A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report found the Secret Service missed multiple chances to detect, communicate and respond to security threats before the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
By yourNEWS Media Newsroom
A newly released Department of Homeland Security inspector general report says the U.S. Secret Service failed to identify and act on several critical security threats before Thomas Crooks opened fire during President Trump’s July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The final report from the DHS Office of Inspector General describes a series of failures involving drone detection, staffing, communications, perimeter planning and line-of-sight mitigation before Crooks climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research complex and fired toward the rally site.
OIG-26-13-Jul26-Redacted by yourNEWS Media
According to the inspector general, Crooks flew a drone near the rally grounds from about 3:51 p.m. to 4 p.m., capturing aerial views of President Trump’s stage and the rooftop area later used in the attack. The report said the flight went undetected because the Secret Service’s counter-drone system was not operating at the time.
The agency had assigned only one counter-drone operator to the event, and the report said that operator had received about 20 minutes of informal instruction before the assignment. The operator also had not shadowed a more experienced counter-drone operator, according to the report.
The inspector general said the operator did not discover the equipment problem until the morning of the rally, after failing to test the system the previous day as required by agency policy. After identifying the malfunction, the operator spent hours attempting to get the equipment working.
The report said the operator first tried to reach the vendor shortly after noon but could not connect with technical support. He reached support at about 1:11 p.m. By 3:04 p.m., the vendor told him the issue would need to be escalated because weekend staffing was limited.
While that troubleshooting continued, Crooks launched and completed his drone flight. The Secret Service system was not restored until about 4:29 p.m., nearly 30 minutes after Crooks finished flying the drone, according to the report.
The inspector general used a 3D model of the rally site to examine the route of Crooks’ drone and what the drone could observe during the flight. The report said the equipment failure was ultimately traced to a broken Ethernet cable, which the operator replaced with a cable borrowed from President Trump’s audiovisual crew.
The watchdog concluded that if experienced Technical Security Division personnel had been assigned as originally requested, the counter-drone malfunction likely would have been fixed before Crooks’ drone flight occurred.
The report also found major gaps in communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement. The Secret Service did not establish a joint communications room with local agencies. Instead, the agency operated a communications room with the Pennsylvania State Police while local law enforcement worked from a separate mobile command center 257 yards away.
That separation meant urgent local radio traffic about Crooks did not reach the Secret Service in real time, according to the report. Local law enforcement’s communications room received 102 radio transmissions about the escalating search for a suspicious person, later identified as Crooks. The Secret Service communications room received only five phone calls and three text messages.
The report said the Secret Service communications room did not receive the most urgent transmissions indicating that the suspect was on the roof with a long gun.
At 6:09 p.m., local law enforcement called the Secret Service communications room to warn that a suspicious person was on the AGR roof. According to the report, the communications room supervisor and the counter-drone operator did not ask where the building was located. The operator instead searched the internet to determine the building’s location.
Members of President Trump’s protective detail later told investigators that if they had been informed about the search for the suspicious person, they would have delayed the speech or removed Trump from the stage. The report said the protective detail was not given that opportunity because the information was not properly relayed.
The inspector general identified five broad categories of missed opportunities before the shooting.
The first involved drone detection. The report cited the under-trained counter-drone operator, malfunctioning equipment and a lack of backup personnel as factors that prevented the Secret Service from detecting Crooks’ drone activity.
The second involved communications. The watchdog found that the absence of a joint communications room, the failure to receive 102 local radio transmissions and the lack of urgent notification to the protective detail left Secret Service personnel without critical information before the attack.
The third involved staffing and intelligence sharing. According to the report, the Secret Service had limited internal sharing about a long-range threat. Counter snipers were added, but a counter surveillance unit was not deployed, which the report said could have helped focus attention on the AGR complex.
The fourth involved the area outside the rally perimeter. The Pennsylvania State Police operations plan, which the Secret Service reviewed, did not include securing the AGR complex. The Secret Service did not provide feedback or clarify that the area needed to be covered, and local assets were not positioned to prevent access. A PSP supervisor told investigators that officers would have been assigned there if requested.
The fifth involved the failure to block the line of sight from the AGR roof to the stage. The report said the Secret Service had identified the AGR roof as a concern but did not ensure that the risk was addressed. A site agent counterpart suggested using trucks already at the location to block the view, but protectee staff rejected the proposal because it was “too close to the press shot,” according to the report.
The site agent counterpart then proposed an alternative but did not inform her lead agent or supervisors that the line of sight from the AGR roof remained exposed. The report said supervisors in the Donald Trump Division wrongly believed local law enforcement was covering the AGR grounds.
The Secret Service concurred with all seven recommendations issued by the DHS inspector general. The report said some recommendations have been closed while others remain open. Since the Butler shooting, the agency has created the Aviation and Airspace Security Division and updated certain policies involving communications rooms and coordination.
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