Former president Donald Trump’s top advisers and his U.S. Secret Service detail have privately raised questions about why they weren’t notified that local police were tracking a suspicious person before that same person attempted to assassinate Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one spectator and injuring two others. The former president additionally suffered an injury to his ear from the shooting.
The head of Pennsylvania State Police told a congressional committee last week that at least 20 minutes before Crooks shot at the former president, local countersnipers observed him acting strangely, took his photograph and sent it to a command center with state troopers and Secret Service agents.
According to the Washington Post, members of the Secret Service detail that protects Trump and were with him backstage have raised concerns with others in the Secret Service that they were never informed that Crooks was being tracked.
They also said they were not told that the local countersnipers eventually lost track of Crooks, or that another local officer, who was stationed on the roof of a building just outside the security perimeter of the rally, noticed Crooks perched with a gun.
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The Trump detail’s first warning came when Crooks began to open fire at 6:11 p.m., eight minutes after Trump took the stage.
Some of Trump’s top advisers, who were located under a large white tent behind the stage, initially believed the sound of gunfire was fireworks and did not immediately take cover, the newspaper reported.
Trump advisers told the outlet they first learned of concerns when the shooting was happening, stressing that they did not know why they were told of the suspicious person report so they could decide whether to delay Trump’s speech.
“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News’ Jesse Watters. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.”
A Secret Service official told The Post that investigators are still working to determine whether anyone told Trump’s security detail or other Secret Service operational teams about the suspicious person report.
The official said reports of suspicious people are fairly common at some public events and sometimes are not enough of a concern that plans need to be changed or that the senior official’s security detail needs to be notified.
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Then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who has since resigned, said when asked at a House Oversight hearing last week why the Secret Service did not immediately delay the Trump speech or act faster when local police reported a suspicious person that such reports were fairly common.
“At a number of our protected sites, there are suspicious individuals that are identified all the time,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that they constitute a threat.”
The questions from Trump’s security detail and his advisers come after months of tensions between the former president’s camp and top Secret Service officials ahead of the assassination attempt.
The former president’s team has taken issue with Secret Service headquarters over various rejected requests, including for more magnetometers, more countersnipers and other specialty teams at events, according to The Post. The two sides were also at odds over security and logistics at the Republican National Convention that was held earlier this month in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, just days after the shooting.
Members of Congress have repeatedly raised concerns about how poor communication may have contributed to Crooks having an opportunity to shoot at Trump.
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Trump’s team may have altered their security decisions had they been alerted that law enforcement officials were looking for a suspicious person just outside the security perimeter at the rally, according to The Post. However, it remains unclear whether such a decision would have led them to delay Trump’s speech.
There are sometimes reports of suspicious people or activities at Trump’s rallies that end up being nothing, someone from his team told The Post. This person said that when those incidents happen, the suspicious person is typically inside the Secret Service perimeter of the rally, meaning they have been screened by magnetometers aimed at stopping people with weapons from entering. But in the case of the July 13 rally, Crooks was located just outside the secure perimeter.
Col. Christopher L. Paris, head of the Pennsylvania State Police, told the House Homeland Security Committee last week that local countersnipers believed Crooks was suspicious because he was lingering around just outside the rally site without entering and that their concerns were further raised when they observed him with a golf range finder.
Paris said the countersnipers then sent a picture of Crooks to a Pennsylvania state trooper stationed in a command center with Secret Service agents.
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