Security failures before first Trump assassination attempt detailed by House task force
The Secret Service did not properly plan and coordinate with local law enforcement ahead of former President Donald Trump's July 13 campaign rally, where he was shot at in an assassination attempt, a new report says.
WASHINGTON — The Secret Service did not properly plan and coordinate with local law enforcement ahead of former President Donald Trump's July 13 campaign rally, where he was shot at in an assassination attempt, a new report says.
The interim report by the House task force investigating the attempt on Trump's life that day says that the first phase of the probe "clearly shows a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners before the rally.”
These findings, the bipartisan panel said, were based on 23 transcribed interviews with local law enforcement, thousands of pages of documents, and testimony from the task force's public hearing in September, the task force said in a release.
On the day of the rally, the task force said there could have been opportunities in which “federal, state, and local law enforcement officers could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments." But the report says "fragmented lines of communication allowed Crooks to evade law enforcement and, eventually, climb on to the roof of the AGR complex and fire eight shots at the rally stage and crowd, killing a rally attendee and injuring three others, including former President Trump.”
An officer with the Butler Township Police Department told the task force that he was helped onto the AGR complex roof by another officer and spotted the shooter with the gun, saying Crooks “pointed his firearm in my face” and had a bookbag and gun magazines. He said he fell to the ground and immediately radioed that the suspicious person on the roof was armed.
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