A damning new report from the Senate Homeland Safety and Authorities Affairs Committee outlines the huge safety failures one 12 months in the past in Butler, Pennsylvania, that almost killed President Trump.
One of the crucial chilling findings within the report is that the Secret Service didn’t even self-discipline an agent who was made conscious of the shooter 25 minutes earlier than he fired eight rounds on the President and harmless rallygoers, however did nothing.
The 22-page report, which examines the “gorgeous failures by the US Secret Service (USSS) that allowed then-former President Donald J. Trump to be shot on July 13, 2024,” was launched on the one-year anniversary of the incident.
“One 12 months later, the info stay as chilling as ever: a former President of the US and main celebration candidate was shot within the head at a public rally by a person who was reported as suspicious and carrying a rangefinder to the Secret Service a minimum of 25 minutes prior,” the report’s abstract reads.
One other report from the Authorities Accountability Workplace reveals that the Secret Service was made conscious of a menace towards Trump’s life ten days prior, however didn’t alert the crew chargeable for securing Trump’s July 13, 2024, rally.
“What occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, was not only a tragedy—it was a scandal. America Secret Service did not act on credible intelligence, did not coordinate with native regulation enforcement, and failed to stop an assault that almost took the lifetime of a then-former president,” Senate Homeland Safety and Authorities Affairs Committee Chairman Rand Paul (R-KY) stated in a press release.
“Regardless of these failures, nobody has been fired. And we solely know what little self-discipline was handed out as a result of I issued a subpoena. That’s unacceptable. This was not a single lapse in judgment. It was an entire breakdown of safety at each stage—fueled by bureaucratic indifference, an absence of clear protocols, and a surprising refusal to behave on direct threats. We should maintain people accountable and guarantee reforms are totally applied so this by no means occurs once more.”
The report discovered that an unnamed Secret Service safety room agent, “the person accountable for communications,” who was partially recognized because the Particular Agent in Cost of the USSS Buffalo, New York, Discipline Workplace, was allegedly knowledgeable a few suspicious indivisual carrying a rangefinder 25 minutes earlier than the taking pictures. That particular person later turned out to be 20-year-old gunman Thomas Crooks.
“The job of a Safety Room Agent is to be the conduit of communications between all entities concerned in a protecting web site to be able to guarantee situational consciousness of all events concerned in securing the occasion,” the report notes.
The agent determined to have the Secret Service counter-unmanned aerial programs agent relay this data by way of telephone to the USSS Counter Sniper Response Agent, as an alternative of his radio, and due to this fact, “the message didn’t exit to USSS put up standers, counter snipers, and DTD shift element,” the report states. The report additionally describes the operator, tasked with managing counter-unmanned aerial programs, as “inexperienced.”
In response to the report, a Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) Officer advised the PSP and FBI in a joint interview that he had notified the safety room agent of the potential menace, however the agent appeared to disregard it. “It wasn’t like he rushed round or did something,” the PSP officer stated.
“After I stated exterior the perimeter, I received a definite impression that there is, like, an absence of urgency,” the officer advised the FBI and PSP.
The agent appeared to corroborate the “lack of urgency” when he advised the Committee, “For somebody on the outer perimeter, there’s actually solely two property obtainable to us from a USSS perspective to dispatch… the [protective intelligence] response and the [counter sniper] response as a result of they’re the one people who find themselves able to leaving the inside safe perimeter to go on the skin to search for anyone.” Nevertheless, as famous earlier than
The agent additionally gave conflicting narratives in each his interviews with the FBI and PSP and the Senate Committee, telling the Committee he heard concerning the shooter on the roof at roughly 3 o’clock, however telling PSP and FBI that he was by no means made conscious of the shooter.
“By his personal admission, he by no means had direct contact with native regulation enforcement all through the day, and that his solely methodology of communication with them was by means of the PSP officer within the USSS Safety Room.cx Furthermore, when requested by the Committee if he had considered the PSP or Butler Emergency Companies Unit (ESU) operations plan previous to the occasion, he acknowledged that his first time seeing both of the operations plans was the day previous to his transcribed interview with the Committee.”
Nevertheless, this agent confronted no disciplinary motion and was in a position to resign with none consequence final month, suspiciously about two weeks earlier than the report was launched on July 13.
Secret Service stated in a doc offered to the Committee, “After the Mission Assurance Inquiry evaluation was accomplished, as a part of the willpower of which staff would possibly face self-discipline, [the USSS Security Room Agent] was discovered to not be in violation of Secret Service coverage. [The USSS Security Room Agent] retired on June 28, 2025.”
Whereas six USSS personnel have been suspended with out pay earlier this month, “no USSS personnel have been fired for his or her function within the planning or execution of the Butler rally,” the report states.
