Secret Service failures turn GOP lawmakers into private detectives

Failures by the Secret Service to prevent the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump have some Republicans taking matters into their own hands.

Armed with accusations that federal investigators aren’t being transparent, lawmakers have obtained and unveiled new footage and details of security pitfalls that may have enabled a rooftop shooter to strike Trump from only a few hundred feet away.

“The only way for the Secret Service to regain Americans’ trust is to be totally transparent about what went wrong on July 13,” Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) told the Washington Examiner. “Unfortunately, federal agencies seem to be behind the ball.”

Grassley made public nearly 30 minutes of bodycam footage taken by law enforcement in the aftermath of the shooting, including the graphic moments when agents encountered the lifeless body of the would-be assassin, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks.

Parts of the video show Crooks’s body on the roof of the building where a Secret Service counter-sniper shot and killed Crooks in the moments after he opened fire on Trump during a July 13 campaign rally. The videos offered greater details into reports that agents were warned of Crooks as a possible threat prior to him gaining roof access and shooting Trump.

“So, this is the guy that your snipers saw?” a Secret Service agent says on the roof to a Beaver County Emergency Services Unit officer.

“Yes, Beaver County snipers seen him and sent pictures out. This is him,” a Beaver County ESU officer said before the two men compared pictures on their phones.

Grassley obtained the footage from Beaver County ESU in response to congressional requests. His office said he’ll be “making public all relevant records in the interest of transparency” from federal and local agencies.

“Federal agencies ought to be embarrassed that Chuck Grassley has beaten them to the investigative punch,” Grassley said. “My oversight won’t be letting up anytime soon.”

Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-TN) led a group of House Republicans to survey the rooftop shooting site. Members said their in-person assessments undercut claims by former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle that the rooftop’s slope rendered it unsafe for agents.

Several lawmakers filmed themselves on the roof to provide a first-person perspective of Crooks’s ability to navigate the position with ease and its direct line of sight to where Trump was speaking.

“It’s not that steep at all. We just had a 70-year-old man back here climb up on the roof easily,” Rep. Eli Crane (R-AZ), a former Navy SEAL, said in a video he posted to social media.

The man he referenced was Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL), a former SWAT member. In his own video, Gimenez called the Secret Service’s reasoning “crazy.”

“I’m a 70-year-old man, and this roof is not a big deal,” he said. “You can see you got a clear line to [Trump].”

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) revealed an anonymous whistleblower told his office that the Secret Service declined to deploy drones beforehand to help secure the rally site. Crooks used a drone himself before the event to survey his future firing position.

“According to one whistleblower, the night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees Secret Service. “This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no.”

The Secret Service “changed course” and “asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site” after the assassination attempt, according to the whistleblower.

The Secret Service has yet to address the allegations.