Trump assassination attempt: Independent panel says Secret Service needs ‘fundamental reform’

An independent panel cited poor communication and failure to secure a key building as two issues facing the Secret Service the day when former President Donald Trump was wounded by a would-be assassin.

The Independent Review Panel examining what allowed Thomas Crooks to open fire on Trump and the crowd that gathered at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, issued its 52-page report on Thursday, blaming the Secret Service for the failures and recommended bringing in in new leadership as well as focusing on its protective mission, The Associated Press reported.

The panel, made up of four former law enforcement officials, wrote, “The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission. Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”

It was a separate investigation into what happened at the Butler Farm Show grounds that left one rallygoer dead, two others and the former president, wounded.

The panel conducted 58 individual interviews from federal, state and local agencies, reviewed 7,000 documents and surveyed the Butler Farm Show site, NBC News reported.

Congress, the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security all conducted their own investigations.

The Independent Review Panel had strong words for the agency in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, writing, “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static,” NBC News reported. DHS oversees the Secret Service.

The Independent Review Panel said the agency had issues with communications that prevented the Secret Service from communicating with local and state law enforcement, the same conclusion that other investigations made, the AP reported.

The Secret Service also did not secure the building that would become the perch for Crooks to target Trump. The building had a clear line of site to the stage where the former president spoke during the rally.

NBC News reported, “the panel has encountered some evidence that Trump Campaign staff expressed resistance regarding the placement of certain heavy equipment and/or vehicles at the site.” The equipment or vehicles could have blocked Crooks’ line of sight.

But in the end, it was the Secret Service’s duty to make the call, the panel found.

“The failure to secure a complex of buildings, portions of which were within approximately 130 yards of the protectee and containing numerous positions carrying high-angle line of sight risk, represents a critical security failure,” the report said, according to the AP.

It also said the Secret Service did not ask local law enforcement what was done to secure the building. The federal agency assumed local officials secured the area.

“Relying on a general understanding that ‘the locals have that area covered’ is simply not good enough and, in fact, at Butler this attitude contributed to the security failure,” the panel said.

The Secret Service and local law enforcement had separate command posts at the rally, which “created, at the highest level, a structural divide in the flow of communications,” adding that a patchwork of radio, cell phone, text and e-mail was used to communicate and at one time, radio signals from a separate event featuring first lady Jill Biden in Pittsburgh were bleeding into the conversation at the Butler location, necessitating the changing of radio channels at the Trump event, the AP reported.

The panel also blamed issues within the culture of the agency, working under the impression that it had to “do more with less” which affected how it conducted its mission to protect the former president, among others. The panel said that measures taken after July 13 should have been put in place before the assassination attempt.

NBC News reported the agency’s budget nearly doubled over the past 10 years, from $1.4 billion in 2014 to more than $3 billion now. It also increased staffing by almost 25%, employing more than 8,100 people including 3,200 special agents and 1,300 uniformed officers, according to the Secret Service’s website.

“Even an unlimited budget would not, by itself, remediate many of the failures of July 13,” the panel said, according to NBC News.

“To be clear, the Panel did not identify any nefarious or malicious intent behind this phenomenon, but rather an overreliance on assigning personnel based on categories (former, candidate, nominee) instead of an individualized assessment of risk,” the report said, according to the AP.

The panel said there was “back and forth” between Trump’s security detail and headquarters on how many people the mission needed. They also said some senior-level staff did not own the mission, pointing out that one senior agent whose job was communication coordination, did not walk the grounds before the event and did not brief their state police counterpart about communication management.

Two agents were also found to be inexperienced including one on Trump’s detail that was to coordinate with the Pittsburgh field office. The agent graduated from the Secret Service academy in 2020 and had been on Trump’s detail since 2023, but before the July 13 event only done “minimal previous site advance work or site security planning.”

The other agent who was said to be inexperienced ran the drone detection system and had only used it twice before, which had been previously reported.

The Secret Service did not respond to NBC News’ request for a comment on the investigation’s report but had said in the past, that it “developed a plan for an agency-wide paradigm shift” to address known issues.

“The increasing demand placed on the agency during this dynamic threat environment has resulted in our people being pushed to the limit,” Anthony Guglielmi, Secret Service chief of communications said, according to NBC News. “We recognize that this is not sustainable, and we cannot risk another mission failure.”

The panel made the following recommendations, according to the AP:

• Unified command post for Secret Service and local law enforcement in one location.
• Overhead surveillance for outdoor events.
• Plans must include mitigation for line-of-sight locations up to 1,000 yards.
• More training.

If “fundamental reform” is not done, the panel said there will be another security failure, NBC News reported.

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