Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe expressed deep regret over significant security lapses during a recent incident where former President Donald Trump was nearly assassinated.
The hearing, held before the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, highlighted critical failures in the Secret Service’s response to the July 13 shooting at a Pennsylvania campaign rally.
Rowe, who assumed his role last week following the resignation of former Director Kimberly Cheatle, disclosed that agents were unaware of the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, who had positioned himself with a clear line of sight from a nearby building.
“This incident was a failure on multiple levels,” Rowe stated in his opening remarks. He described his visit to the Butler Farm Show grounds, where he identified and addressed security gaps that allowed Crooks to target Trump and other Secret Service protectees. “I laid in a prone position to evaluate his line of sight. What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe admitted.
Rowe revealed that neither the Secret Service’s counter-sniper teams nor Trump’s security detail were aware of Crooks or his firearm until gunshots were heard. Local law enforcement had been investigating a “suspicious individual” before the shooting but lost sight of Crooks during a critical 25-minute window. FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate confirmed that Crooks climbed onto the AGR International Inc. building at 6:06 p.m., just five minutes before the shooting began.
The shooting occurred at 6:11 p.m. when a Butler County police officer, who had climbed the building, reported seeing Crooks with a firearm. Crooks fired eight shots, striking Trump in the right ear, killing rallygoer Corey Comperatore, and injuring David Dutch and James Copenhaver. The counter-sniper killed Crooks within seconds of the attack.
The Secret Service faces multiple reviews of this incident and grapples with internal issues. An email from a Secret Service counter-sniper, which was obtained by The Post, warned of the likelihood of future assassination attempts and criticized the agency’s response. The agent called for the dismissal of several high-level supervisors and accused the agency of systemic failures.
Cheatle resigned last Tuesday and had previously testified before the House Oversight Committee, acknowledging the security breaches but controversially rated the agency’s response as an “A.”
