The acting director of the U.S. Secret Service said on August 2 that the local police command center was not staffed when an emergency radio alert was received about a man with a gun on a roof 130 yards from where former President Donald Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
“This case is about what happened in the last 30 seconds before the gunman opened fire, and it’s clear to me that during those 30 seconds there was clearly radio communication on local wireless networks that we were not aware of,” Ronald L. Rowe Jr. said at a press conference in Washington, D.C.
“So we need to co-locate and leverage our counterpart systems more effectively and this will drive our work going forward,” Lowe said.
The confession appears to answer a burning question raised by lawmakers and security analysts over the past few weeks: If local police knew about the man with the gun, why didn’t the Secret Service sniper know?
“You can easily see someone running around on the roof ridge. Why didn’t the Secret Service sniper see him?”
Officials have blamed “silos” of radio communications for the Secret Service’s lack of visibility into what local police are collecting. Rowe said that while Pennsylvania State Police agents were in the Secret Service security room on July 13, there were no Secret Service agents in the local police command center.
“State and local governments [agency] “If we have a unified command post, we may need to be in that room as well, instead of being in another room and relying on that counterpart system,” Rowe said.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) had earlier revealed that radios provided by local police to the Secret Service for interagency communications were never used on July 13.
Rowe said the anti-sniper team at the Butler event communicated by cell phone text messages rather than radio.
Acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald L. Rowe Jr. testified at a joint hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington, DC on July 30.Photo: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
“In terms of counter-snipers, they were using texting on their cell phones,” Rowe said. “At this point, I have instructed everyone to use the wireless network going forward.”
Suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, shot Trump in the right ear with an AR-15-style rifle shortly after 6:11 p.m.
Crooks fired seven more shots before being shot and killed by a law enforcement counter-sniper from 448 yards away, an expert told The Blaze News.
“Just before the Secret Service shot him, we saw him get up and brandish the weapon and point it at us.”
According to The Washington Post, Crooks stopped firing after eight shots when Butler County tactical officers fired at him from the ground behind the fairgrounds bleachers. There was a 10-second pause after Crooks’ eighth shot (fired at roughly the same time as the Butler County Special Forces officers) before he attempted to reposition himself on the roof. He did not fire again and was killed by anti-sniper bullets seconds later.
Video taken by bystander John Maris from just west of Building 6 shows Crooks turning around and looking down at the crowd, who were desperately trying to warn police.
“All I saw was his face looking towards me,” Maris said. He told News Nation. “The guy in front of me had his camera zoomed in – I think he was taking a photo – and he was like, ‘Hey, he’s got a gun and he’s aiming it at us,'” he said.
“I then Zoomed back on the video and sure enough, I saw him get up and brandish the weapon and point it in our direction just before the Secret Service shot him,” Mullis said.
Trump avoided a horrific death only because he turned his head at the perfect time to look at a giant immigration chart on a video screen. Trump’s former presidential physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, said that if the bullet had hit him even a quarter-inch closer, Trump would have been dead. Dr. Jackson has examined Trump at least twice since the shooting.
Rowe made it clear that Trump had not received Secret Service anti-sniper protection at any of his 2024 events prior to the Butler rally.
“This is the first time that Secret Service counter-sniper personnel have been deployed to assist the security detail of a former president,” Rowe said. The Trump campaign, in return, had received “state and local resources” for previous campaign rallies and other events.
At the news conference, Rowe repeated his claim that Secret Service agents and counter-snipers were unaware that Crooks was on the roof with a rifle until he fired eight shots at Trump and the crowd at 6:11:33 p.m.
Federal agencies responsible for Trump’s security were unaware that local police had surrounded American Glass Research Building 6 about two minutes earlier, and that a passerby on the west side of the building had seen a man with a rifle crawling on the roof.
At 6:11 p.m., an officer lifted up to look onto the roof and saw Crooks pointing a rifle at himself. The officer fell to the ground and later broadcast over his police radio that a man was lying face-down on the roof with a gun — 30 seconds before Crooks opened fire, according to a timeline compiled by Johnson’s office.
“Based on what I know now, neither the Secret Service counter-sniper team nor the former president’s security detail knew that there was a man with a gun on the roof of the AGR building,” Rowe said. “My understanding is that they were not aware that the gunman had a gun until they heard gunshots.”
Rowe’s comments underscore the widening gulf between what local law enforcement knew during the critical two minutes before the shooting and what the Secret Service somehow didn’t know.
Hot on the heels: Trump vs. ABC Journalists at NAJB Conference | Sen. Ron Johnson | July 31, 2024Youtube
Rowe’s remarks were made against the backdrop of new video taken from behind Trump’s podium by shooting victim James Copenhaver, who shows Crooks running across rooftops in the distance, dropping to one knee and then assuming a prone shooting position.
“You could easily see somebody running around on the ridge of the roof, and that was Crooks,” Johnson told “Blaze News Tonight.” “The crowd saw Crooks. Why didn’t the Secret Service sniper see Crooks?”
At a U.S. Senate hearing on July 30, Rowe suggested that local police were to blame for not securing all rooftops within view of Butler’s events, but then walked back on that claim.
“The Secret Service takes full responsibility for the tragic events of July 13,” Rowe said. “This was a failure of duty. Our agency’s sole responsibility is to ensure that those we protect are never put at risk. That failed with Butler, and I am working to ensure such a failure never happens again.”
“That building was so close to the perimeter, we should have had more of a presence.”
Lowe’s comments are unlikely to assuage growing concern and anxiety in Congress over the Secret Service’s historic failure to assassinate Butler, a former president and leading 2024 presidential candidate.
Crooks first appeared to local police as a suspicious person when a Beaver County police officer who was off-duty found him sitting at a nearby picnic table sometime between 4:20 and 4:26 p.m. and texted his coworker.
A local police sniper captured a photo of would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks on a retaining wall near the building used as a base to shoot and kill former President Donald J. Trump on July 13.
Photo courtesy of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.)
“Just letting you know someone snuck in after us and parked next to our car,” the officer texted at 4:27 p.m., according to recordings released by Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa. “He knows you guys are out there because he saw me go outside with my rifle and put it in my car and he’s just letting you know because he’s sitting directly to the right of the picnic table about 50 yards from the exit.”
A counter-sniper in a building behind the one Crooks was using as a firing base took two photographs of Crooks “lurking” at 5:14 p.m. According to the timeline A photo of Crooks riding a bicycle onto the property was taken at 5:28 p.m. The photo was texted to a local counter-sniper unit at 5:38 p.m., then forwarded to the command center at 5:45 p.m., Johnson’s office said in a statement.
“So that’s 26 minutes before the first shot was fired,” Johnson said. “Again, this photo was taken at 5:14 a.m., almost an hour before the first shot was fired.”
“So what happened in the 26 minutes after the snipers received the photographs and their location? What were they doing? Why weren’t they continuously monitoring the AGR building?”
Security plan for the Butler Farm Show, where former President Donald J. Trump was shot on July 13. The would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, is pictured at top right, firing from the roof.Beaver County Emergency Services Unit SWAT
According to the venue’s security plan, snipers from Butler and Beaver counties were stationed in a two-story building just north of Building 6, where Crooks fired his shot, while counter-snipers from Washington County were positioned southwest of the event stage and a few hundred yards away from Building 6.
Rowe said the roof on the AGR campus, located north of the fairgrounds, “should have been better covered.”
“We should have had a better look at the roof line for the people we were protecting,” he said. “From a Secret Service perspective, there should have been at least another pair of eyes there. That building was very close to the perimeter, and we should have had more look.”
Local law enforcement agencies assisting with the Butler event included the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, Beaver County Emergency Services Unit, Butler County Police Department, Allegheny County Bomb Squad, Washington County SWAT Team and Pennsylvania State Police.
Rep. Corey Mills (R-Fla.), a former soldier with the 82nd Airborne Division in Iraq and a countersniper for the State Department, said Butler posed even greater security risks than previously known.
“I was personally where Thomas Crooks fired his gun and can say with confidence that that building was in a vantage point that would have allowed him to see the gunman at any time,” Mills told Fox News. “We went to the exact location where President Trump was standing when this happened and I can say with confidence that the Kubota Manufacturing Center, over 420 yards from the perimeter, was where the shot was aimed at the president at noon.”
“It goes without saying that there were numerous buildings on the other side of the stage that could have been a sniper from that position,” Mills said, describing the Butler incident as “the largest breach and failure of Secret Service and security that we’ve ever seen.”
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