New text messages reveal local law enforcement officers working former President Donald Trump’s Butler, Pennsylvania, rally were severely understaffed ahead of the attempted assassination.
During the tragic rally, Trump was shot in the ear and a former volunteer firefighter lost his life after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from the roof of a nearby building just outside the security perimeter.
Bombshell new text messages between the Beaver County emergency services team from the days leading up to the rally show that there was a staffing shortage.
On July 8, five days before the rally, an unnamed team leader officer wrote in a text chat that they had been ‘requested by Butler to assist’ with Trump’s rally and needed six people to step up for the 12-hour detail. Two offered to do so for the whole time, and two more offered to split the Saturday shift.
The law enforcement leader wrote in the thread that he only had a few people available to work the event because ‘everyone else is either working, on vacation or hurt.’
The never-seen-before messages also lay out a timeline of nearly 90 minutes from between the identification of Crooks and his deadly fire.
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024
New messages, bodycam footage and law enforcement debrief were obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, who is conducting oversight of the event.
The messages showed that law enforcement were aware of Crooks, whom they spotted more than an hour and a half before Trump took the stage.
At 4:26 p.m., a Beaver County sniper finished his shift and departed the AGR building, where Crooks was able to access and take his shots from.
As the sniper left the building, he texted a chain about a suspicious person he’d spotted – which turned out to be Crooks.
‘Someone followed our lead and snuck in and parked by our cars just so you know,’ read one message.
‘I’m just letting you know because you see me go out with my rifle and put it in my car so he knows you guys are up there.’
The officer noted that he was sitting at a picnic table ‘about 50 yards from the exit.’
‘That bike was not there when I pulled out. Maybe have them check that car,’ they went on.
Later on, officers exchanged photos of Crooks, who had then been marked a ‘suspicious person,’ at 5:38 p.m., over 30 minutes before Trump was shot.
‘Kid learning (sic) around building we are in. I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out.
Another officer asked what direction Crooks was headed, to which an unnamed officer replied, ‘if I had to guess toward the back. Away from the event.’
It comes after a whistleblower last week revealed Secret Service stood in the way of using drone technology to survey the scene of the Butler rally where an assassin tried to shoot former President Donald Trump.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revealed that one whistleblower had told his office the night before the rally Secret Service ‘repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally.’
The whistleblower alleged that after the shooting Secret Service ‘changed course and asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site in the aftermath.’
The drones that were offered ‘had the ability not only to identify active shooters but to neutralize them,’ according to Hawley.
From Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas Hawley demanded all records and communications related to the drone offer.
The new claim adds another layer to the probe of the Secret Service’s biggest security failure since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
After a blistering six hours of testimony on Monday Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle handed over her resignation on Tuesday.
She’d spent much of the day evading and giving conflicting answers to questions such as why the roof where gunman Thomas Crooks committed his attack wasn’t included within the security perimeter despite being within rifle range of the stage and why Trump was allowed to take the stage despite Crooks being identified as a suspicious person one hour before he fired any shots.
Snippers stand on a roof at Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump’s campaign rally
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally
When asked to explain why there wasn’t an agent on the roof, the director explained it’s because the agency generally ‘prefers sterile rooftops.’
FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers on Wednesday the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage just two hours before he opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, and had three explosives in his car.
Crooks shot Trump in the ear just 400 feet away from the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 from the roof of a nearby building just outside the security perimeter of the event.
Wray said Crooks and his family owned a combined 14 guns and Crooks had visited a shooting range one day before the rally. Crooks used an AR-style weapon that had been purchased legally by his father and sold to him in October 2023.
Wray said eight bullet cartridges had been recovered from the roof where Crooks fired off his shots toward the former president.
After a blistering six hours of testimony on Monday Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle handed over her resignation on Tuesday
And he wouldn’t rule out that Crooks did not have any accomplices to the crime, saying it’s still being looked at by law enforcement.
As Wray faced questions about why the president was allowed on stage despite the ‘threat’ being identified 20 minutes before the shots were fired, Wray said, ‘we don’t know the answer to that.’
He said that no one in law enforcement saw Crooks with lying down in a shooting position with a gun in hand until ‘moments before’ he fired, but had seen him on the roof ‘minutes before.’
The FBI and Secret Service revealed to lawmakers last week they spotted Crooks as a person of interest a full 62 minutes before he fired a shot.
He’d been seen with a range finder, which Cheatle said was ‘not a prohibited item’ at Trump rallies. This wasn’t enough to identify him as a threat.
Twenty minutes before Crooks fired a shot, he was spotted on the roof.
A bullet grazed Trump’s ear. One audience member, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed and two others – David Dutch, 57 and James Copenhaver, 57 – were badly wounded but are in a stable condition.
