Recap: Senate's assassination attempt hearing
Acting Secret Service Director and Deputy FBI Director testified
Here’s a recap on the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on the attempted assassination of former President Trump. The hearing was held July 30.
Appearing at the hearing were Ronald L. Rowe, Jr, Acting Director United States Secret Service (Written testimony) and Paul Abbate, Deputy Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Rowe was called in after Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned.
Here is Ranking Member Sen. Dick Durbin’s press release. The release contains some of the more pertinent questions posed to Rowe. Some of Rowe’s responses to direct questioning about security that day bring to mind the phrase, “New boss, same as the old boss.”
Video of the hearing:
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Quick Highlights:
Rowe repeatedly insisted that the failures in communications during the rally were “stuck” in local law enforcement channels and never got to the Secret Service, or did so belatedly.
“The only thing we had was that locals were working an issue at the three o’clock – which would have been the former president’s right-hand side – which is where the shot came,” Rowe said. “Nothing about man on the roof, nothing about man with a gun. None of that information ever made it over our net.”
Rowe also blamed local law enforcement for covering the roof where Thomas Crooks took his shots from, stating, “We assumed that the state and locals had it.”
Rowe’s account of communication issues is refuted by multiple local agencies, who claimed the Secret Service sniper team never briefed them, that local officers could only call into the state’s command center, and that multiple radio channels were used. Local law enforcement also said there was no clear set of orders given for areas outside the rally perimeter.
Additionally, while Crooks was able to fly a drone around the Butler rally area with no problem just hours ahead of Trump taking the stage, Rowe said the Secret Service drones were not used due to “connectivity issues.”
Sen. Ted Cruz shared a clip of his questioning about the lack of coverage on the roof and the requests for additional security by the Trump campaign. It’s worth a watch.
Sen. Josh Hawley was arguably the most animated during the hearing, demanding someone be fired. Read about his exchange with Rowe on The Daily Wire and at PJ Media.
Hawley also posted on X that he’s heard from a whistleblower.
“Whistleblower tells me Secret Service Acting Director Rowe personally directed cuts to the USSS agents who do threat assessments for events. Whistleblower says those agents were NOT present in Butler - and some of them had warned of security problems for months,” Hawley wrote.
Hawley included screenshots of a letter sent to Rowe on August 1:
The day after the hearing, new video emerged from the rally in Butler showing Thomas Crooks literally running across the roof where he would take up his position to shoot at Trump. People in the crowd noticed, begging the question, why did Secret Service not act?
