The Secret Service is under intense scrutiny following the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. It has come to light that warning signs were ignored prior to the incident in Butler, Pennsylvania. According to a report from Just the News, the agency has suffered a series of missteps and outright disasters in the months leading up to Saturday’s attack against Trump.
The report states:
Long before the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on Saturday night such focused a harsh light on the Secret Service, the presidential security agency was already facing difficult questions about its capability, training, recruitment and emphasis on diversity. Secret Service agents reportedly were even circulating a petition raising questions about their management a few weeks ago.
Those questions are now certain to receive intense new attention after video footage showed a gunman on was able to scale a building less than 200 yards from Trump, get to a shooting perch with a rifle and fire several rounds before being neutralized by a Secret Service sniper team at the event Saturday night in Butler, Pennsylvania.
In addition, some reports said that rally attendees told authorities about a man seen on a rooftop prior to shots being fired at Trump, which led to outrage from some lawmakers.
“How could you have somebody on the rooftop?” said House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who was shot by a would-be assassin and far-left Bernie Sanders supporter in 2017 during a practice session ahead of the annual congressional softball game. “There are reports that people watched him climb up the roof and even alerted authorities, and we’re going to be looking into that.”
“I mean, we’re going to have hearings on this, you know, how could you have somebody on the rooftop? There are reports that people watched him climb up the roof and even alerted authorities, and we’re going to be looking into that. How could that happen with all the authorities around that they miss something so clear that the shooter was able to get that kind of line of sight just 150 yards away from the stage?” he told Fox News on Saturday.
“Well, I want to hear how seriously they’re taking this threat. You know, in the case of the shooting on the baseball field, they initially called it suicide by cop. The FBI categorized it that way and the shooter’s intent was to kill every one of us on that ball field. And yet they called it suicide by cop, which offended all of us who were there. I mean, they weren’t just trying to kill me. The shooter was trying to kill every Republican on that ball field. And we felt it wasn’t taken seriously the way it should have been,” the Congressman said.
“In this case, you know, I want to see a very stern and serious focus on finding out were there other people involved in the planning of this? Are there other people still out there that are planning future attacks? Was it a lone gunman? What were his motivations? You know, how was he obviously able to get access to that rooftop? But I want to see a very serious focus on recognizing that this was an assassination attempt on a leading candidate for President of the United States and it should be taken that seriously and beefed up security needs to follow from this point forward,” he added.
House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) wants the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, to provide immediate answers to Congress on how the attack happened.
Disclaimer: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author’s opinion.