The acting director of the Secret Service testified Tuesday that he was “ashamed” at the security gaps that led to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and pledged to discipline any agents who failed to do their jobs.
During a rare joint Senate committee hearing, acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said he could not understand or defend why the roof the 20-year-old shooter fired from on July 13 was not better secured.
He said the Secret Service was investigating whether any employees broke any rules that day. Those employees, Rowe said, would be held accountable through the agency’s disciplinary process and face penalties that could include termination.
“That roof should have had better coverage,” he said, “and we will get to the bottom of if there were any policy violations.”
Rowe displayed bursts of anger early in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee as he discussed what went wrong during Trump’s presidential campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Rowe said he traveled to the site of the shooting and went up on the roof to evaluate the gunman’s line of sight and lay in the prone position.
“What I saw made me ashamed,” he said. “As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
At a minimum, Rowe said, somebody should have been looking at the roof, but there was a “failure of imagination.”
Rowe raised his voice again as Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., pressured him to make immediate terminations. Rowe said he would not do so, or rush judgment, until a proper investigation is completed.
“You’re asking me, senator, to completely make a rush to judgment about somebody failing,” Rowe said.
Rowe said he would take disciplinary action as warranted and “with integrity.”
“This was a failure, and we will get to the bottom of it,” he said.
Tuesday’s hearing is the latest in a series that lawmakers have held to investigate how Thomas Crooks, 20, was able to evade law enforcement and open fire at Trump.
Trump was shot in the ear, one rallygoer was killed and two others were wounded before a Secret Service counter-sniper shot and killed Crooks.
Rowe said an inability of all the agencies to directly communicate with one another hindered the Secret Service.
Local law enforcement confirmed Crooks was armed at about 6:11 p.m. The local officers called out the threat through a radio, but the information was not relayed to the Secret Service, Rowe said.
The Secret Service counter-snipers did not know Crooks was armed on the roof “until they heard gunshots,” Rowe said.
Only about 30 seconds had passed from the time the local officer confirmed Crooks was armed to when Crooks opened fire.
Rowe said that there was a “delay in reporting” and that authorities had not set up a way for all the agencies to directly communicate with one another. The process would have taken months of planning and require “a lot,” he said.
“Technically you could do it, but it would take a long time to get it done,” Rowe said.
Rowe was appointed acting director last week after Kimberly Cheatle resigned following a blistering House Oversight Committee hearing in which legislators skewered her over her lack of cooperation.
“I’ve heard your calls for accountability, and I take them very seriously,” Rowe said.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who also testified, said investigators found a social media account that may have belonged to Crooks, which espoused antisemitic and anti-immigrant views and included posts about political violence.
Abbate said the FBI has not yet confirmed the account belonged to Crooks. The agency still does not know a motive.
Last week, FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that Crooks may have had a firearm with a collapsible stock, making it easier for him to carry and conceal the weapon.
He had researched President John F. Kennedy’s assassination and had previously traveled to the rally site.
On the morning of the rally, he went back to the campaign site, where he stayed for about an hour, and he left that afternoon to buy 50 rounds of ammunition.
Wray said Crooks was back at the rally site shortly before 4 p.m., when he flew a drone about 200 yards from the main stage area.
Two hours later, witnesses began to shout about a suspicious man on the roof of a nearby building.
Crooks began firing at least eight gunshots seconds after he noticed a law enforcement officer on the ground had spotted him, Wray said.
The officer had gotten a boost from a colleague and pulled his head up over the roof. Crooks pointed his gun at the officer, causing him to fall, and then started shooting at Trump, Wray said.
On Monday, Kevin Rojek, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office, said Crooks was “highly intelligent” and made “significant efforts to conceal his activity.”
Rojek confirmed that Crooks’ gun had a collapsible stock and that he climbed up the roof by scaling HVAC equipment and pipes.
On the internet, the gunman had also searched power plants, mass shootings, explosive devices and the attempted assassination of Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico in May, Rojek said.
Crooks bought more than 25 firearms through online vendors, using an alias, starting in the spring of 2023, Rojek said.
His father legally purchased the assault-style rifle Crooks used and legally transferred it to Crooks last year, Rojek said.
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