Law enforcement missed ‘pivotal moments’ to engage Trump gunman, House panel finds

A lack of planning and coordination led to the “preventable” assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump on July 13, according to an interim report from a House task force investigating the shooting.

The panel released a 53-page interim report on Monday morning — its first since the House voted unanimously to create it in late July — detailing communications and coordination failures between the multiple layers of law enforcement on the ground in Butler, Pennsylvania, for Trump’s rally. The task force also disclosed that Chair Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) has quietly issued three subpoenas to local Pennsylvania agencies for “sensitive documents.”

“Put simply, the evidence obtained by the Task Force to date shows the tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” the report found.

The Secret Service “did not effectively verify responsibilities were understood and being executed,” and there was no joint meeting between the Secret Service and state and local law enforcement on the day of the rally, according to the report.

The Secret Service also put the building where the shooter accessed the roof outside of the security perimeter for the rally — a point that has sparked frustration among both Democratic and Republican lawmakers for months. And the panel found that there was “disagreement and confusion” about who was responsible for making sure the building was secure.

The breakdown in communication also impacted law enforcement's ability to share information about the shooter, the report found, saying that “critical pieces of information ... moved slowly due to fragmented lines of communication and unclear chains of command on July 13.”

“Federal, state, and local law enforcement officers could have engaged Thomas Matthew Crooks at several pivotal moments,” the report adds, referring to the shooter.

The bipartisan panel has until mid-December to release its final report and legislative findings on the failures that led to the shooting and how to prevent future assassination attempts. This initial report’s findings align with another independent review, released last week, that found Secret Service personnel failed to effectively communicate with local law enforcement partners.

The House panel’s scope has been expanded to include the second assassination attempt in Florida in September. But Monday’s report focuses squarely on the Butler rally, including detailing radio communications and text messages between state and local law enforcement about the shooter. It is “unclear” if any of that information reached Trump’s security detail at the time, according to the panel’s findings.

The report said Secret Service records also show that information about a suspicious person did not reach the agency’s command post until about 5:51 p.m. — approximately 40 minutes after the shooter was “under scrutiny” from state and local law enforcement. Three local officers noticed him at approximately 5 p.m., according to the report.

“These observations were made independently, and based upon each officer’s experience, Crooks’s behavior and manner were suspicious,” according to the report.

A member of the Butler Emergency Services Unit yelled to another unit member at approximately 5:10 p.m. that the shooter had a “rangefinder.” It’s not clear that either of the two unit members, who were kept anonymous in the report, notified local law enforcement leadership.

The first member, identified as witness four, also sent a series of text messages at 5:15 p.m. to the other unit member that included a description of the shooter and reiterated that he had a rangefinder. But those messages weren’t seen until approximately 5:40 p.m.

Another local law enforcement officer — identified as Butler Township Police PD witness four — had a colleague help hoist him up onto the roof where the shooter was located and saw that he had a gun, but immediately fell to the ground.

“From there, I just start yelling out to the guys that are there, I yell on the radio right away. I start saying, you know, ‘South end, He's got a long gun, male on the roof.’ I just kept repeating, ‘He's got a gun, he’s got a long gun,’” the witness told the task force, according to the report.

But, the report notes: “To date, the Task Force has not received any evidence to suggest that message reached the former President’s USSS detail prior to shots fired.”