‘Massive security breach’: Secret Service under scrutiny after gunman got clear shot at Trump

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump represents a glaring failure by the Secret Service, which left the former president exposed to gunfire in a breach of security that will likely haunt a long-idealized agency that has been repeatedly tarnished by scandal in recent years.

Important questions about the shooting remain unresolved, but the fact that the 20-year-old gunman managed to scale a roof about 200 yards from where Trump was speaking has already prompted calls for a searching investigation of the Secret Service.

“Those responsible for the planning, approving and executing of this clearly insufficient security plan need to testify before Congress and be held accountable,” said Rep. Ruben Gallego, a Democrat and former Marine running for Senate in Arizona.

The inevitable formal inquiries into the shooting, which left an attendee at the rally dead and wounded Trump, will raise fundamental questions about how the U.S. can protect dignitaries at a time of bitter polarization and widespread access to firearms.

Immediate questions about the attack will land Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle under the microscope of congressional investigators as the FBI investigates the shooting.

In the hours that followed Saturday’s shooting, lawmakers from both parties and law enforcement experts have pointed to a series of glaring oversights or errors that appear to have contributed to the tragedy and to the possibility that the country came within millimeters of a political catastrophe.

The gunman identified by the FBI on Sunday, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper team after he opened fire from a building overlooking the rally. His ability to reach that rooftop, where he had a direct shot at Trump, is among the most immediate areas of review.

“There should never have been a clear line of sight on the former president. My Marine Corps training taught me that,” Gallego, an Iraq veteran, said in a statement.

The vantage point Crooks managed to acquire immediately calls to mind one of the greatest disasters in U.S. political history: the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by Lee Harvey Oswald from a 6th-floor perch in the Texas School Book Depository. It’s been six decades since Kennedy was shot in his open-top limo on Dealey Plaza, but the lessons remain central to Secret Service planning — or are supposed to.

Investigators will seek to interview agents who did advance preparations for the Trump rally and surveyed the area with local law enforcement and campaign staff. They are expected to explore if access to the rooftops was discussed and whether anyone suggested doing anything to hinder it.

Witnesses have put the distance between the building where the gunman’s body was recovered and the podium at between 150 and 250 yards, leading some experts to express surprise that a roof with a clear view of the stage would not have been secured.

Speaking on CNN Sunday, Rep. Cory Mills (R-Fla.) said it wouldn’t take much for someone with a high-powered rifle to hit a target from that range.

“There was no one on that building. ... This is a massive security breach, in my opinion,” said Mills, an Army veteran who also worked for State Department security contractor Dyncorp in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The timeliness of the Secret Service’s response and its coordination with local law enforcement was also thrown into question by witnesses who said they alerted authorities about what was happening.

“We noticed the guy bear-crawling up the roof of the building beside us, 50 feet away," rallygoer Greg Smith told the BBC at the scene. "He had a rifle, we could clearly see a rifle. ... We're pointing at him, the police are down there running around on the ground, we're like 'Hey man, there's a guy on the roof with a rifle'... and the police did not know what was going on."

"Why is there not Secret Service on all of these roofs here?" asked Smith, who described trying to alert authorities for three to four minutes. "This is not a big place. ... Security failure — 100 percent security failure."

As investigators dig into those accounts, it will be vital to scour radio traffic from local and state police as well as the Secret Service. How much time elapsed from the first reports until word reached the agents? Was there a communications breakdown?

The last time the Secret Service’s handling of a high-profile situation drew as much scrutiny came after Jan. 6, 2021, when a security sweep overlooked a pipe bomb planted outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters as then Vice President-elect Kamala Harris entered the area. The agency drew bipartisan fury after congressional investigators discovered that the phones of dozens of high-level officials and agents were wiped in the weeks after the attack.

The Jan. 6 select committee also obtained Secret Service radio recordings to determine how agents moved then-Vice President Mike Pence to safety amid the chaos.

In the attempted assassination this weekend, questions are also swirling about whether the counter-sniper team moved quickly enough to locate the shooter and open fire. Audio of the event and witness accounts suggest the suspect may have gotten off as many as seven shots before he was killed. At a press conference late Saturday, the FBI special-agent-in-charge of the investigation, Kevin Rojek, called it “surprising” that so many shots could be fired at a highly secured presidential event.

Relatedly, there are questions about whether Trump’s Secret Service detail moved fast enough to secure him and if they followed correct procedure.

After the shooting, agents quickly covered Trump behind what experts say appeared to be a ballistic barrier. That's what's called for by the Service's long-established “cover and evacuate” protocol . But as the agents began to evacuate Trump, they twice exposed his chest and body to the crowd. That may have been an error considering the possibility of multiple shooters.

“Clearly USSS failed at the basics of a secure perimeter and once shots were fired their extraction was clumsy and left DJT highly exposed to follow on attacks,” said former Navy SEAL and founder of the Blackwater security firm Erik Prince in a post on X.

Another certain area of focus for investigators will be whether Crooks had any prior encounters with law enforcement.

After nearly every high-profile shooting or terrorism incident, FBI leaders now brace for word on whether its databases reflect any encounters or tips about the suspect, fearing it will mean recriminations for the agency if it failed to sufficiently follow up. During a briefing for journalists on Sunday, officials said they had found no contacts with Crooks or reports about him.

Social media is also awash in wild speculation about the shooter's motive. Trump’s allies have been quick to suggest a link between Joe Biden’s rhetoric and Saturday’s violence. But, as yet, there’s been no evidence publicly unearthed to shed insight into the attack.

“We don’t yet have any information about the motive of the shooter,” Biden said during a White House appearance. “I urge everyone — everyone, please: Don’t make assumptions about his motives or affiliations. Let the FBI do their job.”

Precisely, how far-ranging the FBI investigation will be was unclear from the briefing Sunday. Rojek, the top FBI agent in Pittsburgh, said his agency is zeroing in on the shooting itself and not broader issues of security tactics or procedures.

“The focus of our investigation will be the actions associated with the attack on the former president. And so the questions that we're asking [Secret Service agents] now are related to that. They're not necessarily focused on the security of the event, and the grounds,” Rojek said.

FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate, however, suggested the investigation would be somewhat broader. “We do plan a full-scope investigation to encompass the entire timeline of the events leading up to this, as well,” he said.

Biden also said he’s launching “an independent review of the national security at yesterday’s rally to assess exactly what happened.”

Details of that review were not immediately clear, but it seems likely to examine whether the overall security was sufficient given the threat environment and the Republican National Convention two days away.

Some on the right have also surfaced reports that the Trump campaign sought greater security from the Secret Service in recent months and was rebuffed. Those claims prompted a broad denial from Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.

“This is absolutely false,” Guglielmi wrote on X . “In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”