New report details stunning Secret Service leadership failures around first Trump assassination attempt | CNN Politics

Secret Service agents failed to take charge of decision-making for security at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where former President Donald Trump was shot in July, a bipartisan Senate committee revealed in a new report Wednesday, leading to key lapses in preparation and communication that day.

The report, citing interviews with top Secret Service officials and local law enforcement who oversaw the security for the rally, said the failures were “foreseeable, preventable” and found that many of the problems identified by the committee “remain unaddressed” by the Secret Service.

Some of the problems highlighted include the Secret Service failing to set up visual barriers around the rally that may have blocked shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’ view of Trump, the lack of a plan on how to secure the building the shooter took aim from and the general chaos of communication around the shooter’s movement leading up to the attempt on the former president’s life.

Key resource requests were also denied, and some were not even made, the report says.

Secret Service advance agents did not request a surveillance team, which could have helped patrol the rally for approximately 15,000 attendees. First lady Jill Biden, meanwhile, had one assigned to her event roughly an hour away for approximately 410 individuals.

“Overall, the lack of an effective chain of command, which came across clearly when we conducted interviews,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who is leading the subcommittee’s investigation, told reporters Tuesday. “It was almost like an Abbott and Costello farce, with ‘who’s on first?’ finger pointing by all of the different actors.”

Nobody was in charge and there was no decision-making process

In interviews with the committee, the report says the Secret Service team in charge of planning for the Butler “could not answer questions about who – specifically – was responsible” for deciding the inner and outer perimeter of the rally, and who excluded the group of buildings Crooks ultimately climbed up from the Secret Service’s perimeter.

Those involved in security planning could also not agree on who – whether agents from the Pittsburgh field office, the office of protective operations or Trump’s own Secret Service detail – was ultimately responsible for decision-making or how the process even worked.

Secret Service, federal, state and local law enforcement only had two “official” meetings ahead of the July 13 rally and described the interactions prior to the event as “informal,” the report states.

The decisions that fell through the cracks included whether to position rental trucks around the rally to obstruct any line of sight to Trump.

Other issues included how responsibilities that day were not clearly defined or understood in how communication would work that day, both between local law enforcement and the agency as well as in the agency itself.

According to the report, agents interviewed “did not agree about who was responsible for ensuring” the agency’s communication center that day “was functioning as intended.”

Agents also disagreed in interviews over who was responsible for the setup of the operations room, how it was staffed and how the agency would communicate with local officers on the ground.

‘No specific’ agency in charge of securing building shooter fired from

The lack of clarity and subsequent finger-pointing also extended to who was responsible for securing the building Crooks ultimately fired from.

Excerpts of testimony from Secret Service agents and Butler officials outline how there was no clear entity agency to oversee securing the building, which became a huge issue when the rally turned into an emergency.

While Secret Service agents told the committee they believed Butler emergency officials were covering the building, those local officials told lawmakers they had informed the USSS they did not have the ability to do so.

A police officer with the Butler County Emergency Services Unit told lawmakers that two days before Trump’s rally, he told the Secret Service site agent that his team “did not have the manpower to lock down this area.”

That police officer said the site agent “copied” and “they would take care of it.”

But the Secret Service site agent told a different story, saying they thought the Butler County Emergency Services Unit “would have coverage” of the building.