The House Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump released, on Monday, October 21, its “INTERIM STAFF REPORT: INVESTIGATING THE STUNNING SECURITY FAILURES ON JULY 13, 2024 IN BUTLER, PENNSYLVANIA.” In the report, the task force said that “stunning security failures” were to blame for the near-miss assassination attempt.
Introducing the report, the task force noted that it had investigated what it described as “stunning security failures” before noting the vast amount of information that it had examined to come to his conclusions. He said, “For the past two months, the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump (Task Force), led by Chairman Mike Kelly and Ranking Member Jason Crow, has been investigating the stunning security failures that occurred at the Donald Trump campaign rally on July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania.”
The executive summary of the over 50-page report provides, in part, “Although the findings in this report are preliminary, the information obtained during the first phase of the Task Force’s investigation clearly shows a lack of planning and coordination between the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners before the rally.”
Continuing, the report’s executive summary provides, “For instance, USSS did not give clear guidance to the relevant state and local agencies about managing areas outside the secure event perimeter, and there was no joint meeting on the day of the rally between USSS and all state and local law enforcement agencies assisting USSS.”
Then, after describing how the area from which Crooks shot was not in the perimeter, another security failure, it described why Crooks was not engaged. It began that section by saying, “Accordingly, the local sniper teams inside the AGR complex had a narrow field of vision and were not positioned to monitor the areas where the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was spotted on the afternoon of July 13.”
Next, it said, describing how Crooks was able to take a shot, “Indeed, federal, state, and local law enforcement officers could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments. Throughout the afternoon, as Crooks’s behavior became increasingly suspicious, fragmented lines of communication allowed Crooks to evade law enforcement and, eventually, climb on to the roof of the AGR complex and fire eight shots at the rally stage and crowd, killing a rally attendee and injuring three others, including former President Trump.”
It then noted that only then was Crooks neutralized as the Secret Service and a local officer fired at him, providing, “Crooks was neutralized by a Secret Service counter sniper. A local law enforcement officer also returned fire at Crooks. The autopsy shows Crooks died because of a single gunshot wound to the head.”
Concluding, it noted that the assassination attempt was easily preventable and could have been avoided had the proper things been done, saying, “Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened.”
Watch Dan Bongino’s testimony before Congress about the assassination attempt, in which he came to much the same conclusion as the report, here:
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