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Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said that he “cannot defend why that roof was not better secured” at a campaign rally where a gunman opened fire at Donald Trump from 500 feet away.
Rowe testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs Committee on Tuesday that he had visited the rally site in Butler, Pennsylvania, something his predecessor had not done.
“I laid in a prone position to evaluate his line of sight. What I saw made me ashamed. As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,” Rowe said in his opening statement.
The shooting was a “failure on multiple levels”, he added.
Rowe is testifying days after he was tapped to serve in the top Secret Service role. His predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, tendered her resignation one day after she testified on July 22 before the House Oversight Committee, prompting lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to call for her to step down.
Rowe acknowledged the ongoing investigations into the shooting. “I pledge my full support to those inquiries…so that the American people have a full understanding of what happened, leading up to and during” the events of the July 13,” he said.
“This is a failure of the Secret Service.”
“That roof should’ve had better coverage and we will get to the bottom of whether there were any policy violations,” Rowe later said. “I could not, I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roof line.”
Rowe also laid some blame on local law enforcement, saying officers had the better perspective on the roof. “I’m not saying they should have neutralized him, but if they had held their post and looked left, then maybe” the gunman could have been stopped, he said.
At one point, a heated exchange erupted between Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz and Rowe.
“I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests,” Cruz suggested. “I think the Biden administration has been suffused with partisan politics.” Cruz then asked whether the same person denied both Trump’s requests and Robert F Kennedy Jr’s requests.
“Secret Service agents are not political,” Rowe replied. Cruz started cutting in when Rowe interjected: “I will get to your answer Senator if you allow me to.”
Cruz then pressed about the size of President Joe Biden’s detail compared to that of a former president.
“Senator, there is a difference between the sitting president of the United States,” Rowe began saying.
“What’s the difference? 2x, 3x, 5x, 10x?” Cruz interrupted.
“The difference? National command authority to launch a nuclear strike, sir, there are other assets that travel with the president that the former president will not get but the number of Secret Service agents —” Rowe said, speaking loudly over Cruz who was shouting at him, claiming he was refusing to answer the question.
Rowe said all of the Trump campaign requests for assets for the Butler rally were approved.
Minnesota Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar asked Rowe to explain “what went wrong” to dispel conspiracy theories around the shooting.
“This was a failure of imagination. The failure to imagine that we actually do live in a dangerous world where people actually do want to do harm to our protectees…We didn’t challenge our own assumptions. We assumed that someone was going to cover that,” Rowe testified.
Rowe became the acting director after Cheatle stepped down last week. Lawmakers called for her resignation after she called the tragedy the “most significant operational failure” in decades in her testimony to the House.
On July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, opened fire from a nearby rooftop into the rally venue, killing one, striking Trump, and injuring two others. A Secret Service agent killed Crooks at the scene.
Cheatle had previously acknowledged that the Secret Service was informed of a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting — and that the roof where Crooks fired his AR-15-style rifle was considered a security vulnerability.
“We did not have anything beyond ‘suspicious person’ that was communicated to us,” Rowe testified. “There were other calls that day of individuals who came to the attention of law enforcement…Had we known that there was an individual out there, we would never let a protectee go out on stage.”
“Suspicion had not risen to the level of threat or imminent harm,” Rowe later said. “Without additional information at that point, we’re not rising to the level yet where perhaps we are pulling [Trump] off [the stage] or delaying him.”
On Tuesday, Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee asked Rowe why Trump was allowed to take the stage 17 minutes after multiple reports of a suspicious person.
“There was never a communication that there was an individual with a gun, a threat, or any other bad intentions,” Rowe said.
FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate also testified. He said “no motive” has been identified for the assassination attempt.
California Democratic Senator Laphonza Butler asked how Crooks was able to get a rifle on the rooftop.
“We don’t have definitive evidence,” Abbate said, adding that he “likely had it in the backpack.” He said part of the rifle would have stuck out of the bag, since it would not have fully fit inside the backpack, yet no video footage or eye witness noted seeing anything popping out of it.
“It’s possible that he broke the rifle down” and put it in the backpack, Abbate suggested. But, he said, no evidence has concluded that is what happened.
“If this happened in the military, a lot of people would be fired,” said South Carolina Republican Senator Lindsay Graham, ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “Somebody’s gotta be fired. Nothing’s going to change until somebody loses their job.”
Florida Republican Senator Rick Scott labeled the Secret Service as a “black hole” that is losing the trust of the American people and suggested the agency give regular updates to the press about the matter.
Connecticut Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal also asked for more transparency, asking Rowe to commit to producing documents in a more timely manner.
Rowe committed to making Secret Service agents available to speak to the panel within the next few days.
Trump has confirmed that he would be participating in an interview with the FBI about the assassination attempt.
