In Butler, Pennsylvania, Secret Service agents discovered Thomas Crooks wielding a rifle on a rooftop with a direct vantage point on Donald Trump. However, they failed to communicate this potential threat to the president’s protective team.
This unsettling oversight is detailed in a new report released on Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General.
The investigation highlighted that prior opportunities to detect and thwart Thomas Crooks’s assassination attempt against Trump during a campaign event on July 13, 2024, were overlooked by the Secret Service.
According to the OIG report, deficiencies in policy, a lack of intelligence-sharing, and inadequate communication with both Trump’s staff and local law enforcement created an environment where crucial preventative actions were not taken.
The report’s conclusions were drawn from 92 interviews, the examination of over 70,000 documents, and a 3D reconstruction that meticulously mapped out the positions of all involved before, during, and after the incident.
It found that the Secret Service failed to detect Crooks’s drone flight used to view the campaign event stage – citing both an under-trained operator, who had received just 20 minutes of informal training – as well as a broken ethernet cable that was fixed roughly one half-hour after Crooks had already flown his drone over the site, undetected.
The report also revealed that Trump’s own campaign staff refused to let agents park trucks blocking the shooter’s sightline because they’d be ‘too close to [President Trump’s] press shot.’
That was one of many damning revelations made in the report, which also faulted the lack of formal communications established with local law enforcement, thereby depriving them of additional communications regarding Crooks, as well as a lack of communications and intelligence sharing with leadership in the Pittsburgh Field Office.
Secret Service agents knew Thomas Crooks (left and right) had a rifle and had made his way onto a rooftop in Butler, Pennsylvania with a clear shot at Donald Trump — and never issued a word to the president’s own protective detail
Donald Trump is seen with blood on his face surrounded by Secret Service agents as he is taken off the stage at a campaign event at Butler Farm Show Inc. in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024
Crooks, 20, was shot dead after attempting to kill the now-President at a rally in 2024
Trump’s ear was shot in the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024
The lack of coordinated communications with state and local law enforcement would also prove deeply damaging.
In total, the report says, the Secret Service did not receive 102 radio transmissions sent by local law enforcement officers in a separate communications room in the run-up to the attempted assassination, and regarding what the report described as an ‘increasingly intense’ suspicious person search.
Instead, the report says, Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about a suspicious person, who was later identified to be Crooks, during that period, including that the suspicious person had a range finder.
They also never received three transmissions from local law enforcement officers that the suspect in question had a long gun.
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President Donald Trump holds a meeting in the Situation Room of the White House. A newly unredacted report sheds light on the communications and security failures that left then-candidate Trump vulnerable to an assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024
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‘The limited communication regarding the suspicious person … did not create a sense of urgency for Secret Service members to report this information to President Trump’s protective detail,’ the report concludes.
In total, the OIG report made seven recommendations for the Secret Service to improve its processes for securing events.
The unredacted report comes just weeks after gunshots were fired at the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, and after FBI Director Kash Patel announced a series of arrests made in connection with an alleged UFC attack plot at the White House.
Reports of the UFC investigation appeared to catch the Secret Service, which assisted the FBI in leading the investigation, off guard.
It also comes as the nation’s capital, and commander-in-chief, prepare to host Americans from across the country for the nation’s 250th anniversary.