Acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Lowe acknowledged at a joint congressional hearing on Tuesday that he is “ashamed” of the security failings that almost led to the assassination of former President Donald Trump.
Rowe, who was promoted to the post last week following the resignation of his boss, said in testimony before the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees that the July 13 shooting at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania was a “failure on many levels.”
He added that he later visited the Butler Farm Show and “identified security deficiencies” and took “corrective measures” to prevent another shooter like 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from opening fire on Trump or Secret Service agents.
“I lay face down to see what he was looking at,” Rowe told the committee members in his opening remarks. “What I saw left me feeling ashamed.”
“As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran of the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better protected,” he confessed.
Cheatle resigned last Tuesday following damning testimony before the House Oversight Committee in which he acknowledged the security failings that led to the near assassination but gave the Secret Service’s response an “A.”
