U.S. authorities are investigating how a young gunman managed to get to a rooftop vantage point last Saturday to shoot former president Donald Trump during a political rally when local police were in the warehouse beneath the gunman and just outside.
“There was local police in that building. There was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building,” Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News.
At outdoor events like Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend, the Secret Service — the key federal government security protection agency for current and former presidents and their families — controlled the inner perimeter closest to Trump, while leaving the outer perimeter, including the warehouse, to be monitored by local police.
Now, questions are being raised whether the choice to leave the warehouse in the outer perimeter and in the hands of local police was the proper decision, since the rooftop was within shooting range of the rally stage where Trump was speaking.
The gunman, identified by authorities as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, managed to carry an assault weapon to the rooftop, and from a distance of about 140 meters, fire off as many as eight shots toward the stage. One of the shots pierced Trump’s right ear, while one rally-goer was killed and two others critically wounded. A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks.
Homeland Security chief Alejandro Mayorkas, whose agency includes the Secret Service, said on Monday that an independent review of the assassination attempt from outside the government will start soon. He called the attack a security failure.
Video analyses of the attack scene by U.S. news media recorded some bystanders outside the immediate rally area and near the warehouse yelling at police that there was a gunman on the warehouse rooftop nearly a minute and a half before shots were fired.
Cheatle told ABC News there was only “a very short period of time” between those reports and when the gunman fired.
“I don’t have all the details yet, but it was a very short period of time,” she said. “Seeking that person out, finding them, identifying them and eventually neutralizing them took place in a very short period of time, and it makes it very difficult.”
Cheatle, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2022, said she took responsibility for the handling of security at the event.
“The buck stops with me,” she said. “I am the director of the Secret Service.”
She said she did not plan to resign.
The Secret Service has said that before Trump went onstage, local officers were searching for a “suspicious” man who had been flagged by passersby, and that the Secret Service was notified of that hunt. But it is not clear how much earlier that search went on or when the agency was notified of it.
After Cheatle’s interview, the Secret Service expressed support early Tuesday for local law enforcement partners in providing security at the event despite the admitted failure to stop the attack.
“We are deeply grateful to the officers who ran towards danger to locate the gunman and to all our local partners for their unwavering commitment,” the Secret Service said in a statement. “Any news suggesting the Secret Service is blaming local law enforcement for Saturday’s incident is simply not true.”
Mayorkas said the probe of the assassination attempt would examine the actions of the Secret Service and other law enforcement agencies “before, during and after the shooting to identify the immediate and longer-term corrective actions required to ensure that the no-fail mission of protecting national leaders is most effectively met.”
Trump was not seriously injured in the attack but easily could have been killed. He wore a bandage over his right ear on Monday at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where his fellow Republicans officially named him as the party’s presidential nominee for the November election.
Biden on Monday ordered Secret Service protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an independent presidential candidate in the election, who trails far behind Trump and Biden in national polling. Kennedy’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963. His father, Robert F. Kennedy, was killed as he campaigned for the presidency in 1968.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation, the country’s chief criminal investigative agency, said it is continuing to look for a motive behind Saturday’s shooting. The FBI said it is investigating the case as potential domestic terrorism, but that the probe is still in its early stages, and no motive for the shooting has been identified.
The FBI said Monday its technical specialists successfully gained access to Crooks’ phone, and they are analyzing his electronic devices. It said the search of his residence and vehicle had been completed.
The investigative agency said it has conducted nearly 100 interviews of law enforcement personnel, rally attendees and other witnesses and that more people are being interviewed.
