The acting director of the US Secret Service says he “cannot justify” why the rooftop used by the shooter in the attempted assassination of Donald Trump was not secured.
Ronald Rowe testified before two Senate committees Tuesday. He said he recently visited the site of the shooting in Pennsylvania and was ashamed of what he saw.
The number two of the federal police (FBI) also testifies Tuesday before the two Senate committees.
In the latest in a series of congressional hearings on the July 13 shooting, senators are questioning security and federal law enforcement officials about failures in the hours leading up to the attempted assassination of Mr. Trump.
Mr. Rowe became acting director of the Secret Service last week after Kimberly Cheatle resigned following a House hearing. Cheatle had been sharply reprimanded by lawmakers and had failed to answer specific questions about communications failures leading up to the shooting.
Mr. Rowe is joined at the hearings Tuesday by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, during a joint session of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.
“If this happened in the military, a lot of people would be fired,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. “And if a lot of people aren’t fired, the system fails again. Nothing will change until someone loses their job.”
The FBI released new details of its investigation Monday, saying the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had searched online for mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of Slovakia’s prime minister in May.
The FBI also revealed Monday that Mr. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, had agreed to be interviewed by agents as a victim of a federal crime. The FBI officially said last week that the former president was struck in the ear by a bullet or bullet fragment. Mr. Trump said Monday night that he expected that interview with FBI agents would take place Thursday.
But most of the questions Tuesday are likely to be directed at Mr. Rowe of the Secret Service, as lawmakers demand answers about how Crooks got so close to Mr. Trump. Investigators believe Crooks fired eight shots at the former president from an AR-style rifle after climbing onto the roof of a building about 450 feet from the lectern in Butler, Pennsylvania.
A bystander was killed and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
At his hearing last week, Mr.me Cheatle admitted that the Secret Service had “failed” in their mission to protect Mr. Trump. She called the attack the “most significant operational failure” of the Secret Service in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and ensure there is no repeat.
Mme Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service had been briefed at the rally about the suspicious person two to five times before the shooting. She also revealed that the rooftop from which Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.
Mme Cheatle said she personally apologized to Mr. Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.
In an interview Monday night on Fox News, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him during the shooting. But he said someone should have been on the roof with Crooks and there should have been better communication with local police. “They weren’t talking to each other,” he said.
He praised the sniper who killed Crooks with what he called an incredible shot, but added: “It would have been a good nine seconds earlier.”