The U.S. Secret Service (SS) has finally disciplined agents involved in protecting former President Donald Trump when assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks attempted to assassinate him in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13.
Multiple news outlets confirmed a report by Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics that several employees in the Pittsburgh bureau are currently on administrative leave, while others who are part of Trump's full-time security detail remain on the job.
Some employees are angry that not everyone responsible has been held accountable for the massive failure to protect Trump.
One person who should be held accountable, a source told Crabtree, is acting director Ron Rowe, who took over after director Kimberly Cheatle resigned.
No defense
Trouble for the once-prestigious agency began when Thomas Matthew Crooks effortlessly scaled the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) building and took aim at Trump from less than 200 yards away. Crooks shot Trump in the ear, killed firefighter Corey Comperatore, and wounded two other men, one of whom provided video of Crooks moving across the roof.
The Secret Service's failures were soon exposed. Local police officers providing security had spotted Crooks long before he shot Trump. A Secret Service agent himself encountered Crooks with a rangefinder as he entered the Butler Farm Show. The Secret Service repeatedly refused Trump's requests for additional security.
Cheatle, who rose to the top job because he was the girlfriend of first lady Dr. Jill Biden, said the AGR's roof was too steep for anti-sniper deployment — a claim that drew understandable ridicule.
He resigned after damning testimony before the House Oversight Committee, and in a joint letter, Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, Republican, and Sen. Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking minority leader, called for his resignation.
Not all agents are held accountable
The disciplinary action against investigators from the Pittsburgh office is sending ripples through the police department, Crabtree reported.
“While the Pittsburgh agents have been placed on administrative leave, a separate group of agents assigned to Trump's full-time security unit remains involved in protecting Trump, sources said,” Crabtree wrote.
They too continue to operate despite being heavily involved in developing security plans for the Butler rally.
The differences in the two teams' responses have led to internal rifts and speculation that the Pittsburgh office could end up bearing primary responsibility for the serious security failures that day, even though it has been held fully responsible.
A natural question is who else is in charge? Crabtree's sources name not only agents who work for Trump's security, but also powerful figures in Washington, DC.
“These sources argue that Lowe and other senior officials in Washington headquarters should share responsibility,” Crabtree continued.
Higher CIA leadership was almost certainly involved in declining at least some of the security assets requested for the Butler rally, despite the heightened threat level posed by an Iranian assassination plot against President Trump.
Former agent is “terrified”
Crabtree also quoted conservative podcaster and former agent Dan Bongino, who said he and his colleagues were “horrified by Ron Lowe and ashamed of what this agent has become.”
Fumed Bongino:
I'm not talking about a small group of them, I'm talking about a large group of former agents who are outraged by what happened here, who are horrified by what's going on in this agency.
Crabtree's source also blames Rowe and other police elites for “their decisions leading up to the July 13 rally leading to the failure of rank-and-file investigators.”
Continued Crabtree:
“Butler's failure was the result of mismanagement of technology and personnel by senior officials, but the senior officials are not to blame,” a Secret Service official told RealClearPolitics.
Mid-management at the Washington, D.C.-based Secret Service routinely cut security asset levels as part of cost-cutting, and the pressure to deny asset requests is even greater during a presidential election year, when the agency's resources are especially stretched with multiple candidates to protect.
Because of the growing Iranian threat against Trump, these decisions would likely involve not just mid-level Secret Service management but also senior agency officials, the people argued. In the case of Butler's rally, it marked the first time agency leadership had authorized counter-snipers for a Trump reelection event, but still only assigned two teams of counter-snipers instead of the four requested, multiple people told RCP.
Authorities did not have enough snipers to cover the incident in Butler, so they asked local police to provide security around the perimeter and to watch the rooftop where Crooks had plotted to assassinate Trump.
Multiple issues with insurance coverage
Crabtree also noted that Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Missouri), who had previously said citing a whistleblower that Trump's security detail was made up of agents from Homeland Security Investigations, not the Secret Service, had written to Rowe saying the whistleblower blamed Rowe for making “significant cuts” to the Department of Homeland Security's Countersurveillance Division (CSD).
Hawley wrote:
The Communications Security Department (CSD) did not conduct its usual assessment of the Butler venue and was not on site that day. This is important because CSD's mission includes assessing potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event. The whistleblower alleges that if CSD personnel had been at the rally, the shooter would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder. You acknowledged in your Senate testimony that the security perimeter for the Butler event should have included the American Glass Research Complex. The whistleblower alleges that because CSD was not at Butler, this apparent deficiency was not properly warned of or mitigated.
Five days later, Senator Hawley wrote Rowe again. The lead field agent in the Pittsburgh office “has been known to be incompetent in his job and to have failed to implement proper security protocols,” he wrote. Senator Hawley wanted to know why the agent was still employed. “Your unwillingness to hold this individual accountable is increasingly puzzling,” he wrote.
DEI Recruiting Women Agents
Last week, Crabtree shared more details about the female agent and the female agents who protect President Trump.
“As part of President Trump's 60-person full-time security force, the agent was responsible for helping develop security plans for the event, but was primarily focused on inner perimeter security,” Crabtree reported.
She also worked with the event's lead agent, a woman from the Secret Service's Pittsburgh office, and conducted a thorough security review with the supervisor. The lead agent typically oversees security for the entire event, from airport arrival to the event, hotel stay, and airport departure.
The two agents who worked on the campaign event were in charge of diversity, equity and inclusion hiring.
Video of the assassination attempt showed the female agents either panicking or not knowing what they were doing.
One of Cheatle's goals was for 30 percent of the agency workforce to be women by 2030.
H/T: The Daily Caller
