Independent panel investigating Trump rally shooting warns of “deep flaws” in Secret Service, calls for “fundamental reform”

Washington — An independent panel tasked by President Biden with reviewing the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, found the Secret Service suffers from “deep flaws” that enabled the attack at the Trump campaign rally, and called for the agency to undergo “fundamental reform” to carry out its mission of protecting top government officials around the world.

Findings from the panel were made public in a report released Thursday. In a letter accompanying the report signed by all four of its members, the independent review panel said it identified in the course of its investigation “numerous mistakes” that led to the attempted assassination against Trump, but also “deeper systemic issues that must be addressed with urgency.”

“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” the members said. “Without that reform, the Independent Review Panel believes another Butler can and will happen again.”

The panel dedicated its work to Corey Comperatore, who was killed in the shooting, and James Copenhaver and David Dutch, who were injured, as well as their families.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement that DHS will “fully consider” the panel’s recommendations and is taking actions to advance to Secret Service’s protection mission.

“These actions will be responsive not only to the security failures that led to the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt but, importantly, to what the Independent Review Panel describes as systemic and foundational issues that underlie those failures,” he said.

In response to the review, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe said the agency will examine the report and recommendations, and reiterated that its committed to addressing the failures that led to the attempted assassination. Rowe said the Secret Service has already taken steps to improve readiness, operational and organizational communications, and implemented enhanced protective operations for Trump and others that the agency protects. It is also developing a plan to seeks to drive a “fundamental transformation” within the Secret Service, he said.

“We acknowledge that July 13 did not occur because of a lack of resources, however, our enhanced protective model implemented after July 13 requires additional people, equipment, and asset capabilities,” Rowe said in a statement. “The agency is also working with Congress to increase the agency’s budget so that we can make this paradigm shift a reality and ensure that our people have the resources they need to successfully carry out the mission.”

Rowe told staffers in a later message that he worried about the report’s “impact on agency morale” and that he has “reservations” about some of the panel’s recommendations, specifically those concerning a potential reorganization.

In its review, the members identified six failures related to the attack at the July 13 rally: the absence of personnel to secure the so-called AGR building, whose roof gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired from; the failure to address the line-of-sight threat posed by the building; communication issues between the Secret Service and local law enforcement; the failure of the Secret Service or law enforcement to encounter the shooter even though he was spotted more than 90 minutes before opening fire; the failure to inform the leaders of Trump’s detail about the gunman; and the failure to detect a drone the gunman operated hours before the shooting.

The group also pointed to “deeper concerns” it found about the Secret Service, including what it said was a “lack of clarity” over who has security ownership of a protectee’s site, “corrosive cultural attitudes” about resources; and a “troubling lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service employees in the days before and after the assassination attempt.

It faulted Secret Service leadership for what the panel said was a failure to take ownership of security planning and execution at the Butler rally and an “insufficiently experienced-based approach” by Trump’s detail about the selection of agents to perform tasks critical to security. 

The breakdowns “reveal deep flaws in the Secret Service, including some that appear to be systemic or cultural,” the report said.

To mitigate the issues identified by the panel, it called for new Secret Service leadership with experience outside the agency and a refocusing on its “core protective mission.”

“The Secret Service must be the world’s leading governmental protective organization,” the report states. “The events at Butler on July 13 demonstrate that, currently, it is not.”

Numerous shortcomings identified

The report walks through the planning leading up to the rally on July 13, beginning with a kickoff meeting hosted by the Secret Service for state and local law enforcement on July 8, and the events in the run-up to when the gunman fired eight rounds from a semi-automatic rifle before he was killed by a Secret Service countersniper.

The site agent assigned by Trump’s detail to coordinate with the Pittsburgh field office to conduct site advance work and security planning for the Butler rally graduated from the Secret Service’s academy in 2020, the panel said, and joined the former president’s detail in 2023. The report also said the site agent engaged in “minimal” prior site advance work or security planning, and “certainly nothing” to the level of Trump’s rally in Butler.

The panel said the failure to secure the AGR building, its roof and others in the area represents a “critical security failure” and noted that there were available personnel to secure it.

In identifying communications issues between the Secret Service and local and state law enforcement, the panel said there were “inconsistent and varying approaches” to the methods of communication, with a “chaotic mixture” of radio, cellphone, text and email used by different personnel at different points.

The panel also noted that in the 90 minutes that elapsed from when the gunman was first spotted by a local countersniper who was going off-duty to when he began shooting, the gunman was never questioned despite being seen with a range finder.

“The particular combination of repetitive suspicious behavior in a close-in location, the possession of a range finder and its use to range the stage, and only intermittent visual contact with him (in other words, Crooks was not being continuously monitored and surveilled) represents information that should have triggered a police or other law enforcement encounter, and such an encounter likely would have averted the subsequent sequence of events,” its report said.

Three Secret Service personnel were made aware that the gunman was on the roof of the AGR building in the two minutes before he opened fire, the report stated, and a fourth agent was told in that same period that he was on the roof. But the panel said the leadership of Trump’s detail was never told about Crooks.

Secret Service’s reaction sharply criticized

The independent review panel lambasted Secret Service personnel for what it said was a lack of self-reflection in the wake of the assassination attempt.

“July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee,” the report stated. “For personnel involved, given the multi-factor nature of the security failure, even a superficial level of reflection should yield insights regarding lapses and potential remediations. But many personnel struggled to identify meaningful examples of either type of observation — what went wrong and what could be done better in the future to prevent a similar tragedy from reoccurring.”

Panel members said they identified complacency among Secret Service employees they spoke to and said new agency leadership will need to inspire agents to “be elite and flawless.” Members of the panel told reporters that the Secret Service has been “insular,” and outside leadership would bring in “fresh thinking about tactics and techniques” and culture.

An overhaul of the agency’s leadership will likely fall to the next president given the proximity to the presidential election, the panel told reporters.

Release of the panel’s findings comes as some members of Congress have called for increases in the Secret Service budget. Rowe has also warned that the agency has “finite resources” that it is stretching to “their maximum.”

The outside review found that while more resources would be “helpful,” lessons from the assassination attempt will be lost if the conversation surrounding the security failures devolves into a discussion about Secret Service funding. Panel members told reporters that all resources requested for the Butler rally were granted, with the exception that 13 magnetometers sought was lessened to 10. 

“The failure of July 13 likely would have occurred regardless of budget levels at the current Secret Service,” the report found. “Put otherwise, even an unlimited budget would not, by itself, remediate many of the causes of the failures on July 13.”

The four-member panel was formed at the direction of Mr. Biden and conducted its examination of the attack from early August through early October. The panel consisted of Mark Filip, former deputy attorney general; David Mitchell, a longtime law enforcement officer; Janet Napolitano, former secretary of Homeland Security; and Frances Townsend, former assistant to President George W. Bush for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism.

During the span of its investigation, members conducted 58 interviews with Secret Service employees and federal, state and local law enforcement. The panel collected and reviewed more than 7,000 documents, it said in its report.

Ramifications continue to unfold

The assassination attempt at Trump’s rally in Butler led to substantial scrutiny of the Secret Service, which faced questions about how the shooter was able to gain access to a roof so close to where the former president was speaking.

A five-page summary of the Secret Service’s report on the attempted assassination released last month blamed the security lapse on multiple communication deficiencies among law enforcement at the rally site and a “lack of due diligence” by the agency.

In addition to the Secret Service and FBI investigations, several congressional committees and a bipartisan task force are probing the attack.

The FBI previously revealed that the gunman flew a drone near the site of the campaign event roughly two hours before he began shooting and was livestreaming footage from it for about 11 minutes. Investigators said they recovered the drone and two explosive devices from the gunman’s car, as well as a third explosive device from his residence. 

The gunman also conducted a Google search for “how far away was Oswald from Kennedy” one week before the shooting, the FBI found, a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the assassin who shot and killed President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

The assassination attempt on Trump, and the criticism of the Secret Service that followed, led to the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle, who headed the agency at the time of the attack. Rowe is now serving as the Secret Service’s temporary leader.

Concerns about the agency’s ability to protect Trump grew again last month after a Hawaii man, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, was arrested after he was spotted by a Secret Service agent in the brush along the fence line at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, where the former president was playing.

The suspect, identified as Ryan Wesley Routh, was charged with three violations of federal firearms laws, assaulting a federal officer and attempted assassination of a presidential candidate. He pleaded not guilty to all five counts.

The two incidents targeting Trump led the Secret Service to boost its protection for the major presidential and vice presidential candidates.