Secret Service head says Trump shooting in July was agency 'failure'

The head of the Secret Service admitted on Friday that the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July was a "failure" for the agency and it is taking the lessons learned to prevent such an event from occurring again.

“It is important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13 and we take the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another mission failure like this again," said acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. during a briefing at the agency’s headquarters. “This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service.”

Rowe also said the agency "cannot afford to fail." 

According to an interim agency report, the Secret Service was plagued with communications issues and "technical difficulties" with drones around the time of security preparations for the rally.

"It is possible that if this element of the advance had functioned properly, the shooter may have been detected as he flew his drone near the Butler Farm Show venue earlier in the day," according to the executive summary of the report.

The report also states a "consistent theme gathered from state and local law enforcement personnel who helped secure the Butler rally was the presence of communications deficiencies."