The US Secret Service’s new acting director said on Tuesday that he was “ashamed” of a security lapse that led to the July 13 attempted assassination of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but blamed the shortfall on local law enforcement.
In testimony before two Senate committees, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said he visited the outdoor rally site in Butler, Pennsylvania, and climbed onto the roof of a nearby building from which 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired shots that wounded Trump’s right ear, killed one rally attendee and injured two others with an AR-15-style rifle.
“What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe told a joint hearing 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.”
The first shooting of a US president or major party candidate in more than four decades was a glaring security lapse that led last week to former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation under bipartisan congressional pressure.
But Rowe told lawmakers that the Secret Service erred by assuming that local officials would cover the building and its roof, not the Secret Service.
Rowe’s comments came days after a local Swat team assigned to help protect Trump told ABC News that it had no contact with Secret Service agents in charge of security at the rally before the shooting and that an anticipated face-to-face briefing with Secret Service officials never happened.
Rowe said he has already taken steps to prevent similar lapses from occurring amid concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about further political violence as the campaign intensifies ahead of the November 5 US election.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who also testified before the panels, said Crooks appears to have posted violent antisemitic and anti-immigration content online as a teenager.
It is some of the first evidence of Crooks’ possible inclination toward extremism and political violence found by investigators, who have yet to identify a motive.
