The acting head of the Secret Service told lawmakers Tuesday that he was \u201cashamed\u201d his agency failed to secure the rooftop where a gunman fired on former president Donald Trump, sparring at times with angry Republicans who demanded he fire people immediately over the security shortcomings.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,\u201d Ronald Rowe Jr. told a joint Senate committee examining the assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13.<\/p>\n
Firing at the GOP presidential candidate, the gunman killed one person in the crowd and critically injured two others. One of the bullets grazed Trump\u2019s ear.<\/p>\n
At times, the hearing turned emotional and even angry, particularly when Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) loudly called for people to be ousted from the agency.<\/p>\n
\u201cSir, this could have been our Texas schoolbook depository,\u201d Rowe told the lawmaker, referring to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy. \u201cI have lost sleep\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThen fire somebody,\u201d Hawley hollered at him.<\/p>\n
Raising his voice in response, Rowe said he would let the investigation play out before delivering punishments.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will tell you, Senator, I will not rush to judgment,\u201d Rowe said. \u201cThis was a failure and we will get to the bottom of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWell, I hope you\u2019re going to do something about it,\u201d Hawley retorted.<\/p>\n
Rowe told lawmakers from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee that he visited the site after the disastrous security failure, including the rooftop from which the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired eight shots from an AR-style rifle.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat I saw made me ashamed,\u201d Rowe said. He became the acting director of the agency a week ago, following the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle under pressure from lawmakers and others. Rowe previously served as deputy director of the Secret Service, responsible for overseeing daily investigative and protective operations.<\/p>\n
Raising his voice in frustration, Rowe showed lawmakers photos of the rooftop, near where officials have said local law enforcement officers were posted.<\/p>\n
\u201cI cannot understand why there was not better coverage\u201d of that roof, Rowe said. \u201cI think this was a failure of imagination, a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees. I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions.\u2019<\/p>\n
Rowe said the Secret Service assumed there would be \u201csufficient eyes\u201d from local law enforcement covering the outer perimeter of the rally, including counter sniper teams in the AGR building from which the shooter fired.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe assumed that the state and locals had it,\u201d Rowe said in response to questioning from Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas). \u201cI can assure you that we\u2019re not going to make that mistake again.\u201d<\/p>\n
Going forward, Rowe said, Secret Service counter snipers will join local counter snipers on the roofs and other locations, similar to the way they handle security at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve directed that when we\u2019re talking to people and we\u2019re making requests, that we are very specific about what we want, we are providing explicit instructions,\u201d Rowe said.<\/p>\n
The agency has already decided to use more drones around such events, he added, and to improve radio communications between the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies that contribute to their security.<\/p>\n
Lawmakers at the hearing, particularly Republicans, criticized the Secret Service over the failure to stop the gunman from climbing onto the roof just outside the rally\u2019s security perimeter and suggested Cheatle\u2019s resignation was not enough.<\/p>\n
Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, said Congress needs answers \u201cabout what appears to be a problematic communications system\u201d used by the Secret Service.<\/p>\n
Before the shooting, local police assisting with security at the event had spotted the suspicious young man, but much of that information was not relayed to the Secret Service agents who are part of the former president\u2019s security detail.<\/p>\n
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said that while investigators still don\u2019t have a sense of the gunman\u2019s motive, they have recently discovered a set of online posts believed to have been made by him in 2019 and 2020 that reflect \u201cantisemitic and anti-immigraton themes\u201d and espoused political violence.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis was just discovered and it is being closely analyzed right now,\u2019 Abbate said, cautioning that agents still need to verify that the posts were made by the gunman. Previously, investigators briefly thought an online post about the date of the assassination was made by the shooter, before deciding that it was not.<\/p>\n
Abbate said if the posts do turn out to have been written by Crooks, \u201cit is the first indication that he is expressing\u2026 extremist views and talking about political violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) chided the agency officials for not speaking in public more often about what happened and what investigators have found.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve allowed the public to assume the negative, which I don\u2019t get. I think you should have been doing all along at least once-a-day press conferences. I think you\u2019ve got to tell the public what\u2019s going on,\u201d said Scott. \u201cYou ruin your reputation, impact the integrity of the federal government, it makes no sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
This is a developing story. It will be updated.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The acting head of the Secret Service told lawmakers Tuesday that he was \u201cashamed\u201d his agency failed to secure the rooftop where a gunman fired on former president Donald Trump, sparring at times with angry Republicans who demanded he fire people immediately over the security shortcomings. \u201cI cannot defend why that roof was not better […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":6973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6972","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6972"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6972\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6972"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6972"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstriumphs.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6972"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}