Members of the House task force investigating the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Thursday accused the U.S. Secret Service of indigent planning and breakdowns in communication and coordination with local law enforcement.
Republicans and Democrats on the House task force on the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump during the first public hearing praised the work of local law enforcement agencies whose representatives testified at the hearing.
Lawmakers said a preliminary investigation found the secret service responsible for a lack of planning, information sharing and decision-making.
Attempted attacker Thomas Matthew Crooks searched the site days before Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler and found security flaws, task force Chairman Mike Kelly (R-16th District) said Thursday.
Kelly added that if the 20-year-old gunman had not recognized these weaknesses, the entire incident could have been avoided.
But he added that the shooting that injured Trump’s ear and killed one rallygoer was caused by more than one failure.
“It was not a single mistake that allowed Crooks to outsmart one of our nation’s most elite security agencies,” Kelly said. “There have been safety failures on multiple fronts.”
Kelly said the Secret Service, which is the lead agency at any event at which someone under its protection is present, failed to create a sufficient plan and fail to make decisions on key issues. The agency failed to manage access to facilities adjacent to the rally and did not communicate effectively with state and local partners, he added.
Testimony from local agencies
Local officials told the panel they felt prepared for their task of supporting Secret Service protection.
Commander Edward Lenz of the Butler County Emergency Services Unit said the Secret Service requested assistance from counterattack teams, sniper teams and quick reaction forces and that the local agency felt prepared for such missions.
“There were obviously additional things that probably needed to be discussed,” he said. “But they never asked us to do it, they never commissioned us to do it. So given what they specifically asked us to do, we were certainly prepared.”
He added that the sniper teams were not given detailed instructions for their mission.
Patrolman Drew Blasko of the Butler Township Police Department said local police did what they were asked to do.
“With the information we had, I believe we did everything we could,” Blasko said.
No unified command
The task force’s ranking Democrat, Jason Crow of Colorado, who is an Army veteran, highlighted the lack of communication.
“Clear lines of communication are crucial,” he said during his opening remarks. “The Secret Service Must Do Better.”
Later, questioning witnesses, Crow said he was surprised to learn that the Secret Service had not established a unified command center at the Butler rally.
Patrick Sullivan, a former Secret Service agent who testified on his own behalf, said it was unusual for Secret Service operations.
Sullivan said a central command post is typically established for the Secret Service, state and local agencies and any other supporting law enforcement agencies.
“It’s very unusual what it turned out to be here, in this place,” he said.
A unified command center can assist relay information from different teams, including alerting agents closest to the president or presidential candidate about a suspicious person.
Pennsylvania Democrat Chrissy Houlahan noted that the breakdown in communications between the Secret Service and local authorities occurred because they were not using the same radio frequencies.
“So here we were, we had three minutes counted and every second counted, and the Secret Service and State Police were unable to directly hear what local law enforcement actually saw because they didn’t have that interoperability with local law enforcement frequencies and I didn’t have those radios ” – she said.
She called for reforms requiring different agencies to communicate with each other.
He slipped through the cracks
Kelly said Crooks was seen multiple times throughout the day and local police considered him a suspect.
Crooks was operating in an unsecured area “where information about him was delayed and limited,” Kelly said.
Sullivan told Ohio Republican David Joyce that authorities could have used several methods to secure adjacent sites, suggesting that the most effective way would be to send officers there.
Local police spotted Crooks, considered him a suspect and passed information to Pennsylvania State Police and the Secret Service, Lenz said.
But Kelly said that information did not reach the Secret Service in time to remove Trump from the scene before the shooting began.
“The Secret Service was unable to process the information quickly enough to remove the former president from the scene,” Kelly added.
The chairman wondered why Trump was allowed to take the stage after flagging Crooks several times.
“I’ll keep wondering at what point someone said, ‘We’re not sure this area is safe and secure,’” Kelly said.
First audition
After two months of investigation, Thursday’s meeting was the first public hearing of the task force the House passed unanimously in the wake of Butler’s shooting.
The Secret Service is primarily responsible for the shooting.
Then-director Kimberly Cheatle rdesigned under pressure in the days following the attempted coup.
Acting Principal Ronald Rowe he said last week the incident was a “failure of the United States Secret Service” and was promised to trigger a “paradigm shift” in the way the agency operated.
The importance of Secret Service protection and the task force’s mission was highlighted again this month when a man was arrested hiding in the bushes of Trump’s golf club in Florida and accused with another murder attempt.
Members of both parties on the panel condemned the targeting of political candidates on Thursday.
“Political violence has no place in our democracy, period,” Crow said.
Trump he said this week will return to Butler on October 5 to “finish our speech.”
