Secret Service Investigates How Gunman Who Shot, Wounded Donald Trump Got So Close

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Secret Service is investigating how an attacker armed with an AR-style rifle managed to get close enough to shoot and wound former President Donald Trump at the rally On Saturday in Pennsylvania, there was a catastrophic failure to fulfill one of the agency’s most basic responsibilities.

On Sunday, the FBI identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

The shooter, who officials say was killed by a Secret Service officer, he fired many shots on stage from an “elevated location outside the assembly area,” the agency reported.

An Associated Press analysis of more than a dozen videos and photos taken at the Trump rally, as well as satellite images of the scene, show the shooter was able to get surprisingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking. Video posted on social media and geolocated by the AP shows Crooks’ body lying motionless on the roof of a manufacturing plant just north of the Butler Farm Show grounds where Trump’s rally was held. Another photo shows Crooks wearing a gray T-shirt with a black American flag embroidered on his right shoulder, with a bloody gash on his head.

The roof was less than 150 meters (164 yards) from where Trump was speaking, a decent sniper could reasonably hit a man-sized target at that distance. For comparison, 150 meters is the distance at which a U.S. Army recruit must hit a man-sized silhouette to qualify for the M16 assault rifle in basic training. An AR-style rifle, like the one the shooter at the Trump rally carried, is a semiautomatic civilian version of the military’s M16.

President Joe Biden said Sunday he had ordered an independent review of security at the rally.

Biden also said he has directed the U.S. Secret Service to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention, which begins Monday in Milwaukee. Audrey Gibson-Cicchino, the Secret Service’s convention coordinator, later told reporters that the agency was pleased with what she called comprehensive planning for the Republican convention.

Biden urged Americans not to assume a motive for the shooter. He said investigators were working quickly to investigate the attack.

“Unity is the most difficult goal to achieve,” he said, but “nothing is more important than it at this moment.”

There were calls from all sides for an investigation.

Rep. Mark Green, a Tennessee Republican who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Sunday raising questions about the shooting and seeking information about the former president’s Secret Service protection.

“The gravity of this security failure and this horrific moment in our country’s history cannot be underestimated,” Green wrote.

The Secret Service did not have a speaker at a news conference Saturday evening where FBI and Pennsylvania State Police officials briefed reporters on the investigation into the shooting. FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek said it was “surprising” that the shooter was able to fire at the scene before he was killed.

Members of the Secret Service’s countersniper team and counterattack team were at the rally, according to two law enforcement officials. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss details of the investigation.

The heavily armed counterattack team, codenamed “Hawkeye” by the Secret Service, is responsible for eliminating threats so other agents can cover and retrieve the person they are protecting. The countersniper team, codenamed “Hercules,” uses long-range binoculars and is equipped with sniper rifles to deal with long-range threats.

Mayorkas said his department and the Secret Service are working with law enforcement to investigate the shooting. Ensuring the safety of presidential candidates and their campaign events is one of the department’s “top priorities,” he said.

“We condemn this violence in the strongest possible terms and commend the Secret Service for their swift action today,” Mayorkas said. “We stand with President Biden, former President Trump and their campaigns and are taking every measure possible to ensure their safety.”

Green also noted reports that the Secret Service had rejected Trump’s campaign requests for additional security. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told X Sunday that those allegations were “absolutely false” and that they had added resources and technology as the campaign’s travel increased.

Green said he will speak with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on Sunday.

Former Secret Service agents told The AP that Crooks should never have gotten on the roof and that the agency will have to figure out how it happened. They said the mishap could have been caused by officers being negligent at their posts or a flaw in the security plan for the event.

The agency “will have to review the security plan and interview a series of people from the director on down” to find out what went wrong, said Stephen Colo, who retired in 2003 as assistant director after a 27-year career in the service.

Colo said presidential candidates and former presidents typically don’t get the same level of protection as a sitting president. In fact, Colo said he was surprised the agency would staff the event with a team of countersnipers. Such a valuable resource — there aren’t many such highly trained agents — is typically reserved for the president. Candidates typically don’t get such teams.

Timothy McCarthy, a former agent who retired in 1994, said the Secret Service “had better take a hard look at what happened there and do everything they can to find out” because a gunman should not have been in such a position.

“How did this person get into this building?” said McCarthy, 75, who was shot when President Ronald Reagan was shot outside the Washington Hilton in 1981. “How did that happen? That’s the key to this whole thing. And what measures were put in place to prevent that?”

Kentucky Republican James Comer, who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said he had contacted the Secret Service for information and had summoned Cheatle for questioning. Comer said his committee would soon send an official invitation.

“Political violence in all forms is un-American and unacceptable. There are many questions, and the American people are demanding answers,” Comer said in a statement.

U.S. Representative Ritchie Torres, a Democrat from New York, called for an investigation into “security failures” at the rally.

“The federal government must continually learn from security mistakes to avoid repeating them, especially when those mistakes have national consequences,” Torres said.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, posted on X that he and his staff were in contact with safety planning coordinators ahead of the Republican National Convention will begin Monday in Milwaukee. “We cannot be a country that accepts political violence of any kind — that is not who we are as Americans,” Evers said.

The FBI said it will investigate the shooting in cooperation with the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Justice Department “will commit every available resource to this investigation.”

“My heart goes out to the former president, the injured, and the family of the bystander killed in this horrific attack,” Garland said in a statement. “We will not tolerate violence of any kind, and violence like this is an attack on our democracy.”