A former U.S. Secret Service agent questioned why former President Trump was allowed to speak at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on Saturday even though “suspects” had been identified beforehand.
“Why the rush? Why rush him onto the stage? Why not delay?” Mike Matranga asked on “America’s Newsroom” Thursday.
“It would have taken nothing to tactically pause, assess the situation, locate the perpetrator and prevent something I’ve never seen in 43 years.”
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The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was considered a “person of interest” by the Secret Service after police determined he was acting suspiciously and had a golf rangefinder in his possession, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.
Crooks was only identified as a threat when he “retrieved a weapon” and climbed onto the roof of a building shortly before the shooting, Guglielmi said, adding that being identified as a threat requires “a different process and course of action than a suspect.”
Shortly thereafter, Butler Township police officers confronted Crooks on a rooftop, where he pointed a gun at one of the officers, who then jumped off the roof. Crooks then fired a gun at Trump and was shot and killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
Matranga called the situation a “catastrophic failure.”
“It’s wrong to just blame local law enforcement without even addressing the American people,” he said. “This is a catastrophic failure of communication. We’ve known for decades that we rely too heavily on local law enforcement to do the job they’re supposed to do, so this is a catastrophic failure.”
“The former president deserves better,” he continued. “The people he injured and the people who died from his injuries deserve better.”
Republican presidential candidate and former president Donald Trump was hurriedly escorted off the stage during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
In response to the incident, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said: Facing pressure to resignRepublican House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana told Fox Business on Thursday that he’s prepared to ask President Biden to remove her from office.
In an interview with ABC News on Tuesday, Cheatle said the Secret Service was aware of security vulnerabilities in the building where Crooks was positioned to shoot at Trump, but the decision was made not to station personnel on the roof.
Cheatle made the remarks a few hours later. Fox News Digital reported. Local police officers reportedly spotted a suspicious man carrying a rangefinder just 30 minutes before Saturday’s assassination attempt.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof on the highest part, so, you know, for safety reasons, you don’t want people on a sloped roof, so the decision was made to protect the building from the inside,” she said.
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Fox News’ Greg Norman, David Spunt, Jake Gibson, Chris Pandolfo and Michael Lewis contributed to this report.
