The law enforcement team tasked with monitoring former President Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Pennsylvania was short-staffed ahead of the assassination attempt, newly released text messages show.
A team leader for Beaver County Emergency Services sent a text message on July 8, five days before the rally, requesting assistance for a rally at the Butler Farm Show grounds. The message was obtained by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
The group then exchanged multiple messages, with one participant expressing concern that they were short-staffed because “everyone else is either working, on vacation, or injured.”
Several members of the text thread explained that they too could not make it to the event, with one saying they were out of state at the time.
“Bravo has two things he can stay all day for and one he has to leave early for,” someone interjected.
Beaver County officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday about what is apparently a staffing issue.
The text messages provided a timeline of the events leading up to the moment that suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from a rooftop near the rally, striking President Trump by the ear, severely wounding two protesters and killing a volunteer firefighter before being shot dead by Secret Service agents.
According to the messages, Crooks, 20, had been under police surveillance for 90 minutes before the first shooting.
At 5:38 p.m., less than an hour before the shooting, one of the officers took a photo of Crooks and sent it to a group chat about suspicious people near the crime scene.
“There’s a kid studying around the building we’re in. I think it’s AGR. I saw him looking at the rangefinder towards the stage. FYI. Be careful if you want to alert SS snipers. I lost sight of him,” the officer wrote to the group.
“Call command and have a uniformed officer take a look,” the officer suggested.
The text messages proved that authorities were aware of the suspicious person, later identified as Crooks, more than an hour and a half before the assassination attempt, not just an hour before, as previously alleged in congressional hearings.
Since then, the federal agency has endured numerous complaints as lawmakers questioned why it allowed Crooks to come within inches of assassinating the former president.
A bipartisan task force led by House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) condemned the security failures as “shocking” and vowed to “ensure accountability” for the incident.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week following the backlash.
