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Congress uncovers major Secret Service failures – and urges change

Despite heightened partisan tensions heading into a consequential election, Congress has put aside its usual divisive rhetoric to investigate the dual Trump assassination attempts in a serious, bipartisan way. 

A House panel held its first hearing Thursday. Members of local law enforcement who were working at the Butler, Pennsylvania, site when former President Donald Trump was shot and nearly killed on July 13 helped lawmakers piece together a series of failures in planning, coordination, and communications.

Why We Wrote This

Key details are emerging from both a House hearing and a Senate report on Secret Service lapses in security for presidential candidates. A bipartisan effort in Congress aims to identify and fix systemic problems.

The overall thrust of their testimony corroborated an interim Senate report released Wednesday that found “foreseeable, preventable” failures. 

These congressional investigations aim to uncover not only what went wrong but also any systemic reasons for such mistakes. 

Untangling such problems, some due to chronic understaffing as well as increased operational demands on the Secret Service, will take time. But both the agency and lawmakers recognize the need to act immediately to prevent a potentially explosive act of violence so close to Election Day. 

“We must be united in our belief as Americans – not as Republicans or Democrats – that political disagreement is settled through rigorous debate, not violence,” said Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, the top Democrat on the House panel.  

Despite heightened partisan tensions heading into a consequential election, Congress has put aside its usual divisive rhetoric to investigate the dual Trump assassination attempts in a serious, bipartisan way. 

“We must be united in our belief as Americans – not as Republicans or Democrats – that political disagreement is settled through rigorous debate, not violence,” said Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, a retired Army Ranger and the top Democrat on a bipartisan House panel that held its first hearing Thursday. “This task force has a solemn, urgent responsibility to uncover the failures and help stop them from being repeated.”

At the hearing, members of local law enforcement who were working at the Butler, Pennsylvania, site when former President Donald Trump was shot and nearly killed on July 13 helped lawmakers piece together a series of failures in planning, coordination, and communications. The overall thrust of their testimony corroborated an interim Senate report released Wednesday that found “foreseeable, preventable” failures. 

Why We Wrote This

Key details are emerging from both a House hearing and a Senate report on Secret Service lapses in security for presidential candidates. A bipartisan effort in Congress aims to identify and fix systemic problems.

Both the House and Senate investigations have expanded to include a second apparent assassination attempt on Mr. Trump in Florida earlier this month, underscoring the urgency as he and Vice President Kamala Harris step up their appearances in the final weeks of the campaign. 

These congressional investigations aim to uncover not only what went wrong but also any systemic reasons for such mistakes, including an apparent lack of accountability and responsibility. Untangling such systemic problems, some due to chronic understaffing as well as increased operational demands on the Secret Service, will take time. But both the agency and lawmakers recognize the need to act immediately to address the risk of violence close to Election Day.

“In this next phase we will be seeking answers about the Secret Service’s questionable decisions regarding planning, resources, and the apparent lack of leadership that led to complacency and vulnerability on July 13,” said House task force Chair Mike Kelly, a Pennsylvania Republican who grew up in Butler.

Evan Vucci/AP

Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump is covered by U.S. Secret Service agents at a campaign rally, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Among the more stunning failures identified by the Senate report, which is based on 2,800 pages of documents and a dozen transcribed interviews with U.S. Secret Service personnel: 

  • A Pennsylvania State Police lieutenant involved in a planning meeting on site five days before the rally said the U.S. Secret Service couldn’t answer basic questions, including where the stage would be.
  • Countersnipers, which had not previously been used for presidential candidates who were not yet official nominees of their party, were added to the security plan due to credible intelligence of a threat, relayed by Mr. Trump’s detail, but the Secret Service’s special agent in charge of the rally was never notified of that threat.
  • Not only were the Secret Service and local law enforcement communicating on separate radio frequencies, but their communications teams were operating out of separate locations more than 100 yards apart. That is an unusual departure from the norm of a single unified command center, and hampered quick sharing of information. 
  • The Secret Service agent running a system for countering drones, which the shooter used to surveil the area, only had about three months of experience using that equipment. When technical problems arose, he had to call a toll-free 888 hotline, delaying deployment of the system.

Mr. Trump, who is scheduled to return to the same Butler site for another rally next weekend, was warned earlier this week in a briefing with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that Iran is behind real and specific threats to assassinate him “to destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.”

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