The agency is under fire for failing protect the Republican presidential candidate.
The US Secret Service has reportedly suspended a regional director and several agents as it probes the “operational failure” that almost got Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump killed last month.
Trump was speaking at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 when an assassin opened fire from the roof of a nearby building. While Trump was only grazed because he turned his head at the very last moment, the shooter killed one member of the audience and seriously injured two more.
On Friday, CBS News reported that the USSS “has placed multiple agents on leave, including the head of the Pittsburgh field office,” citing an anonymous source familiar with the matter.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi declined to confirm or deny the claim, saying only that the “mission assurance review is progressing.”
Shortly after the CBS report, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican, published a letter to the acting USSS director Ronald Rowe, saying that a whistleblower has contradicted his sworn testimony to Congress.
The whistleblower, said Hawley, alleged that “officials at Secret Service headquarters encouraged agents in charge of the trip not to request any additional security assets in its formal manpower request–effectively denying these assets through informal means.” Rowe, however, told Congress that no assets were denied.
“You must explain this apparent contradiction immediately,” Hawley wrote. “Your actions to place some field agents on leave are not enough.”
According to the Secret Service and the FBI, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks managed to get onto the roof of a building overlooking Trump’s rally with a rifle and fire at least eight shots before he was neutralized by a USSS counter-sniper.
Kimberly Cheatle, who headed the Secret Service at the time, told reporters that the building was not part of the security perimeter and agents weren’t placed on the roof because it was too sloped to be safe. She ended up resigning ten days after the shooting.
The FBI, which is investigating the assassination attempt, has not published any findings about Crooks or his motivation. Congressman Clay Higgins, a Louisiana Republican, has accused the bureau of effectively covering up the shooting and destroying evidence.
According to Higgins, the FBI “released the crime scene” after just three days, cleaned up the blood and other “biological evidence” from the roof, and allowed Crooks’ family to cremate him on July 23, thereby making it impossible to verify any autopsy results – which were still pending as of August 5.
