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Saturday, September 21, 2024

'What We Have Here Is A Failure to Communicate'


The Secret Service failed to give clear and crucial directions to its local law enforcement partners at a July campaign rally in Butler, Pa., allowing a would-be assassin to climb onto a warehouse and shoot at former President Donald J. Trump, an agency internal investigation has found.

The NY Times reports the lapse was one of several damning findings in the summary of an internal investigation report the Secret Service released Friday in response to the shooting on July 13 at a Trump campaign rally where the former president was grazed by an assailant’s bullet. Three attendees at the event were wounded, one fatally.

During a news briefing on Friday in conjunction with the release of the summary, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., the acting director of the Secret Service, ticked off several other failures, including complacency by some advance team members charged with securing the site and technological breakdowns that if better managed could have thwarted the gunman.

Rowe said that while he could not discuss individual personnel matters, there would be consequences for agents responsible for deficiencies in the security plan and its implementation.

The assassination attempt by Thomas Crooks, who fired off eight rounds, was the first shooting of a current or former president since 1981.

The close call on Trump’s life shocked the country and raised profound questions about whether the Secret Service was up to the task of protecting American leaders in the current, unusually high, threat environment.

Those concerns were underscored on Sunday when the Secret Service spotted a man with a firearm hiding in the wooded area of a golf course in Florida where Trump was playing a round. That episode, which ended with a Secret Service agent firing at the gunman, who sped off in a vehicle and was arrested 45 minutes later, appeared to be a second assassination attempt on Trump

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