The US Secret Service failed to discipline the agent at the heart of the security failures that allowed a gunman to take eight shots at President Trump during the July 13, 2024, campaign rally, according to a damning new Senate report.
That agent was allegedly warned by local cops about would-be assassin Thomas Crooks 25 minutes before Trump was shot — but did not relay that info to the agents on the ground in Butler, Pennsylvania, the report found.
The investigation into everything that went wrong at the rally — published on the anniversary of the attack — concluded that the Secret Service suffered “multiple, unacceptable failures.”
The leaders at the center of the scandal have never being appropriately punished, said Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), chair of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
“Despite those failures, no one has been fired,” Paul said in a statement. “And we only know what little discipline was handed out because I issued a subpoena. That’s unacceptable.”
Six agents were suspended without pay — including one junior agent from Trump’s security detail who was suspended for 45 days.
The expansive report singled out a Secret Service security room agent who was in charge of managing communications between local and federal law enforcement parties working security at the event.
One Pennsylvania State Police Officer who was in the room told the committee that he relayed information on Crooks to the agent — letting him know that local cops were hunting for the suspect.
The agent — who was not named — was made aware of all this about 25 minutes before the shooting, yet he allegedly never relayed the information to everyone involved in securing the rally, according to the report.
“I got a distinct impression that there’s, like, a lack of urgency,” the state officer told the committee about his dealing with the room agent.
After his first check in, the officer went back to the room agent to let him know that Crooks was spotted on a rooftop, but, again, it did not seem as though the agent passed on the information to their colleagues.
When pressed by the committee over his version of the events, the room agent gave a conflicting story — claiming he was never made aware of a person on the roof.
The agent also acknowledged that he had no other contact with local law enforcement on the day of the shooting, and that he had never seen the operations plan put together by local officials before the rally.
The Senate report highlights this specific chapter of events as emblematic of the communications breakdown that occurred during the Butler rally between local and federal officials, an issue that should have been prevented by the room agent.
“The lack of structured communication was likely the greatest contributor to the failures of
the USSS on July 13, 2024,” the report stated.
“The job of a Security Room Agent is to be the conduit of communications between all entities involved in a protective site in order to ensure situational awareness of all parties involved in securing the event,” it added.
Despite being at the center of the “greatest” failure of the event, the Senate committee found that the room agent was never told he violated Secret Service policy, never faced any disciplinary action, and was allowed to retire without incident this June.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service only ever disciplined six people with suspensions that ranged from 10 days to 42 days, with the longest punishment handed out to Myosoty Perez, an agent only three years into her career, according to the report and lawyers representing the agents.
“What happened was inexcusable and the consequences imposed for the failures so far do not reflect the severity of the situation,” the report stated, calling for further punishments to be handed out for all those responsible.
Sunday’s report is one of several that were published detailing the Secret Service’s failures, with the agency announcing earlier this month that it had made several changes to prevent such an incident from happening again.
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