The first time that the U.S. Secret Service deployed snipers for the Trump campaign in 2024 was at the July 13 Pennsylvania rally where former President Donald Trump was shot in the ear, the acting director of the agency confirmed.
“It was the first time Secret Service counter snipers were deployed to support the former President’s detail,” acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said at a news conference on Aug. 2, responding to a question about whether snipers were deployed for the Trump campaign in 2024.
The agency had “evaluated a threat stream … and we put our Secret Service counter-sniper personnel out there,” he said. “And looking back, it was very fortunate that we did.”
A counter sniper is credited with shooting and killing would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks moments after he fired at the former president from a building roof about 400 feet away from the rally stage where Trump was speaking. One rally-goer was killed and two others were injured, while Trump’s right ear was struck with a bullet.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told news outlets last week that an agent wasn’t put on the roof from where Crooks opened fire due to the angle of the roof. After a contentious House hearing last month, Cheatle resigned from her position and Rowe was named as the acting director.
Rowe said on Aug. 2 that the agency “should have had better protection for the protectee,” referring to Trump. “We should have had better coverage on that roof line. We should have had at least some other set of eyes from the Secret Service point of view, covering that.”
“That building was very close to that outer perimeter,” Rowe added. “And we should have had more of a presence.”
Earlier in the week, Rowe said that the Secret Service sniper teams and the former president’s personal detail had no knowledge that an individual was on the roof with a gun. He said that the security lapse at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally was a “failure on multiple levels.”
“It is my understanding those personnel were not aware the assailant had a firearm until they heard gunshots,” he said.
“We assumed that the state and locals had it,” Rowe said. “We made an assumption that there was going to be uniformed presence out there, that there would be sufficient eyes to cover that, that there was going to be counter-sniper teams” in the building that Crooks had fired shots from the rooftop.
After the hearing with Cheatle, the House launched a bipartisan task force to investigate the shooting, led by Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.).
Autopsy Released
Earlier in August, Butler County Coroner William Young released a report that confirmed Crooks, 20, died from a single gunshot wound to the head at 6:25 p.m. local time on July 13, and his official cause of death was a homicide.No other details about his death, including whether he had substances or medications in his system when he died, were included in the report.
So far, local and federal agencies have had little to say about Crooks’s motive behind the shooting. In late July, Congress brought in representatives for both the FBI and the Secret Service, with FBI Director Christopher Wray telling a House panel that his bureau had no information about why Crooks carried out the assassination attempt or whether he was motivated by a particular political animus.
The Crooks family, meanwhile, has not issued a statement on the shooting three weeks after it occurred.
