The acting director of the U.S. agency charged with protecting high-profile officials called the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump earlier this month a “failure on multiple levels,” further describing it as shameful.
Ronald Rowe testified before U.S. lawmakers Tuesday, promising immediate changes to fix breakdowns in communications and coverage that allowed a 20-year-old shooter to climb to the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots during the July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, killing a rallygoer and wounding Trump and two others.
“What I saw made me ashamed,” he told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. “As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
Rowe, who took charge of the Secret Service following last week’s resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, said the agency’s investigation indicates responsibility for securing the section of roof used by the shooter had been assigned to local sniper teams.
Those teams should have had a clear view of the shooter as he climbed into place, he said.
“We were told that building was going to be covered,” Rowe told lawmakers. “I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line when that’s where they were posted.”
Rowe also admitted to lawmakers that even though local law enforcement had identified the shooter as a suspicious person more than an hour before the rally, that information never got to the Secret Service agents protecting the former president.
“It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state and local channel,” he said.
“It is troubling,” Rowe added. “We didn’t know that there was this incident going on. … Nothing about a man on the roof. Nothing about a man with a gun.”
Cheatle resigned a day after she was berated by a congressional committee for failing to prevent the attempt on Trump’s life.
