draw similar conclusions; a massive failure of both intelligence and professional vigilance.

The Secret Service Agency itself had launched an internal investigation. And there is an ongoing bipartisan House probe. First to present their findings, however, was an interim report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which found multiple failures on every conceivable level leading up to the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting.

Planning, communications, security and allocation of resources were all inadequate and ill-fitting to the occasion. "The consequences of those failures were dire", commented Senator Gary Peters, Michigan Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel. There was no clear chain of command among the Secret Service, according to investigators' findings. Nor was there among other security agencies. 

 

No plan was formulated for coverage of the building where the shooter positioned himself on the roof to fire from relatively close range toward his target.

Separate multiple radio channels were used by security officials which inexorably led to missed communications. After  his equipment failed to work properly, an inexperienced drone operator was fixed on a help line with no assistance forthcoming. Most telling of all, likely, was a report finding the Secret Service had been given notice of an individual on the roof of the building several minutes before the shooter opened fire.

In total, eight rounds were fired in Trump's direction from a distance less than 150 yards from the location of the speaking former president. The presidential nominee for the Republican ticket ended up struck in his ear by a bullet or bullet fragment during the assassination attempt. A superficial wound, with great dramatic effect. More serious was the death of one individual at the rally, with two others injured before the gunman was shot to death by a counter-sniper with the Secret Service.

The report found that a local officer had sent a radio alert some 22 seconds before shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks fired his first shot. The information sent of an armed individual on the building roof failed to be relayed to key Secret Service personnel, however. 

 

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"Leaving a roof unattended, just you know, barely over 100 yards from the podium with a direct line of sight was an unacceptable and inexcusable error." 

"Everybody thought this guy was suspicious and nobody thought to stop the proceeding and remove the former president from the stage." 

GOP Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, committee member