Senate hearing on Trump assassination attempt and Secret Service failures

Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe provided new details about the assassination attempt of Donald Trump on Tuesday, delivering forceful testimony at a Senate hearing about the agency’s failures earlier this month in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Rowe testified that Secret Service agents on Trump’s security detail, as well as snipers on duty, were not told that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was positioned on a nearby roof with a rifle and only learned of his presence after he started shooting.

Here are the key takeaways from the hearing:

Read more takeaways from the hearing.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said that Tuesday the bureau is looking into an account on to social media platform Gab that may have espoused support for Joe Biden.

Abbate told senators Tuesday that investigators are looking into at least two accounts that may be connected in the shooter. On one account, the shooter seemed to “reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes, to espouse political violence, and are described as extreme in nature.”

But a separate account on the platform Gab appears to have “differing points of view,” Abbate said.

Gab CEO Andrew Tobra revealed last week that the would-be assassin may have had an account on the site, which is an alternative social media network popular with conservatives, the alt-right and some extremists. Tobra claimed that the account in question was “pro-Biden.”

The Senate hearing on the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump has ended after hours of testimony from acting US Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate.

The hearing held by the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees is the fourth such hearing on Capitol Hill to feature testimony from law enforcement officials in the weeks since the assassination attempt earlier this month.

During more than three hours of testimony, Rowe and Abbate fielded dozens of questions from lawmakers over the security failures, with the officials revealing new details about the federal probe into the incident and explaining how the USSS is working to ensure future lapses don’t occur.

Under questions of why Secret Service snipers did not see Trump’s would-be assassin before he shot the former president, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told lawmakers that within 15.5 seconds of Thomas Matthew Crooks’ first shot, he was killed.

“Within 15.5 seconds of his first shot, he’s neutralized,” Rowe said of Crooks.

Prior to Crooks shooting at Trump, the Secret Service snipers were not aware of Crooks’ presence on the roof, Rowe testified.

“I believe he was obscured by that roof,” Rowe said, noting that Crooks was below the visibility line of USSS snipers before he fired.

As senators left the hearing about the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, they gave bipartisan praise for acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe’s performance – to a point.

“I think Rowe did a good job,” GOP Sen. Thom Tillis said. “He’s not trying to varnish anything. He knows that there was catastrophic mistakes.”

Tillis did say that “someone in the Secret Service has to be held accountable,” but added that he did not know specifically who should be.

Unlike last week’s hearing with former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, no one has called for Rowe to resign.

Rowe also garnered praise from California Democratic Sen. Laphonza Butler. “He has been authoritative. He has proven that he had been out at the camps at the site, and he is taking responsibility,” she said. “I think he’s being affirmative in the positions that he’s offering.”

But Sen. Gary Peters, chair of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, offered more nuanced feedback without directly criticizing Rowe. “He’s been straightforward and candid with answers, but we still have a lot more to go in this investigation,” Peters said. 

This praise offered by the senators has also been partnered by criticism of the Secret Service during the hearing. Notably, GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham said “somebody’s got to be fired. Nothing’s going to change until somebody loses their job.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledged that Rowe “was more forthcoming.”

“That’s a step forward,” the Texas senator said. “But when asked specific questions, he would not provide specific answers.”

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz and acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe shouted over each other Tuesday in a heated exchange over why Donald Trump, as a former president, doesn’t get the same amount of Secret Service security as the current president.

“There is a difference between the sitting president of the United States,” Rowe said.

“Then what’s the difference,” Cruz yelled, cutting Rowe off.

Cruz also accused the US Secret Service leadership as making a “political decision” about how much security Trump received. “I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests,” Cruz said. 

Rowe pushed back saying, “What I will tell you is that Secret Service agents are not political.”

In a heated exchange during Tuesday’s hearing, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley attacked Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe for not firing individuals involved in the security decisions around the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.

During the exchange, Rowe loudly objected to Hawley’s persistent questions of why individuals weren’t fired.

“I will not rush to judgement. People will be held accountable,” Rowe said, adding that investigations were still on going into the failures that day.“

Hawley shot back: “Is it not prima fascia that somebody has failed? The former president was shot.”

“Then fire somebody,” Hawley said.

Rowe said that he would not rush to judgment and unfairly persecute individuals.

“We have to be able to have a proper investigation into this,” Rowe said.

Sen. Rick Scott questions FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a hearing in Washington, DC, on July 30.

Republican Sen. Rick Scott ripped into FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate on Tuesday, accusing him of being a “black hole” and not being transparent enough about the bureau’s probe into the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.

“You’re a black hole. You lose the support of the American public because people don’t believe you’re being direct with them,” Scott, who represents Florida, told Abbate. “I completely disagree with your approach.”

US Secret Service agents were never told that a person with a weapon was at the July 13 Trump rally, Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe testified Tuesday.

The acting director repeatedly said that though local law enforcement was alerted to an armed person on a nearby roof around 30 seconds before the attempted assassin fired, the Secret Service was never told that that there was a man on the roof with a gun.

Republican senators have pushed Rowe several times over why the former president was allowed to take the stage for his rally speech despite warnings of a suspicious individual, and why he wasn’t pulled of the stage sooner.

In highlighting the failures on the day Trump was nearly killed, acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe pointed to the agency leaning on local law enforcement to cover the area where the shooter took his position.

“We assumed that the state and locals had it,” Rowe said of the area where Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed up the side of a building near the rally with his rifle.

“We made an assumption,” Rowe said, explaining that the Secret Service believed there would be sufficient eyes to cover the area and that local law enforcement would have a counter sniper in the AGR building where Crooks took his position.

Acting US Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe rebuffed a claim from a local SWAT team that helped provide security at the Butler rally that they didn’t get a briefing from the federal agency the morning of the event, saying the local team’s leader did receive a briefing from USSS.

“With respect to the snipers that went on national television and gave an interview and said that they did not get a briefing from the Secret Service, they were not – they were supporting through mutual aid, and our personnel briefed the tactical team leader that was leading that element that was providing this counter-sniper,” Rowe said in response to a question from GOP Sen. Ron Johnson.

Members of the Beaver County SWAT team claimed in a recent interview with ABC News that they were supposed to have a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service when the agents arrived in Butler but that no such meeting took place.

“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, a sniper on the team, told ABC News.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe confirmed to members of Congress that the reason a counter-drone system was not deployed at the Butler rally earlier in the day was because of connectivity issues.

“On this day in particular, because of the connectivity challenge … there was a delay,” Rowe said of why a counter drone system was not deployed at the time. Thomas Matthew Crooks flew his own drone around the area two hours before Trump took the stage.

The issue has “cost me a lot of sleep,” Rowe said. “What if we would have geolocated him because that counter (unmanned aircraft system) platform would have been up.”

Rowe said that, had the system been up, law enforcement may have been able to see Crooks’ use of drone and approached him well before the shooting.The acting director also said that the Secret Service will now work with the Department of Homeland Security to set up their own, private connection, and not rely on public domain connections.

Acting US Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said that that encrypted radio communications among the agents on the day of the shooting were not recorded.

Pressed by Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, Rowe said that the agency did not memorialize radio traffic from events outside DC that were not presidential or vice presidential stops.

Rowe points to images on poster board during a hearing on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe questioned why local law enforcement posted nearby didn’t see Donald Trump’s shooter on the roof as the investigation continues into the security failure at the July 13 rally.

Rowe showed lawmakers images of what the local law enforcement’s counter sniper team could see from their position in a building next to where Trump’s would-be assassin took his eight shots.

Rowe added: “I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roofline when that’s where they were posted.”

However, Rowe later stressed that the security failure started with the Secret Service.

“This is a failure of the Secret Service,” Rowe said.

He also highlighted the quick action of the sniper who killed Crooks and the difficult shot he took. “Our counter sniper, this individual, I know him, I consider him a friend,” Rowe said of the sniper. “He exemplifies the courage, the skill and the ability to respond under great stress in such short time and neutralize the threat.”

Acting US Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe stressed Tuesday that law enforcement personnel working to secure key events and protectees need to be communicating via radio in order to maximize “collective awareness” of potential issues.

“I want people using the radio,” he continued. “So it’s great that the tactical elements are talking to each other. It’s great that the shift is talking to each other. But we have to be able to make sure that whenever we come across a situation that everyone has situational awareness of this.”

Much of the communication among law enforcement officers about Thomas Matthew Crooks before he began shooting at former President Donald Trump took place over text.

Text messages between law enforcement before the assassination attempt suggest that some officers raised the shooter’s presence at the rally more than 90 minutes before he climbed onto a roof and fired eight rounds at Trump.

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said that the security lapses that left former President Donald Trump vulnerable stemmed from a “failure of imagination” about the harm people want to do to protectees and an agency “failure to challenge our own assumptions” about the planning being done with local law enforcement.

Going forward, Rowe said, the Secret Service would be “very specific about what we want” when talking to its partners and make requests.

He praised the local and state officials the agency works with, but said, “We need to be very clear to them and that may have contributed to this situation.”

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe described the breakdown in law enforcement communications in the moments before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, testifying that information about the shooter was “stuck” in a local law enforcement channel.

“The only thing we had was that locals were working an issue at the three o’clock – which would have been the former president’s right-hand side – which is where the shot came. Nothing about man on the roof, nothing about man with a gun. None of that information ever made it over our net,” Rowe said.

Sen. Gary Peters said that local law enforcement has claimed they were “only able to call in to a state command center” and not able to easily communicate threats to the Secret Service.

But Peters also noted that Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate testified that “there was about 30 seconds between when the local law enforcement reported that there was a man on the roof with a gun” and when the shooter fired.

“If it’s communicated directly to a counter-sniper team, would that be enough time to react prior to the firing of those shots,” Peters asked.

The acting director said that the Secret Service tactical teams had radios and “embeds” from local law enforcement.

“It is troubling to me that we did not get that information as quickly as we should have,” Rowe said. “We didn’t know that there was this incident going on.”

US Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe testifies during a hearing on the security failures leading to the assassination attempt on former US President Donald Trump on Tuesday in Washington, DC.

As acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe displayed poster boards illustrating the sightline of both the would-be assassin of Donald Trump and the counter assault sniper team, necks of attendees craned to get a better look.

Palpable tension was felt while Rowe raised his voice displaying his frustration with the local law enforcement that he said was tasked with covering the building.

Sen. Alex Padilla of California stood from his seat and walked to gain a better vantage point of the poster board.

As Rowe’s emotional response concluded, Sen. Rand Paul said, “Director, I’m encouraged by your attitude, what you brought here today.”

Sen. Amy Klobuchar also praised Rowe, thanking him for “your own personal emotion and reaction to your visit and what had gone wrong.”

Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told the Senate that the agency will end the year having increased its force by 200 agents, a ramp-up in hiring related in part to the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. 

Rowe told Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin – who had asked about the agency’s protective services loss of 365 agents over the last decade – that this would be the “first time” in a “number of years” that the agency would make such staffing increases. Rowe stressed the hiring gains were not because of a drop in standards but because there had been “efficiencies” created in the hiring process.

Rowe stressed that only 2% of applicants make it through the hiring process.

Investigators have uncovered a social media account with posts espousing political violence that may be connected to the would-be Donald Trump assassin, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate said Tuesday.

Officials have repeatedly said that they have struggled to understand what the 20-year-old shooter’s motive was, and that they are combing his online presence for more information.

“Something just very recently uncovered that I want to share is a social media account, which is believed to be associated with this with the shooter – in about the 2019, 2020 timeframe,” Abbate said Tuesday.

On that account, “there were over 700 comments,” Abbate said, which, “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.”