Senators accuse Secret Service of trying to make local police a ‘scapegoat' following Trump rally shooting
Senators are now accusing the Secret Service of trying to make local law enforcement into "a scapegoat" for the Trump rally shooting after its acting director testified this week about why gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks wasn’t spotted in advance in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Ronald Rowe, during his Capitol Hill testimony on Tuesday, appeared to blame local police for not seeing Crooks on top of the building from which he ultimately fired from. However, on Wednesday, the district attorney of Butler County disputed Rowe’s account and told Fox News that local snipers were not responsible for monitoring that rooftop.
"I think they’re looking for a scapegoat," Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told The Washington Times following Rowe’s testimony.
"This has a lot of CYA [cover your a--] feel to it," added Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
BUTLER DISTRICT ATTORNEY SAYS LOCAL SNIPERS WERE NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ROOFTOP SHOOTER FIRED FROM
As part of his testimony, Rowe showed senators an image of the roof of the building that Crooks scaled prior to opening fire at former President Trump.
"This is from the second floor of the building. This point of view is the point of view where the counter sniper team locally was posted," he said. "The gold arrow indicates where the shooter fired from. Looking left, why was the assailant not seen? When we were told that building was going to be covered, that there had been a face to face that afternoon, that our team leads met."
Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger told Fox News the next day he coordinated local snipers working at the July 13 rally and they were assigned to a window with a different vantage point than the one Rowe pointed to during his testimony.
Goldinger added that monitoring the roof of the AGR building, where Crooks perched and opened fire, was not the local snipers' assignment.
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Hawley told The Washington Times he has heard different stories from whistleblowers on both sides and "there’s a lot of blaming each other."
"What I heard yesterday was a lot of wanting to litigate who’s really to blame, ‘It’s really not us; it really wasn’t that bad,’" Hawley said on Wednesday, regarding Rowe’s comments.
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said to The Washington Times that "the Secret Service throwing local law enforcement under the bus [is] not only unfair, but also unwise."
"They’re going to have trouble getting local police to cooperate if they make them the ones to blame when anything goes wrong," he reportedly added.
Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich.., meanwhile, said he is reserving final judgment until the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee that he chairs interviews all parties involved at the rally shooting, according to The Washington Times.
"In my mind, at this point, [the] Secret Service should have been aware of how strategically significant that rooftop was when it comes to a potential threat," he was quoted as saying.
Fox News' Christina Coulter and CB Cotton contributed to this report.