WASHINGTON: The US Secret Service's new acting director said on Tuesday that he was "ashamed" of a security lapse that led to the July 13 attempted assassination of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, but blamed the shortfall on local law enforcement.
In testimony before two Senate committees, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said he visited the outdoor rally site in Butler, Pennsylvania, and climbed onto the roof of a nearby building from which 20-year-old Thomas Crooks fired shots that wounded Trump's right ear, killed one rally attendee and wounded two others with an AR-15-style rifle.
"What I saw made me ashamed," Rowe told a joint hearing of the Senate Homeland Security and Judiciary Committees. "As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured."
The first shooting of a US president or major party candidate in more than four decades was a glaring security lapse that led last week to former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle's resignation under bipartisan congressional pressure.
But Rowe went on to tell lawmakers that the Secret Service erred by assuming that local officials would cover the building and its roof, not the Secret Service.
Republican Senator John Cornyn pushed back on the notion that the responsibility should have been left to others.
"Isn't that something that the Secret Service should have covered, as opposed to delegating it to local law enforcement?" Cornyn asked.
"We assumed that the state and locals had it," Rowe replied. "I can assure you that we're not going to make that mistake again."
Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal asked Rowe: "Ultimately, doesn't the buck stop with the Secret Service?"
"It stops with us, sir," Rowe said. But Rowe added: "If they'd just held their post and looked left."
Rowe's comments came days after a local Swat team assigned to help protect Trump told ABC News that it had no contact with Secret Service agents in charge of security at the rally before the shooting and that an anticipated face-to-face briefing with Secret Service officials never happened.
Rowe said he has already taken steps to prevent similar lapses from occurring amid concerns among both Democrats and Republicans about further political violence as the campaign intensifies ahead of the November 5 US election.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, who also testified before the panels, said Crooks appears to have posted violent antisemitic and anti-immigration content online as a teenager.
It is some of the first evidence of Crooks' possible inclination toward extremism and political violence found by investigators, who have yet to identify a motive.
Abbate said investigators found a social media account dating to 2019-2020 when Crooks would have been 15 or 16 years old, adding that the account had posted more than 700 comments.
"Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes, to espouse political violence, and are described as extreme in nature," Abbate told lawmakers.
Crooks flew a drone near the rally site ahead of the shooting, a flight that Secret Service officials failed to notice because a system for detecting drones was not working properly due to problems with the local cellular network, Rowe said.
Lawmakers sought to learn why the Secret Service did not delay the rally or prevent Trump from taking the stage, noting that local police saw Crooks with a rangefinder device for measuring distances about an hour before the shooting.
Rowe said Crooks was only one among a number of individuals to draw local law enforcement attention, and added that the Secret Service was not informed when local police saw Crooks on the roof with the rife, just before he opened fire.
"They were in the midst of dealing with a very critical situation and they articulated that over the radio, as I understand it. However, it was never relayed over to us," Rowe said.
The proceedings grew heated when Republican Senator Josh Hawley pushed Rowe to begin expelling agency employees immediately.
"I will tell you, senator, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity and not rush to judgment and let people be unfairly persecuted," Rowe told Hawley with a raised voice.
