How the Secret Service Failed to Prevent a Trump Assassination Attempt

A report from the Senate HSGAC details USSS security and planning failures related to the July 13 attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, Pa.

On July 13, Thomas Crooks crouched atop a building approximately 200 yards away from Donald Trump, where the former president was giving a campaign speech. Crooks fired eight rounds from an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. One bullet grazed Trump’s ear. Two members of the crowd sustained injuries. One man, Corey Comperatore, died from a gunshot wound he sustained while shielding members of his family.

In the aftermath of this assassination attempt, a rally-goer—donning a red visor with fake Trumpian hair and a sharpie mark that etched a “4” on top of “Trump 2020”—told reporters about the chaos that ensued as he tried to warn law enforcement about the location of the shooter. “We’re like, ‘Hey, man! There’s a guy on the roof with a rifle!’ And the police are like, ‘Huh? What?,’” he said. “They didn’t know what was going on.” 

In the months since, Congress has been trying to find out exactly that: “what was going on.” Last month, the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released a bipartisan interim report summarizing the findings of an investigation into the Secret Service’s “planning, communications, intelligence sharing, and related security failures in advance of and during July 13.”

With a stated mission to protect current and former presidents, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) had a significant presence at and around the perimeter of the rally on the day of the attempted assassination. Despite these safeguards, 20-year-old Crooks flew a drone over the rally area, brought two explosive devices near the rally, climbed on top of a building with a rangefinder and large semiautomatic weapon, and opened fire at former President Trump, according to the committee. 

This was the fundamental question before the committee: How did the USSS fail in its mission?

The report, entitled “Examination of U.S. Secret Service Planning and Security Failures Related to the July 13, 2024 Assassination Attempt,” details five key failures of the USSS based on interviews with law enforcement and limited document productions:

1. “USSS failed to clearly define responsibilities for planning and security at the July 13 rally.” 
2. The USSS failed to ensure the American Glass Research (AGR) building, atop which Crooks fired, was sufficiently covered. 
3. “USSS failed to effectively coordinate with state and local law enforcement.” 
4. “USSS failed to provide resources for the July 13 rally that could have enhanced security.” 
5. “USSS failed to communicate information about the suspicious person to key personnel, and failed to take action to ensure the safety of former President Trump.”

What follows is a summary of the report’s findings and recommendations.

Planning Failures

On July 3, the USSS began assigning key personnel to coordinate security measures for Trump’s July 13 rally. These agents “provided [to the committee] contradictory, opaque, or nonresponsive information about who was responsible for key components of the planning and security,” suggesting a lack of clearly defined roles. The site perimeter, for example, was attributed to “joint decisions” rather than to a “singular individual”—what the USSS site agent called a “consensus decision” that, according to another agent, was ultimately approved by the special agent in charge (SAIC) of the Pittsburgh field office. The SAIC denied this claim. 

According to the report, the “USSS did not share materials outlining their expectations and according to state and local law enforcement, planning meetings were disorganized and lacked direction.” During a July 8 meeting attended by the Secret Service, the FBI, and state and local law enforcement, the USSS failed to discuss the site perimeter; on July 9, the USSS, Pennsylvania State Police, and Butler County law enforcement separately examined the site before meeting to establish a map. Discussing a July 11 walk-through, a Butler Emergency Services Unit commander noted there was “no coordination … really just people milling about … I felt like there was no plan.” State and local law enforcement were reportedly concerned by the USSS’s lack of preparation, with some USSS personnel joining over the phone or “not at all.”

The report further shows that Secret Service personnel did not adequately cover the AGR building—which Crooks climbed to gain a clear line of sight to Trump—despite concerns from the counter-sniper team leader about the roof being a “vulnerability.” The team leader also noticed in the days leading up to the event that the line of sight of one of the two counter-sniper positions, known as “Hercules 2,” was partially blocked by trees. However, the team leader failed to mention the obstruction to the Hercules 2 team, claiming, “Honestly, I just didn’t think about it.” Counter-snipers on the Hercules 2 team did not raise the obstruction to the team leader because “the AGR building was to be secured by locals.” 

The “locals”—snipers employed by Butler County law enforcement—claimed that they understood the crowd to be their primary responsibility, an understanding that was never clarified or questioned by Secret Service personnel interviewed by the committee. The committee also conducted its own examination of the site and found that local snipers would have had limited visibility of the AGR roof on July 13. In response to USSS Acting Director Ronald Rowe’s suggestion that local snipers should have spotted Crooks on the AGR roof, one local law enforcement sniper pointed out that snipers “would have literally had to [have] been hanging out the window” to have a clear view.

The Secret Service failed to mitigate other line-of-sight concerns in advance of the July 13 rally. The USSS site agent said that “everything pretty much surrounding the venue, the site, was pretty much considered a line-of-sight [concern] or a vulnerability.” The site counterpart “tried” to place vehicles to block potential threats from having a clear line of sight to Trump, but that never happened. Despite this, a “USSS counter sniper in the Hercules 2 position told the Committee he believed the mitigations were sufficient.”

Planning failures extended beyond fuzzy roles and line-of-sight concerns. According to the report, Trump’s Secret Service detail requested certain additional resources, but “other USSS components” denied them. Denied resources included counter unmanned aircraft systems (C-UAS) and unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), as discussed below. Additionally, the detail requested Counter Assault Team liaisons “to help coordinate tactical assets,” which were similarly denied. The Secret Service Trump detail neglected to request a counter-surveillance team (CSU), responsible for observing outer perimeter areas for threats—despite the scale of the event, which “would lend itself for requesting a CSU-type asset,” according to the USSS assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations. The lead advance agent indicated there were no requests for a CSU because it “is not a typical asset” for a former president. 

On the day of Trump’s rally, the first lady, Jill Biden, held a smaller indoor event in Pittsburgh. The proximity of the two events meant that there were some “shared assets”; the site counterpart for Trump’s rally “acknowledged that resources could be strained by asset sharing between protectees” but felt “that there was not going to be any resource issues during this specific arrangement because she had previously worked with the local law enforcement entity providing the shared coverage.”

What’s more, according to the committee, “at least” two of the USSS Trump rally security planning documents “contained errors regarding the positions of the local counter snipers at the event.” The first error was in the preliminary survey—which “encapsulates the security plan”—and inaccurately recorded the position of local snipers. The site agent acknowledged the error but claimed that during the site visit everyone was briefed on the actual positioning of local assets. The second inaccuracy, in the site diagram, similarly misrepresented the location of local snipers.

General Communications Failures

The committee notes that multiple USSS officials—including the acting director—have acknowledged a range of communications failures on July 13.

Many of these failures relate to siloed communications among the officials responsible for security at the Trump rally. At the rally, the Secret Service used at least three radio channels “each designated for different categories of personnel”; the Pennsylvania State Police used two radio channels; and local law enforcement used three more channels.

The USSS relies on encrypted radio frequencies that are accessible only using a radio issued by the Secret Service. Local police officers told the committee that the Secret Service had not given any of its radios to local law enforcement. This limited access appears to have gone both ways: All of the USSS personnel whom the committee interviewed said that they could not access local law enforcement radio channels (though there may have been a couple of one-off exchanges). One Secret Service officer related to the committee that local officials offered him a “local radio,” but he said that he was not able to pick it up due to other obligations.

According to the committee, cell phones were the primary mode of communication between the USSS and local law enforcement personnel. The Secret Service counter-sniper team leader told the committee that using cell phones was “not great but better than nothing.” He added, “Radios are preferred. They’re instantaneous. But they didn’t have our radios. We didn’t have their radios.” 

Worse, several of the radios belonging to USSS personnel didn’t work. This apparently occurred in part because some radios of Secret Service personnel at the rally were too close to one another and because Secret Service radios picked up transmissions from First Lady Jill Biden’s security detail nearby. But on the day of the rally, USSS personnel changed at least some of the radio frequencies they were using to resolve the crossover issues with the first lady’s detail. 

The SAIC of the Pittsburgh field office gave his radio to the lead advance agent in charge of security at the rally, whose radio was not working. As a result, the SAIC “did not have direct access to any radio communications with other USSS agents while he was at the rally.” 

Because of these and other information sharing failures, several important Secret Service personnel—including the lead advance agent and the counter assault team leader—were not aware that local law enforcement had identified “a suspicious person with a rangefinder” until after the individual had begun firing at the former president. The Pennsylvania State Police sergeant stationed in the Secret Service’s security room at the rally said that he told the Secret Service security room agent that local law enforcement had identified this suspicious individual possessing a rangefinder approximately 27 minutes before the shooting occurred, and relayed two minutes before the shooting that this individual was on the roof from which he fired the shots. Several USSS personnel who were not aware of the suspicious individual with a rangefinder until after the shots were fired had not received this information from the Secret Service security room. These officials reported in committee interviews “that they expected the USSS Security Room would relay relevant information from all law enforcement agencies working at the rally site.” The state police sergeant said that he did not know what the security room agent did with the information after receiving it. 

Secret Service personnel gave different answers to the committee about who was responsible for the proper functioning of the Secret Service security room. According to Secret Service policy, writes the committee, the site agent is responsible for the “physical setup and staffing” of the security room. However, the site agent at the rally stated in a committee interview that she did not have primary responsibility for the security room and that the “site counterpart” coordinated equipment and staffing for the security room. The site agent also said she believed that the local field office was responsible for security room equipment and staffing. The site counterpart disagreed. She told the committee that “the Site Agent’s really responsible for making sure that the security room’s set up and that there’s communications.” The lead advance agent, for her part, told the committee that the site agent and the site counterpart shared responsibility “for making sure that the site ha[d] adequate resources and everything that was part of the plan [was] in place.”

Line-of-Sight and Communication Limitations

The committee also devotes a separate section to line-of-sight and communications failures that occurred the day of the rally—rather than in the planning stages—and over the course of the roughly 25-minute period during which Crooks took his position, fired, and was ultimately shot by counter-snipers. Unsurprisingly, the failure to plan appropriately to address line-of-sight and communications limitations resulted in severe impediments on the day of the event.

While Hercules 2 (discussed above) did not have a clear line of sight to the AGR roof, Hercules 1 (the other Secret Service counter-sniper position) did—but the team leader, who was with Hercules 1, told the committee that for most of the rally he was facing “basically the same direction as the stage.”

According to the report, “At approximately 5:45 pm, the USSS Counter Sniper Team Leader received text messages from a local sniper regarding an individual near the AGR building with a rangefinder looking toward the stage.” At 5:52 p.m., the team leader notified the counter-sniper team over email about the individual, including two images of Crooks, with the subject line “Local CS [counter-sniper] BOLO [Be on the lookout]”—guidance that one member of the Hercules 2 team felt was “worded vaguely,” although they “continued to search and observe the site.” 

The Hercules 2 counter-sniper then saw a police officer moving toward AGR from the tree line and sent the security room a radio transmission, which Hercules 1 also received. The Hercules 1 leader and team members then “repositioned” themselves to face the AGR building “close to minutes” after receiving the transmission, the team leader testified. According to the report, “Based on the estimated likely route Crooks took across the roofs of the AGR buildings starting at 6:05 pm on July 13, the USSS counter snipers in the Hercules 1 position could have had a direct line-of-sight to him for at least part of his movements across the roofs,” although it notes that “the Committee cannot know for certain” whether the snipers would have seen Crooks if they were facing in his direction. 

During that time, more police officers began running toward the AGR building with their weapons drawn. The committee notes that “[d]espite this, the USSS Counter Sniper Team Leader did not relay this information to anyone on the radio,” including to the Trump detail, who could have prevented Trump from taking the stage or advised that he be taken off.

According to the counter-sniper team leader, who was positioned with the sniper who shot Crooks, it took “mere seconds” of having Crooks in their line of sight before he was killed—requiring only one shot, an action that the counter-snipers the committee interviewed claimed required “no permission.”

Intelligence Concerns

The Secret Service decided in early July that it would send counter-snipers to all of Trump’s outdoor events. The assistant director of the Secret Service Office of Protective Operations told the committee that this decision “was based on several factors including the size and scale of the former President’s outdoor events, his being on the cusp of becoming the nominee, and threat information, at least some of which is classified.” Of the 12 Secret Service personnel interviewed by the committee, two were aware “that there was a credible threat related to former President Trump prior to July 13, only one of whom was made aware of the classified information underlying the threat.” The committee assesses that the Secret Service’s decision to send counter-snipers to the rally “potentially saved lives.” 

One of the interviewed officials who was aware of the “credible threat” to the former president was the lead advance agent for the July 13 rally. According to the committee, although the lead advance agent had been notified of the threat, she wrote in the intelligence section of the preliminary survey related to the security of the event that “[a]t this time, no adverse intelligence has been developed concerning this visit.” When the committee asked the agent why she wrote this note, she said that when she filled out the document, her understanding “was that there was no adverse intelligence to pass on to the group as a whole.” She continued, “If it’s something classified, … then that would not be put in writing, as well. It would’ve been passed to those that needed to know in this situation.” The Pittsburgh SAIC told the committee that he would expect that any credible threat or intelligence would be included in the intelligence section of the preliminary survey. 

The lead advance agent reported to the committee that she told the SAIC that there was credible intelligence related to the threat. However, the SAIC told the committee that the lead advance agent never notified him of the threat and that if he was aware of this intelligence, he would have followed up asking for more specific information concerning the threat and may have advocated for moving the event indoors. The SAIC also said that he would have requested additional security assets if he had had this information. Other agents involved with planning for the security of the event told the committee that they “absolutely” should have been made aware of “credible intelligence or threats.”

Before the rally, the Secret Service intelligence advance agent for the rally called the Secret Service Protective Intelligence Division to ask if there were any intelligence-related updates. He reported to the committee that he was told there were no updates. The site agent told the committee that the bulletin containing advisory information specific to the security of the rally “came back with negative results, as [reflecting] no threats or no other issues or concerns prior to the visit.” 

Despite this discussion of threats with the committee, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate testified before the Senate on July 30 that there was “an absence” of “information or intelligence pertaining to a threat against the rally or to former President Trump or anyone else there … in the lead up [to the rally] specifically.”

Counter Unmanned Aircraft System Failures

The committee finds that, based on Acting Director Rowe’s comments at a Senate hearing, the USSS counter unmanned aircraft system was not operational until after 5:00 p.m. on the day of the rally due to technical difficulties. Earlier that day, at 3:51 p.m., Crooks flew a drone near the site of the Butler rally. Rowe suggested that “[w]e could have maybe stopped him” if the system had been working.

In addition to these technical difficulties, Secret Service personnel lacked sufficient C-UAS equipment, and requests for more were denied. The USSS Technical Security Division’s outdoor site survey found that the area was “vulnerable to possible drone attacks with the limited amount [of] C-UAS equipment on site.” On the day of the rally, Secret Service personnel used C-UAS equipment “intended to counter the unauthorized use of drones.” They also employed a temporary flight restriction (TFR). During a planning meeting on July 10, the “C-UAS Advance Agent requested an additional mitigation capability as well as a more advanced mitigation system with a technician to operate it as a backup to the C-UAS system. Both requests were denied.” The advance agent also requested that the TFR for the event be extended, which was also denied—without explanation. The restriction lasted only from 4:20 p.m. to 6:15 p.m. on July 13, missing the window in which Crooks flew his drone. 

Beyond these requests, the report demonstrates a profound lack of expertise by the USSS official in charge of operating the C-UAS equipment. The C-UAS advance agent was unable to activate the equipment on the morning of July 13. The agent contacted a member of his detail and another USSS official, who referred him to tech support for the company that produces C-UAS equipment. They had several phone conversations over the course of several hours, with little success. Finally, after 4:00 p.m., the advance agent was able to connect the equipment to an ethernet cable from a Trump campaign audiovisual team truck; at 4:33 p.m., the system was operational. Because there was no backup system available, up until this point “USSS did not have any drone detection capabilities”—meaning they did not detect Crooks’s drone flying at 3:51 p.m.

The committee found that the advance agent in charge of C-UAS had less than an hour of training related to the equipment; when asked how it interacts with mobile cellular networks, he stated, “I don’t know how it interacts with it. I believe that it does. The technical aspect of how it communicates to it I don’t know.” He also admitted it was not standard procedure to use an external cable for USSS equipment. 

According to the committee, “Acting Director Rowe testified that perhaps had the C-UAS system been operational at 3:51 p.m., USSS agents would have spoken with Crooks and he could have decided not to go through with his assassination attempt.”

The Committee’s Recommendations

The committee outlines five brief recommendations for Congress and the Secret Service to implement in the future. The first recommendation—labeled “Planning and Coordination”—suggests that Congress require the USSS to “identify defined roles and responsibilities for USSS personnel responsible for advance planning of any protective event.” More specifically, the committee recommends that the USSS improve the coordination among—and make clear the roles and responsibilities of—federal, state, and local law enforcement. 

The second recommendation—“Responsibility”—suggests that the USSS “designate a single individual responsible” for approving all security plans, including security perimeters, before each protective event.

The third recommendation, labeled “Communications,” directs the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service to “ensure communications plans” among federal, state, and local authorities—including first responders—are “property executed and should ensure records retention capabilities.” The committee specifies that this “proper” execution should include the recording of all USSS radio transmissions at protective events. The committee also directs Congress to require the Department of Homeland Security and the USSS to conduct an evaluation of the steps the Secret Service “needs to take to ensure communications plans with state and local partners are fully executed” and that they report to Congress “any steps taken” to address previous failures and to “ensure compliance” with communications plans in the future.

The fourth recommendation—“Intelligence”—advises the USSS to send “additional assets, including counter snipers” to all outdoor protective events in the future. Further, according to the committee, the USSS should make certain that all “appropriate agents” working future protective events are “informed of relevant intelligence and threats against protectees.”

The committee’s fifth and final recommendation—“Resources”—directs Congress to evaluate the USSS budget and available resources. It also specifies that USSS security requirements should be determined by threat levels—ranging from less severe threat environments to National Special Security Events, which require the highest level of security. The committee recommends that the USSS allocate its assets and resources “based on the threat level, not the position or title of the protectee.”

Federal Agencies’ Lack of Compliance

The committee’s report also details the failure of various federal agencies—including the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives—to comply with the committee’s inquiry. 

According to the committee, both the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security responded to records requests with “heavily redacted or incomplete documents and productions.” Specifically, the committee requested the USSS and Department of Homeland Security’s information on “planning, resources, intelligence, and related communications,” in addition to transcribed interviews with USSS officials in connection with the rally in Butler. In response, the USSS provided only 2,800 pages of documents to the committee—apparently significantly less than the committee requested. On Sept. 11, the committee sent a letter to Rowe to raise “concerns” about the document production’s timing as well as the large number of redactions applied to the documents they did receive. The department’s response, according to the committee, did not adequately address these concerns. 

The FBI, according to the committee, has produced only 27 pages of documents connected to the July 13 assassination attempt. The committee reports that it has requested all 302 forms—that is, summaries of interviews conducted by the bureau—for “all USSS personnel interviewed by the FBI” in connection with the July 13 assassination attempt and the Butler rally in general. The FBI, according to the SAIC of the FBI Pittsburgh field office, had conducted approximately 1,000 interviews on the matter as of late August. The committee notes that on Sept. 20, the FBI said it would make these interviews available for in camera review on a “rolling basis,” beginning with 15 interview records—which include just 64 pages of classified and unclassified documents. 

The committee also reports that it had sent a request to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) Director Steve Dettelbach to interview an ATF agent who reportedly attended the rally. In response, the committee “received an informal briefing regarding the agent’s presence at the rally” but has yet to conduct a transcribed interview with the individual, despite its request. 

The committee concludes this section of its report with an extensive list of “additional and outstanding lines of inquiry” it plans to pursue in its ongoing investigation. Broadly, the committee is seeking information related to “federal law enforcement agencies’ preparations for and participation in the July 13 rally”; the coordinated preparation for the rally among federal, state, and local law enforcement; the FBI’s investigation into the assassination attempt and Crooks; the investigation of the crime scene on or after July 13; intelligence related to threats against presidential candidates and other high-level officials before the July 13 rally; requests for additional protective resources from Trump’s campaign, protective detail, or anyone else within the Secret Service; transcriptions of interviews with federal, state, and local personnel who had an awareness of the planning and securing of the Butler rally; and more.

***

The Secret Service, like elements of the intelligence community, usually makes headlines only when it messes up. But its job is too important to cut the agency any slack—especially in light of its recent failures.

In the aftermath of the July 13 rally, some accountability has come. USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle stepped down 10 days later. But the Secret Service’s failures continued. Just nine weeks after the July 13 rally, another would-be assassin appeared to target Trump at Trump’s golf club in Florida. The gunman managed to poke his AK-style rifle out of some shrubbery within 500 yards of the former president. And later in September, a Secret Service agent in Vice President Kamala Harris’s security detail was placed on administrative leave after the alleged groping of a Harris staffer in Wisconsin. 

Are these failures the result of recent massive exits from the service, including those of some of the “best-trained people”? Or are they the result of reported recruiting and training standards issues? It’s hard to know. It could be that the categories of problems the committee identified have been present for a long time, and they just hadn’t come to roost so saliently before the past several months.

But these underlying failures are long-term concerns. In the meantime, the Secret Service must ensure the effectiveness of its short-term protection plans. The next month is a critical one for the Secret Service. At any moment, but especially in a heated election season when threats against public officials reach “a decibel level that should [be] audible from the cosmos,” there is zero room for error. 

– Matt Gluck, Olivia Manes, Katherine Pompilio, Published courtesy of Lawfare.