In a very bad look for the Secret Service, the Congressional task force charged with investigating what issues led to the almost disastrous attempt on the then-former president, now-President-elect Donald Trump’s life during his Butler, Pennsylvania rally over the summer of 2024, with the bullet having come so close to Trump that it hit his ear.
On December 10, the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released the report it had compiled on what happened and what went wrong, finding in the report that the United States Secret Service was plagued by “failures in the planning, execution, and leadership” that led to the awful attack almost succeeding.
In the press statement about the report, the committee said, “Today, the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released adopted report text, “Final Report of Findings and Recommendations.” The report text, unanimously approved by the Task Force on December 5, highlights significant failures in the planning, execution, and leadership of the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners.”
Continuing, the press release added, “The Task Force-approved report also proposes 37 actionable recommendations related both to the security failures on July 13 and to overarching structural changes the Secret Service and Congress must consider strengthen security measures and prevent similar security failures in the future. ”
Describing the key areas that the report covered and what main issues and failures on the part of the Secret Service that it found, the press release then noted, “The Task Force’s findings address six key areas: Butler, PA: Failures in Planning Butler, PA: Failures in Execution Butler, PA: Failures in Leadership Butler, PA: Aftermath FBI Investigation West Palm Beach, FL: Findings and Recommendations .”
Noting the massive amount of information used by the committee to develop its report, the Task Force then added, “Throughout its nearly five-month investigation, the Task Force conducted 46 transcribed interviews with local, state, and federal agencies, reviewed nearly 20,000 pages of documents, held more than a dozen briefings with federal, state and local officials, and held two public hearings—one with local law enforcement and the other with Acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe.”
And, noting as part of that description of the information used that there were certain agencies that did not comply with requests for information by the task force, the press release provided : “The report also provides a list of outstanding requests to agencies that did not provide materials requested by the Task Force.”
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The report itself noted that the awful shooting was not a one-off failure but part of a pattern of failure, saying, “The failures that led to the tragic events of July 13 were not entirely isolated to the campaign event itself, or the days preceding it. Preexisting issues in leadership and training created an environment in which the specific failures identified above could occur.”
It added, “Secret Service personnel with little to no experience in advance planning roles were given significant responsibility, despite the July 13 event being held at a higher-risk outdoor venue with many line of sight issues, in addition to specific intelligence about a long-range threat. Further, some of the Secret Service agents in significant advance planning roles did not clearly understand the delineation of their responsibilities.”
Watch the new Secret Service Director melt down and start yelling when pressed on alleged failures in a Congressional hearing here:
Featured image credit: By U.S. Secret Service – https://www.secretservice.gov/data/press/reports/USSS_FY2015AR.pdf, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63304516