Failures leading up to attempted Trump assassination indefensible, says acting Secret Service director

Washington — The acting director of the U.S. agency charged with protecting high-profile officials called the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump earlier this month a “failure on multiple levels,” further describing it as shameful.

Ronald Rowe testified before U.S. lawmakers Tuesday, promising immediate changes to fix breakdowns in communications and coverage that allowed a 20-year-old shooter to climb to the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots during the July 13 rally in western Pennsylvania, killing a rally goer and wounding Trump and two others.

“What I saw made me ashamed,” he told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary committees. “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.”

Rowe, who took charge of the Secret Service following last week’s resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, said the agency’s own investigation indicates responsibility for securing the section of roof used by the shooter had been assigned to local sniper teams.

Those teams should have had a clear view of the shooter as he climbed into place, he said.

“We were told that building was going to be covered,” Rowe told lawmakers. “I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line when that's where they were posted.”

Rowe also admitted to lawmakers that even though local law enforcement had identified the shooter as a suspicious person more than an hour before the rally, that information never got to the Secret Service agents protecting the former president.

“It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that state and local channel,” he said. 

“It is troubling,” Rowe added. “We didn't know that there was this incident going on. … Nothing about a man on the roof. Nothing about a man with a gun.”

Cheatle resigned a day after she was berated by a congressional committee for failing to prevent the attempt on Trump’s life.

Cheatle testified that the Secret Service had been told about a suspicious person up to five times prior to the shooting.

Meanwhile, the FBI’s ongoing investigation into the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, has yet to determine why he tried to kill the former president.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate told lawmakers Tuesday that the bureau has now conducted more than 460 interviews but has so far come up empty.

“The investigation has not identified a motive, nor any coconspirators or others with advance knowledge,” Abbate said, adding, “absolutely nothing has been ruled out.”

But the deputy FBI director said a newly discovered social media account used in 2019-2020 may shed some new light on the shooter’s motivation.

“There were over 700 comments posted from this account,” he told lawmakers. “Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”

“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 it … 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.”

FBI officials, who briefed reporters on Monday, described Crooks as an intelligent loner and said it appears he “made significant efforts to conceal his activities,” which may have begun more than a year ago.

Investigators said that is when he began using encrypted email accounts and aliases to make online, gun-related purchases, followed by a series of online purchases of chemicals to make the three explosive devices found in his car and bedroom.

Crooks also began to do internet searches on mass shootings, power plants, a variety of elected officials and attempted assassinations.

They also noted a lack of communication between the shooter and others, in general.

“We have identified only a couple people who we would call his friends, and most of those contacts were, in fact, dated,” said FBI Special Agent Kevin Rojek.

Rojek added that even the shooter’s accounts on gaming platforms showed “very little interaction,” describing it as outside the norm.