Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe told senators he was “ashamed” of how authorities handled the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
“I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions,” Rowe said. “The assumptions that we know our partners are going to do everything they can … We assume that someone is going to cover that. We assume that there’s going to be uniform presence.”
Lawmakers pushed back at placing the blame on local police and questioned why the Secret Service official who approved the security perimeter – which did not include the building the shooter perched on – wasn’t fired.
“Isn’t the fact that a former president was shot, that a good American is dead, that other Americans were critically wounded, isn’t that enough mission failure for you to say that the person who decided that that building should not be in the security perimeter, probably ought to step down?” said Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri.
Rowe – on hand because his former boss, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, resigned following a previous hearing on the shooting – said people will be held accountable after the investigation is complete, but he wouldn’t be rushed to judgment by lawmakers.
Updates From the FBI
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who testified alongside Rowe, said the FBI’s investigation is focused on the shooter’s motive and timeline. To date, the FBI has not identified a motive or any co-conspirators, Abbate said.
“The FBI team has conducted more than 460 interviews, executed search warrants, including at the shooter’s residence and seized electronic media to include phones, laptops, hard drives and thumb drives,” he said. “The full resources of the FBI have been brought to bear in furtherance of the investigation.”
Abbate said the FBI uncovered a social media account believed to be associated with the shooter in the 2019-2020 timeframe. There were over 700 posts from the account, some of which were antisemitic, anti-immigration and espoused political violence.
“While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did, in fact, belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share and note it today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential, motive and mindset,” Abbate said.
Washington’s Investigations
The hearing comes just a day after House Speaker Mike Johnson and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries announced the members on the bipartisan task force investigating the assassination attempt. The group includes seven Republicans and five Democrats.
“We have the utmost confidence in this bipartisan group of steady, highly qualified and capable Members of Congress to move quickly to find the facts, ensure accountability and help make certain such failures never happen again,” Johnson and Jeffries said in a statement.
After its investigation, the task force will make recommendations for reform and any necessary legislation to implement the reforms.
Lawmakers on Tuesday pressed for answers on how Crooks gained access to the rooftop, how he eluded the Secret Service and how he got a direct line of sight on the former president.
“We’ve all seen the movies, we’ve read the books. The international assassin with sophisticated technology and elaborate plans, sets out to kill a leading political figure in the United States. But how does that match the reality of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania?” asked Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois.
“When a 20-year-old introverted college student outsmarted one of the most sophisticated American law enforcement agencies in history? Came within an inch of killing a former President of the United States? That’s why we gather today to ask these hard questions. There’s more to this story and other aspects we ought to consider as well.”
The congressional task force comes in addition to several other federal inquiries into the shooting. The Department of Homeland Security is conducting an independent review of the Secret Service, the Secret Service is conducting its own internal review, the FBI has undertaken a criminal investigation and the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General is looking into the incident.
President Joe Biden has also ordered an independent review into the shooting. The external probe will be led in part by former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano and Frances Townsend, who was President George W. Bush’s homeland security adviser.
Secret Service Fallout
The shooting occurred at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks accessed a building rooftop less than 500 feet from where Trump was speaking. Crooks fired at Trump with an AR-15 style rifle, injuring Trump’s right ear. Rally attendee Corey Comperatore was killed, and two others were critically injured in addition to Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
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