The acting head of the U.S. Secret Service on Friday said local law enforcement and Pennsylvania State Police bear no responsibility for the catastrophic security failures in Butler on July 13, when a 20-year-old gunman was able to elude authorities — even after raising suspicions — before shooting at former President Donald Trump from the roof of a nearby building.
Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr.’s acknowledgment of the lead agency’s failure to protect the Republican presidential nominee and rally attendees came just three days after he emphatically questioned local authorities’ ability to spot the shooter on a roof within range of Trump and suggested warnings about the seriousness of the threat never reached the Secret Service.
“In no way should any state or local agency supporting us in Butler on July 13 be held responsible for a Secret Service failure,” Rowe told reporters in a briefing Friday afternoon. “This was a Secret Service failure. That roof line should have been covered — we should have had better eyes on (that).”
Trump and two others were injured and former firefighter Corey Comperatore died in the shooting.
The Department of Homeland Security, the FBI and Congress are conducting multiple investigations into the attempted assassination, which came in the middle of an elevated threat environment and active campaign season with many more events needing a robust Secret Service presence, Rowe said.
Rowe, who just last week replaced Kimberly Cheatle who resigned after being grilled by lawmakers in a Senate hearing Tuesday, pledged to hold personnel accountable for any policy violations on July 13. He also promised to address gaps in security and regain Americans’ trust.
“I promise accountability,” he said.
Although he cautioned that he “will not rush to judgment nor ignore due process. Every single person within the Secret Service feels the weight of what happened. We are in an unprecedented threat environment with a high operational tempo during this presidential campaign. The men and women of the Secret Service are working pretty hard and doing their jobs under difficult circumstances. They need to focus on their work, and they need to know I have their backs.”
Recent videos shared over social media this week raised new questions about the chase for the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and communication efforts up the chain of command before Crooks opened fire. Pressed about a video obtained by Fox News that appeared to show the gunman moving along the roof before getting into position to fire, Rowe told reporters it “affirms to me that this was a failure.”
“We should have had better protection for the protectee, better coverage on the roofline,” he said. “We should have at least had some other set of eyes from the Secret Service point of view covering that. That building was very close to the outer perimeter. We should have had more of a presence … The bottom line is this was a Secret Service failure.”
The news conference marked a major turnaround just days after a fiery Senate hearing, the fourth in two weeks focused on getting to the bottom of the shooting.
Rowe previously acknowledged to senators that the buck stops with the Secret Service. But he also showed senators the view from a window in a building adjacent to where Crooks opened fire, questioning how local officers he believed were stationed near that window did not spot the shooter.
“Why was the assailant not seen?” he said, raising his voice. “We were told that building was going to be covered.”
Rowe also testified that key information on the gunman was “stuck or siloed in that state or local channel.” He suggested at the time that there was a nearly 30-second window where local law enforcement officers were aware of Crooks on the roof with a long gun, but said “that information stayed in state and local channels and did not make it over to Secret Service.”
Local law enforcement leaders have vehemently defended the actions taken by Butler and Beaver County officers and Pennsylvania State Police troopers on the day of the rally. They also say they had little-to-no direct contact with the Secret Service, and that they believed messages and photos they were sending of Crooks after he was deemed suspicious would reach the right teams.
“There’s been a lot of blame and maybe rightfully so, on the Secret Service for failing to act quicker. From my guy’s standpoint, had he not identified him as suspicious early on, at the time Crooks got those shots off, they knew he had been around the building,” Beaver County District Attorney Nate Bible told The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “That’s what allowed the Secret Service snipers to get those shots off so quickly. Who knows, Crooks could have potentially gotten off several magazines before they knew who he was.”
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