Partisan politics, “debacles,” a failure to adapt to changing threats, a recent assassination attempt on a former president, and a growing number of mistakes and near-fatal incidents mean the US Secret Service is not in a position to protect America's highest leadership, a committee of experts said at a US House of Representatives hearing on August 26.
The hearing, chaired by Rep. Corey Mills (R-Fla.), was a scathing and harsh assessment of the Secret Service, coming just six weeks after the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump in Butler Township, Pennsylvania.
“I don't think they have any idea what's going to happen to them,” said witness Erik Prince, founder of the private security firm Blackwater.
Prince charged that day that the problems were widespread and serious: “There had been catastrophic failures across the business.”
While the shocking reality of an armed 20-year-old sneaking onto a rooftop 130 yards from the podium where Trump was speaking and firing eight shots at him, killing him, is frightening enough, Prince said the new threat is even more serious than the incident that occurred in Butler Township, Pennsylvania on July 13.
“When you look at the lessons learned on the battlefield in Ukraine, the dramatic change in our ability to deliver precision fires at long ranges and the increased ability of small forces to deliver devastating precision fires to any target, whether that's the White House, whether that's in a motorcade, whether that's the president outside or whether that's the president inside somewhere, this has huge implications,” Prince said.
Prince said the former president would probably have been killed if the shooter had aimed for Trump's torso instead of his head, adding that a trained terrorist would not have missed.
“The Secret Service was nearly outmaneuvered by a 20-year-old and all of us, including Donald Trump, literally dodged a bullet that day,” Prince said.
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Trump was speaking at an evening rally in western Pennsylvania on a sweltering July day when would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on the crowd with an AR-15 rifle, shooting Trump in the ear, killing volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore, and critically wounding David Duch and James Copenhaver.
“As a former Navy SEAL sniper, it is clear to me that many basic safety precautions were completely abandoned.”
After Crooks fired his eighth shot, Butler County SWAT officers ended the shootout by shooting the butt of his AR-15. When Crooks tried to turn around, a Secret Service counter-sniper shot him dead with a rifle from about 170 yards away.
Mills struck a serious tone at the hearing by laying out two ways to judge the July 13 failure.
“At this stage, I don't think you can tell the difference between gross negligence and intent,” said Mills, a former State Department counter-sniper and decorated U.S. Army combat veteran who served in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Mills said the list of questions for July 13 includes:
- why high vantage points were not covered;
- Why is there no compatible communications system that covers all law enforcement agencies?
- Where was the monitoring of the venue?
- Why the Secret Service didn't use surveillance drones even though they were provided with them.
- Why the Secret Service missed the morning briefing conducted by local law enforcement.
- And why the Secret Service didn't take into account the presence of a Kubota equipment dealership 400 yards from where Trump was facing.
Just before 6:30 p.m. on July 13, two members of the U.S. Secret Service anti-sniper team leave the Butler Farm Show grounds.
Butler Township Police Department body cameras, via Judicial Watch
“I think it's easy to see why an independent investigation is needed,” Mills said. “I think we understand that if this had been done correctly, we would have received subpoenas immediately on July 14th, obtained security plans, communications plans, motorcade operation plans, data cards of actual anti-sniper range fans, questioned each individual individually to build a supporting board of fact and fiction, and started to look at what was going on.”
Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent who is now a popular radio host and podcaster, described July 13 as an “apocalyptic failure,” particularly in terms of communication between local and federal law enforcement.
“The Secret Service's multi-million dollar radio system, which uses NSA-level encryption, didn't magically fail that day,” Bongino said. “They literally gave them radios they weren't going to take.”
“There is absolutely no excuse.”
“That's why we should take Sen. Mills seriously when he says 'borderline manslaughter,'” he said. “What excuse does it have to say, 'Look, I don't need to communicate with the police officers on the scene?'”
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) revealed in July that pre-programmed radios installed by Butler County Emergency Services for the Secret Service were never used on July 13. Witnesses said the Secret Service never retrieved the radios even after being warned.
Reps. Eli Klain (R-AZ) and Andy Biggs (R-AZ) introduced legislation on July 13 calling for the submission and release of all relevant Secret Service records. Klain said the pace of release so far has been too slow.
“We've seen the last month and a half with very few answers and very little accountability for those tasked with protecting President Trump,” Klain said. “Many of the excuses we've heard from our leaders sound like hollow, pathetic attempts to gaslight the American people.”
Crane enlisted in the U.S. Navy after 9/11 and eventually became a member of SEAL Team 3. He served five combat deployments during the war, three of which were to Iraq.
“As a former Navy SEAL sniper, it is clear to me that many basic safety precautions were completely ignored, leaving President Trump extremely vulnerable,” Klain said. “There is absolutely no excuse.”
Ben Schafer, a Washington SWAT officer who worked at the Trump event, said the lack of drone coverage over the venue and failure to include the water tower in the security zone “left a lot of risk areas unprotected and had a serious, I will say again, serious impact on our ability to secure the venue and the event itself.”
Schaefer, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said Base Butler also suffered from a lack of time to properly prepare for the event and a lack of communication between local and federal governments.
“The lack of coordination between the leaders of the Secret Service's tactical elements left ground forces in the dark and without time to prepare for specific venue considerations and needs prior to the event,” Schaffer said. “Surveillance, sniper, [and] Throughout the meeting that day, the anti-sniper positions were to be in direct contact with each other.
“There is no question that there were significant failures in the Butler incident,” he said. “It is important that we know how and why those security failures occurred so that we can better provide safety and security to senior officials and the public going forward, and I truly believe that the American people deserve that.”
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