An internal investigation by the Secret Service confirms multiple catastrophic security breakdowns took place ahead of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, fired eight bullets at the crowd, striking Trump’s ear and hitting three rally attendees, one fatally, on July 13 in Butler, Pennsylvania at a rally.
Officials, in a new report, have called the entire operation to protect the former president ‘alarmingly slipshod’ and its communications system having ‘significant weaknesses’.
Much has already been revealed about the haphazard communication between local police but the investigation uncovered that Secret Service had no access to real-time updates by local police.
When nearby authorities were contacted about a suspicious man showing up at the rally it was not heard on Secret Service Radio, which is used by the service instead of the Military-supported systems used to protect the president and vice president.
The counter-snipers who eventually took Crooks out were initially told to send photos via text message to just a single official with the Secret Service, meaning an all points bulletin could not have been sent out.
This lax activity despite the fact that the police had seen Crooks carrying a range finder and said he was behaving strangely.
No one with the Secret Service was then able to hear about the authorities attempt to find Crooks after he was spotted when Trump started his speech and never secured the roof of the AGR building he used to fire away, senior government officials told the Washington Post.
The investigation allegedly went beyond the shooting, however, with the revelation that Secret Service dragged its feet on increasing security for Trump during the campaign, despite an Iranian plot to kill American political candidates.
American leaders like Senator Richard Blumenthal, who is on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, have said that they expect a bombshell from the investigation’s findings.
‘I think the American people are going to be shocked, astonished, and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president,’ he said Thursday.
Already, heads have begun to role within the organization after disgraced Director Kim Cheadle resigned following the shooting.
The Secret Service confirmed Assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations Mike Plati resigned ahead of the report’s release Friday, while senior executive John Buckley and a senior, unidentified Pittsburgh-based agent are set to retire.
In August, a whistleblower is claiming that the lead Secret Service agent in charge of Donald Trump’s deadly Butler, Pennsylvania, rally was ‘inexperienced’ and ‘failed to implement appropriate security protocols.’
This past week, a bombshell congressional report claims would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks was incapacitated by a local cop before he was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
Two months after Crooks shot the former president’s ear at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a preliminary report from Rep. Clay Higgins offered a differing narrative to the official one pushed by the FBI.
While it was initially claimed that Crooks was shot in the head within seconds by a Secret Service sniper, Higgins’ report claimed it was actually a local SWAT operator who stopped the gunman’s hail of bullets.
The congressman said the local cop’s shot ‘hit Crooks’ rifle and fragged his face/ neck/ right shoulder area from the (gun) stock breaking up’, which meant Crooks was unable to keep firing before he was killed.
It comes amid mounting scrutiny on the FBI and Secret Service’s investigations into the shooting, weeks after Higgins also revealed Crooks’ body was mysteriously cremated with approval from the FBI after just 10 days.
A bullet clipped the former president’s ear while two others were critically wounded and former firefighter, Corey Comperatore, tragically lost his life while heroically defending his family from the incoming fire.
Trump recovered from his wounds and continued on with his campaign, appearing at the Republican National Convention two days later.