Failures of Secret Service mount as senators demand accountability

The failures of the Secret Service around the attempted assassination of Donald Trump are mounting but members of Congress say there’s not been enough accountability.

Trump suffered a wound to the ear, a spectator was killed and two others were critically wounded when a sniper opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week after a U.S. House hearing failed to get answers.

On Tuesday in a U.S. Senate hearing, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe told U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, those on the ground making decisions that day have not been fired.

“Is it not prima facie somebody has failed? A former president was shot,” Hawley said.

“Sir, this could have been our Texas Schoolbook Depository,” Rowe said, referencing the sniper’s outpost in the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy in Dallas, Texas. “I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days, just like you have.”

“Then fire somebody, to hold them accountable,” Hawley said.

Hawley was asking why the people who made the decision to not have someone on the roof where the sniper was ultimately killed, who managed radio communications or who failed to keep the president from taking the stage that day have not been fired.

Tuesday's joint hearing was with the U.S. Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. Senators reviewed the lapses in communications, placement of the parameter in Butler, Pennsylvania and where the buck stops for the failures.

Discussed was how the shooter was known minutes before the shooting to be suspicious with a rangefinder before being seen with a gun. The shooter even sent up a drone hours before the event. Rowe said they didn’t have their anti-drone systems in place until later in the day.

“It appears that there was an offer by a state or local agency to fly a drone on our behalf and I’m getting to the bottom of why we turned that down,” Rowe said.

The motive of the shooter, who was shot and killed, is still being investigated.

U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, confirmed from the Secret Service and the FBI that they are updating their security posture after the lessons of July 13 ahead of next month’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“Tens of thousands of people will be there including some of the highest ranking politicians in the United States,” Durbin said.