“Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened.”
Those stark words are contained in a damning House Task Force report about the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt against former president and current Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
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The preliminary report, released on Monday, reveals the abundance of scrutiny that the US Secret Service has faced since Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, in plain sight, opened fire on the Trump rally from a rooftop just outside the event’s security perimeter, killing one attendee and injuring two others in addition to the former president.
The task force’s final report is expected by December 13.
The task force not only found that Crooks “had been under scrutiny by the Secret Service’s state and local partners” for roughly 40 minutes before “information about a suspicious person” reached the USSS command post, but also that at three local law enforcement officers noticed Crooks at about 5:00 p.m, ET, and each one “independently” concluded that his “behavior and manner were suspicious.”
Back-and-forth communication began between local and state law enforcement units, but the report found that effective communication was made more difficult by the lack of a central command system with the Secret Service. While I’m neither an expert on the workings of the USSS nor local or state law enforcement agencies, it seems to me that a central communication system would be the first thing established for a presidential or former presidential event, particularly for an open-air rally.
Roughly an hour after the local officers first noticed Crooks, the would-be assassin fired eight shots into the rally, hitting Trump and the three attendees before being killed by a Secret Service sniper. As the shots rang out, attendees could be heard yelling, “Duck!”
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The report said that from around 5:38 p.m. to 5:51 p.m., “a series of calls and messages about the shooter’s description and movements reached the Secret Service.”
Here’s more:
The document also referenced prior testimony by a witness from the Butler Township Police Department whose colleague spotted Crooks on the roof just before he opened fire.
That witness said their colleague fell from the roof – which he was tenuously gripping – while shouting “THERE’S AN AR! AN AR! AN AR! A GUY WITH AN AR!”
“To date, the Task Force has not received any evidence to suggest that message reached the former President’s USSS detail prior to shots fired,” the report said.
The report also quoted a witness from the Butler County Emergency Services United (ESU) whose account of shooting Crooks appears to undercut the USSS’s assertion that one of its snipers killed the gunman.
“He fired a single shot from a standing position at Crooks, who was in a prone position on the roof. Butler ESU Witness 5 told the Task Force that he believes his shot hit Crooks,” the report said.
As my colleague Bob Hoge reported on October 17, wholly incompetent Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas also appointed an independent panel to investigate the failures of the Secret Service after the two confirmed assassination attempts on Trump’s life. In that report, a group of former law enforcement officials blistered the agency for its ineptitude and culture of rot.
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READ MORE:
Throw the Bums Out: Independent Panel Recommends Overhauling Entire Secret Service Leadership
The House Task Force report also revealed (emphasis, mine):
The report also points to logistical issues – particularly on the part of USSS – in the hours before the rally took place. For instance, there were two command centers set up for the event, with a witness testifying that no one from the Butler Police Department was invited to the USSS’ hub.
Butler ESU Commander Edward Lenz also told Task Force staff that a sniper from his unit advised a USSS agent to pick up a radio communication device from their command center to be able to keep in contact with local and state authorities – but the agent never retrieved it.
The report said ESU snipers, who were not positioned to monitor the building Crooks fired from but were inside the complex, were also not informed of any plan to keep an eye on the facility itself.
“Local law enforcement told the Task Force that the Secret Service did not give any guidance to Butler ESU and Beaver ESU regarding the placement, role, and responsibilities of their snipers… they understood their assignment to be overwatch of the rally venue,” the report said.
Unbelievable? Given the abject ineptitude of the Biden-Harris administration and officials like Alejandro Mayorkas, Merrick Garland, Antony Blinken, et al., nothing surprises me.
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The Bottom Line
Regardless of what any number of reports find on either of the attempts against Trump, I suspect that the nagging question that will remain in the heads of conservatives is whether or not the same level of incompetence — intentional or otherwise — would have been present at a similar event held by either President Joe Biden or Vice President and Democrat presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
While we cannot know the answer, skepticism will undoubtedly live on.