U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said the multiple security lapses at Donald Trump’s July rally in Pennsylvania were a “perfect storm of stunning failure” and that fixing them could have prevented the shooting that injured the former president and killed an attendee.
His assessment comes as the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs released its interim report Wednesday about the assassination attempt this summer. As chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Blumenthal is one of several senators leading the investigation into the incident.
A couple of days after the July 13 shooting, the committee initiated a bipartisan investigation, and within weeks, Blumenthal and other leaders sent letters requesting information from the U.S. Secret Service, FBI and other federal agencies that were responsible for handling planning and security of Trump’s rally in Butler, Pa.
In the course of two months, lawmakers shared a 94-page report with preliminary findings showing little coordination between Secret Service agents and local law enforcement, difficulties with technology, and no “clear chain of command” at the rally that has led to finger pointing about who was responsible for making decisions.
Blumenthal and other committee leaders also vented frustrations about the lack of compliance with their investigation, especially from the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
“What happened here was really an accumulation of errors that produced a perfect storm of stunning failure,” Blumenthal told reporters ahead of the report’s release. “In a sense, a lot of these individual failings, if corrected, at the time might have prevented this tragedy.”
The report was based in part on a few thousand pages of documents from the Secret Service and a dozen transcribed interviews with personnel involved in security for Trump’s rally. Committee staff also did a walk through of the rally site in Butler and received briefings from local law enforcement.
But the report noted that many of the documents are “heavily redacted,” arguing that made it challenging for the committee to conduct its investigation. The report also said that those interviewed gave “contradictory or incomplete information” that countered responses from other law enforcement as well as others in the Secret Service.
One of the biggest takeaways of the report was the inability of agents to identify who was responsible for decision making, which resulted in placing blame on others. The report noted that decisions by Secret Service advance agents were “made jointly, with no specific individual responsible for approval.”
Communication with local law enforcement was “siloed,” complicating the sharing of information among various agencies. Some personnel, but not all, were made aware of a suspicious person nearly 30 minutes before the shooting.
There were also technical difficulties with radios and counter-drone equipment. The report said one counter-sniper was offered a local radio but did not have time to pick it up because he was busy fixing a Secret Service radio.
The counter-unmanned aircraft system also experienced issues and was overseen by someone with limited knowledge. It did not become operable until after the gunman flew his drone over the rally site.
The committee’s report recommends designating an individual responsible for plan approval, better communication among law enforcement counterparts and considerations for additional counter-snipers for outdoor events based on any threats and intelligence.
“There are a lot of indications of sheer incompetence or absences of recollection that create additional doubts about what was done on July 13, and the lack of a chain of command led to some of those failings in record-keeping, which in turn makes more difficult this investigation,” Blumenthal said. He noted that there is “no evidence anyone lied to us.”
Since the shooting, Secret Service and FBI officials have conducted closed-door briefings with federal lawmakers and testified to Congress. Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe testified at a joint Senate hearing in late July about the failure of the Secret Service to secure a rooftop of a nearby building, where the gunman positioned himself a few hundred yards away from Trump’s podium.
The Senate committee’s report also concluded that the Secret Service did not secure the roof of the building to make sure it had adequate cover during the rally.
And during a press conference last week following the agency’s internal review of the matter, Rowe said that the Secret Service holds responsibility for the security lapses.
“There was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach in protocol,” Rowe said Friday, adding that agents will be held accountable and will receive penalties, without offering more details about how many will be disciplined.
Rowe replaced Kimberly Cheatle as director on a temporary basis after her resignation more than a week after the Trump shooting. But Blumenthal said he wants a further shakeup in Secret Service leadership.
“There needs to be, in my opinion, new leadership, beginning at the top. We have an acting director that needs to be a permanent director, and my preference would be that the new director come from outside the agency with a mandate to accomplish far-reaching and fundamental reform based on risk assessment and threat evaluation.”
Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., said there will eventually be a final report with the possibility of an additional interim report as the investigation continues with more interviews scheduled. While the investigation was launched after the July 13 shooting, it will also look into a possible second assassination attempt that occurred earlier this month at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
Amid the concerns of political violence, especially weeks away from the November elections, Congress is expected to give the Secret Service an additional $231 million, attached to a short-term bill to keep the government funded through December.
The committee chairs and ranking members were split along party lines on whether the agency should get more resources and whether more money would be helpful to prevent similar incidents.
Ranking Member Rand Paul, R-Ky., called the lapses in July “human failures” that could not be corrected with money and argued that bad behavior should not be rewarded. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., ranking member of the subcommittee, agreed.
“No amount of money given is going to alleviate human errors,” Paul said.
Even with those similar concerns, Blumenthal supports the funding boost. He referenced first lady Jill Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh on the same day, noting that the Secret Service was unable to have a counter-surveillance unit at both events.
And while discussing other challenges for the agency, Blumenthal argued that an excess of guns as well as access to assault weapons similar to one used by the July 13 suspect make the jobs of Secret Service agents “more challenging and dangerous.”
“There’s no evidence that the shooter here obtained his firearm illegally,” Blumenthal said. “I don’t want to get into gun violence prevention, but I think that point needs to be made.”