The FBI and the Secret Service have both said they will send officials to testify before Congress regarding the failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump earlier this month during a rally in Butler, PA. Senate lawmakers are expected to question the acting director of the Secret Service on Tuesday regarding law enforcement lapses in the hours leading up to the attempted assassination. The hearing is part of an ongoing series of congressional sessions focused on the shooting.
Ronald Rowe took over as acting director of the Secret Service last week following Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation, which came after a House hearing where she faced intense questioning from lawmakers and struggled to address specific issues related to communication failures before the July 13 shooting. Rowe will appear alongside FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees, the Associated Press reported.
“The hearing comes one day after the FBI released new details about its investigation into the shooting, revealing that the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had looked online for information about mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt of the Slovakian prime minister,” the AP report stated. “The FBI also said that Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, has agreed to be interviewed by agents as a crime victim. The bureau said last week that the former president had been struck in the ear by a bullet or fragment of one. Trump said Monday evening that he expected that interview to take place Thursday.”
Most of Tuesday’s questions are expected to be directed at Rowe, as lawmakers seek answers on how Crooks managed to get so close to Trump. Investigators believe Crooks fired eight shots at Trump from an AR-style rifle after scaling the roof of a building approximately 135 meters (147 yards) away from where Trump was speaking in Butler. One rallygoer was killed, and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
At her hearing last week, Cheatle said the Secret Service had “failed” in its mission to protect Trump. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it, the AP noted. Cheatle admitted that the Secret Service had been alerted about a suspicious individual two to five times before the rally shooting. She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks fired had been flagged as a potential vulnerability days before the event.
Cheatle stated that she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the event. In a Monday night interview on Fox News Channel, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him during the shooting but criticized the lack of a presence on the roof with Crooks and the insufficient communication with local police.
