While every politician and citizen seem to be sharing their thoughts on what went wrong on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania, a former member of the Secret Service has said that the agency should have had a special team in place during the Donald Trump rally turned assassination attempt.
The shooting was committed by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who evaded security long enough to open fire towards Trump on stage. Though he narrowly missed the former president’s brain, leaving him with a miraculous ear injury, other bullets seriously injured attendees and killed one who was protecting his family. After firing from a nearby rooftop, Crooks was fatally shot by members of the Secret Service.
In the weeks that followed, the country has reeled with questions about the incident, pointing fingers at derogatory rhetoric from both sides of the political aisle. But former Secret Service agent Michael Verden believes that the main issue that allowed the shooting to occur was a lack of communication between federal and local law enforcement.
As testified by Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting director for the Secret Service, local police reportedly spotted Crooks on the roof more than an hour before he opened fire at the stage. However, that key information was not passed on to federal law enforcement. Local authorities also maintained that they were not given the proper resources to effectively alert the Secret Service about the threat.
Rowe’s testimony before the July 30 oversight hearing in the Senate came one week after former director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her position, in response to calls for her to do so after the disastrous mistakes at the Trump rally. Cheatle herself stood testimony before lawmakers, including members of the GOP who grilled her on the actions of that day and accused her of negligently allowing for such drastic security failures.
But keeping presidential candidates safe isn’t about party affiliation. At the core of the job, there must be a “strong, seamless communications plan,” according to Verden. He added that there was a “failure” in this area on July 13. The former Secret Service agent explained that local and federal authorities did not have a “joint command center” during the rally, which is critical for both agencies to effectively “talk to one another.”
The lack of communication resources, however, left the Secret Service and Butler County unable to relay important information. Verden said that “all roads” in the failed security efforts of that day “lead back to communication.”
He also shared that he was surprised that nobody approached the shooter when he was standing by a nearby building. According to Verden, the federal agency trains members for “this exact scenario.” He explained that a federal and local law enforcement official generally team up with the “one reason” of “approach[ing] any and all suspicious people.”
Verden added his belief that there would have been these “protective intelligence teams” at the rally site, meaning the overall security should have been prepared for that situation. He also said that if these teams were not around, that meant there was “a huge inconsistency” in security protocol.
