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A report detailing crucial Secret Service incompetencies was released on Wednesday by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. They were brutal in their assessment of “multiple failures” made by Donald Trump’s team of bodyguards in Butler, Pennsylvania. His security botched the job more than once on July 13.
Secret Service failure
While the Senate didn’t actually come out and accuse the Secret Service of “complicity” in an attempt to kill Donald Trump, the committee came close. Bodyguards bungled their jobs so badly they might as well have been involved as a “partner” to Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Agents practically put a reserved sign with his name on the prime sniper position. The amateur killer had no problem picking out the spot as great to get a shot from. Security allowed him eight before snipers silenced him for good.
Investigators with the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had no problem at all finding that Secret Service agents “had multiple opportunities to prevent the shooting that killed one person and injured several others, including Trump.”
Every one of the security lapses were “foreseeable” and “preventable.” They weren’t quite “intentional” but came really close.
The core issues identified by the Senate committee all “grew out of a breakdown in communication and coordination between federal, state and local law enforcement.” They didn’t report any intentional misdirection of communications or messages but the mistakes were totally unacceptable.
In general, the panel writes, “Secret Service failed to define responsibilities for planning and security at the rally, failed to secure the building from which the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, targeted Trump, and failed to effectively coordinate with state and local law enforcement.”
Missing key resources
The Secret Service could have had a drone in the air. The shooter had one but the feds “failed to provide key resources.” A “countersurveillance unit” would also have helped but wasn’t there.
Because officials at every federal level have been dragging their feet on evidence production, and stonewalling investigators every step of the way, the Senate didn’t find out why “officials denied requests for additional counter unmanned aircraft systems.” They were only able to confirm they did issue such a denial.
One thing the report didn’t rule out is that it was at least partially an inside job. The Secret Service can’t deny they totally forgot about passing along “information about Crooks to key security personnel after he was identified as a suspicious person.”
They watched him wander around his eventual sniper post with a range finder for an hour and did nothing about it. Their officials even “knew the shooter was on the roof of a nearby building two minutes before he fired.”
Nobody has any good explanation for the way Trump was allowed to be on stage, practically standing on a target mark. “A Secret Service countersniper saw local law enforcement running toward the building with their guns drawn but failed to alert Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage.”
The agent later testified, it “did not cross [his] mind” to tell Trump’s detail of the possible need to evacuate him. Either that, or he decided on his own to keep quiet but he would never admit that in a million years.
