Acting Secret Service director briefs lawmakers on Trump assassination attempt ahead of public report
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe spoke with members of both the House and Senate in closed sessions Thursday to discuss the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Rowe briefed members in both chambers about the agency’s interim report examining the USSS’s security lapses that led to a gunman being able to scale a nearby building and open fire on Trump, just minutes into his rally.
Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., the lead Democrat on the Trump Assassination Task Force told Fox News Digital that the briefing with Rowe was a “very lengthy and very candid discussion.”
Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testifies before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs committees on Capitol Hill on July 30, 2024, in Washington, DC. (Michael A. McCoy for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“They discussed the … failings that occurred that day and what’s been done to fix it, as well as some of the resourcing constraints the Secret Service has faced this election cycle,” Crow said of Rowe’s briefing with lawmakers. “He made an outline of their internal report and briefed us on their internal mission evaluation, which is now complete.”
Fox News was previously informed that the overall mission assurance probe conducted by the Secret Service is nearly complete and will soon be made public.
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According to Crow, Rowe told lawmakers that he had looked “at everything from the site selection and the planning for security for that day; interaction between local law enforcement and campaign staff for the event; the communication, or lack of communication as the case might be in several instances between Secret Service and local law enforcement; the issue of perimeter security and lines of sight and then the clearing of lines of sight.”
Speaking about his own visit to the site of the July rally, Crow said “the perimeter itself was too small…and the fact that the shooter was on a roof of a building a little more than a hundred yards away from the platform where the former president was standing and that was outside the perimeter is problematic.”
The Task Force is slated to hold its first public hearing with a focus on local law enforcement later this month.
Former President Trump was injured during an assassination attempt at a rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters Thursday that lawmakers “will have a report very, very soon that I think will absolutely shock the American people about the lapses and lags in protection that was afforded that day and the breakdown in communication, failure and responsibility.”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., told reporters, “The most important point that we want to make is this is bipartisan.”
“We truly believe the American people need to know the full truth, and the only way they’re going to have confidence in it is if it’s in a completely nonpartisan way.”
Meanwhile, Several senior Secret Service officials who planned to retire soon have been encouraged to do so more urgently to escape the scrutiny from Congress over the next several months.
Fox News has been informed that several high-level Secret Service officials who have either direct or indirect connections to the Butler, Pennsylvania security situation are retiring. While the employees are eligible for retirement, they’ve been encouraged by senior leadership to do so more quickly to avoid lengthy congressional interviews and investigations.
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Separately, the FBI is conducting a separate investigation into the shooter, and that is still ongoing.
