Butler, Pennsylvania – A whistleblower told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri that a police officer assigned to guard the roof of the building where suspected assassin Thomas Crooks was shot and killed on July 13 resigned from his post because it was “too hot.”
Crooks, 20, fired multiple rounds from the roof of American Glass Research Building 6, outside the rally’s boundaries but in direct view of the former president as he took to the stage at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“This comes from a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Secret Service’s planning and preparations for the day,” Hawley said. “This whistleblower has told my office that at least one officer was stationed on the roof. In other words, the plan was for officers to be on the roof at all times during the rally, but that did not happen, and the whistleblower has told me that the officer stationed on that roof abandoned the roof.”
Butler’s temperature reached 92 degrees Fahrenheit on July 13, and prior to the assassination attempt, emergency medical personnel at the rally were primarily focused on treating people suffering from heatstroke.
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Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) said he was told by a whistleblower that officers were ordered to guard the roof of the building where Thomas Crooks opened fire at a Trump rally on July 13, but that they left because it was “too hot” that day. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Hawley, who visited the rally on July 19, noted that the AGR building in question was within about 150 yards of the main stage at Trump’s rally.
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Deputies have confirmed that Crooks purchased a ladder at Home Depot before the shooting at the rally that killed 50-year-old firefighter and father Corey Comperatore and seriously injured two others, David Duch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74, but he could have reached the roof of the AGR Building without a ladder. Deputies who visited the scene on Monday were able to get to the roof without a ladder.
“… He or she felt it was too hot and they didn’t need to go outside.”
The same whistleblower told Sen. Hawley that multiple officers were patrolling the perimeter of the building “to make sure someone couldn’t jump onto the roof,” presumably through an air conditioning unit sticking out of the building’s window, the senator said.
The Butler Farm Show, the site of a campaign rally for former Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, is photographed in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Monday, July 15, 2024. Trump was injured in an assassination attempt while speaking at a rally on July 13. (AP Photo/Jean J. Puskar)
The roof of the Butler Fairgrounds in Pennsylvania, where a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers visited on July 22. (Fox News Digital)
“Every whistleblower who has come forward to my office says police were instructed to be on the roof and they weren’t, police were instructed to patrol the perimeter of the building and they weren’t, they were supposed to communicate on a common radio frequency and they weren’t,” Hawley said. “I have to say that none of this is a surprise, because with all of these failures and errors, it’s just astounding that this 20-year-old was able to get onto a low-lying roof and fire multiple rounds into a building in full view of everyone.” [former] president.”
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About an hour passed between when law enforcement first saw a suspicious person near the rally and when Crooks opened fire. Authorities briefly lost sight of the suspect, but then at about 5:52 p.m., the shooter “was on him,” Hawley said, citing a briefing he attended last week with former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle.
The whistleblower also told Hawley that the Secret Service had referred inspections of the AGR building and its roof to local or state law enforcement, but that local and federal officials were pointing the finger at each other.
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“There’s a tremendous effort between the Secret Service on the one hand, the Department of Homeland Security on the other, and state and local law enforcement to shift the blame onto one another. That’s why we need these facts out in the open. We need to have real, substantive hearings, not just another hearing like the last one. [on Monday] “The former director of the Secret Service didn’t even answer the question. What a travesty,” Hawley said.
Thomas Crooks attends a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. (Senator Ron Johnson)
His comments came the same day that Cheatle resigned from his position on Tuesday morning.
“To the United States Secret Service: The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leadership and financial infrastructure,” Cheatle wrote in a letter to the agency obtained by Fox News. “On July 13th, we failed to fulfill that mission.”
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Cheatle said the “surveillance” over the past week had been “intense and will continue as the pace of operations increases.”
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“As director, I take full responsibility for any security failures,” she wrote.
Hawley is now also calling on Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to resign.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) (left) is calling for the resignation of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas following the assassination attempt on former President Trump. (Getty Images)
“Alejandro Mayorkas should resign. He’s the head of Homeland Security. He’s responsible for the Secret Service, the DHS staff, everything,” the Missouri senator said. “Another whistleblower said that most of the federal security personnel there that day were not Secret Service. Most were DHS personnel deployed specifically for that day. They did little to prepare, they didn’t read the security plan, and they didn’t perform their duties as planned.”
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Hawley suggested the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was overwhelmed under Mayorkas’ leadership.
A DHS spokesperson said, “We cannot comment on matters related to ongoing investigations. Of course, we are committed to cooperating with any appropriate and appropriate investigations into what happened on Saturday, including with Congress, the Inspector General, and both our own internal and independent investigations.”
The Secret Service did not respond to inquiries from Fox News Digital about Hawley’s comments.
“The Department of Homeland Security is in complete crisis.”
“The reason we have so many Homeland Security agents here is because a lot of them are agents, and their job is to investigate illegal immigration and crime in the field on U.S. soil. A lot of them are deployed to the southern border, so they don’t have a lot of resources to begin with, and they’re pulling people from other positions and sending them to this rally. They’re not being briefed. They’re not being trained to do this,” Hawley said.
Governor Mayorkas announced Sunday that he has appointed a bipartisan commission of law enforcement experts to conduct a 45-day independent investigation into the assassination attempt.
“The officers and officers of the United States Secret Service are the finest security organization in the world, performing one of the most demanding and challenging tasks in our government,” the Homeland Security Secretary said. “This independent investigation will help the organization excel even more.”
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Hawley’s office continues to be in contact with the whistleblower about the shooting at the Trump rally and what happened that led Crooks to enter the roof of the AGR building that night with an AR-15.
