The July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, was the first time the Secret Service provided its own countersnipers to protect former President Donald Trump as he campaigns for a second term, the agency’s acting director said Friday.
Mr. Trump was nearly assassinated at that rally after a lone gunman climbed on the roof of a nearby building and shot at the former president with an AR-15 rifle. The shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired at least eight rounds, grazing Mr. Trump’s ear, killing one rallygoer and injuring two others, before a Secret Service countersniper shot and killed him.
Ronald Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director, held a press briefing Friday where he revealed that the July 13 rally was the first Trump campaign event in which the agency used its own countersnipers.
The Secret Service has relied on state and local law enforcement for sniper coverage at other Trump campaign events, but moving forward the agency will provide the snipers to protect the Republican presidential nominee, he said.
“With respect to why they were there in Butler, listen, we evaluate our threat landscape every day. We calibrate based on that threat. We evaluated a threat stream that we have and we put our Secret Service countersniper personnel out there,” Mr. Rowe said, without elaborating on the specific nature of the threat.
“Looking back, it was very fortunate that we did,” he said. “But the former president will have countersniper coverage moving forward.”
Mr. Rowe said Secret Service sniper coverage will also be provided for events held by President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, whoever she picks as her running mate, and Republican vice presidential nominee J.D. Vance.
“Our campaign cadence now has obviously picked up, and we’re going to make sure that we have all the resources out there to address any challenges that we have,” he said.
While planning to direct more Secret Service resources to the presidential campaigns, Mr. Rowe made clear he was not suggesting the agency delegates too much of its responsibility to state and local partners.
“There’s not an overreliance on them,” he said. “They’re out there every day securing their communities. They know the terrain. They know the people. More importantly, they know the local laws.”
Friday’s press briefing followed a promise Mr. Rowe made to senators during a congressional hearing on Tuesday that he would do more to keep the public updated on the Secret Service’s internal investigation into the assassination attempt.
Mr. Rowe acknowledged in his opening remarks Friday that the Secret Service typically refrains from commenting on ongoing investigations. “But we know these were extraordinary circumstances,” he said.
The acting director took a different tone than he did during his testimony on Tuesday when describing the security failures of July 13, going out of his way on Friday to make clear he was not trying to assign any blame to local law enforcement officers who supported the Secret Service at the rally.
Senators had told The Washington Times earlier this week that they felt Mr. Rowe threw local law enforcement under the bus during Tuesday’s hearing and used them as a scapegoat for failing to secure the roof of a building that Crooks accessed to shoot at Mr. Trump.
“In no way should any state or local agency supporting us in Butler on July 13 be held responsible for our Secret Service failure,” Mr. Rowe said Friday.
During the hearing, he called out local snipers stationed in a second-story window in an adjacent building for not seeing Crooks, saying all they had to do was look left. On Friday, Mr. Rowe said he was not intending to shift blame.
“This was a Secret Service failure,” he said. “That roof line should have been covered. We should have had better eyes on that.”
Mr. Rowe convened a call this week with all special agents in charge of the Secret Service’s field offices to tell them they need to be “very clear” with local law enforcement partners about what is needed of them to avoid any miscommunications or misunderstandings at future events, which he promised will have a more “overt presence” of law enforcement to deter bad actors.
The Secret Service did not have a surveillance drone at the Butlery rally, Mr. Rowe said, noting he is investigating why the agency turned down local law enforcement’s offer to fly one. The Secret Service plans to use drones in its security plans moving forward.
During the Senate hearing, Mr. Rowe testified that the Secret Service had planned to launch counter-drone technology but it was delayed because of cellular bandwidth issues. Asked Friday if that technology is deployed in the air like a typical drone, he declined to reveal “too much sensitive information,” but said it allows the agency to pinpoint the location of drones in the area.
Mr. Rowe provided a timeline of events leading up to and the day of the Butler rally. His timeline largely supports one from the FBI, which is leading the criminal investigation into the assassination attempt, but filled in some gaps about the Secret Service’s specific actions.
On July 8, Secret Service personnel from the Pittsburgh field office conducted planning meetings and a site walkthrough with state and local law enforcement partners and Trump campaign staff. Separate Secret Service countersniper and technical security personnel arrived in Pittsburgh on July 10 to begin advanced planning for their teams.
“In the morning of July 13, a site briefing was conducted with Secret Service personnel and law enforcement partners supporting the event,” Mr. Rowe said. That contradicts whistleblower reports lawmakers have cited that Secret Service personnel were not present for the security briefing held the morning of the rally.
At 5:45 p.m., a member of the local counter sniper team from the Butler County Police Department texted the Secret Service countersniper team leader about a suspicious person, sending two photos of the man later identified as Crooks.
Eight minutes later that Secret Service team leader texted the agency’s countersnipers that local law enforcement was looking for a suspicious person lurking around a building in the AGR International Inc. complex adjacent to the rally site, outside of the security perimeter.
“The concept of local law enforcement working on such issues is common at sites,” Mr. Rowe said. “And on July 13 there were over 100 calls for support.”
Some of the other calls were related to suspicious persons, but he did not say how many. Most of the calls were for medical support related to the heat.
Mr. Rowe reiterated his congressional testimony that no Secret Service agents were aware that Crooks was on the roof of the AGR building or had a firearm until after they heard gunshots. He again explained that local law enforcement sent radio communication about that in the minutes and seconds before the shooting but it did not make its way to the Secret Service.
“There was clearly radio transmissions that may have happened on that local radio net that we did not have,” Mr. Rowe said. “And so we have to do a better job of co-locating, leveraging that counterpart system. And this is going to drive our operations going forward.”
The Secret Service did put out a radio transmission on its own channels about the local cops working an issue to Mr. Trump’s “3 o’clock,” prompting a member of his protective detail to call their counterpart from the Pittsburgh field office to get more information.
“Right in the middle of that phone conversation, the shots begin firing,” Mr. Rowe said.
The Secret Service has not yet interviewed local law enforcement who worked the Butler rally but would like to after the agency finishes talking to its agents.
“We’re starting with our federal personnel and working out,” Mr. Rowe said.
He said he has met with the Secret Service agents from the Pittsburgh field office who were in charge, and they are cooperating with the agency’s internal investigation.
The Pittsburgh agents feel like they let their colleagues and the country down, Mr. Rowe said. “It’s an open wound that they are carrying.”
• Lindsey McPherson can be reached at lmcpherson@washingtontimes.com.
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