WASHINGTON — Two days before a gunman wounded former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service walked the site of the planned campaign rally with members of the Pennsylvania State Police, who had been pulled in for added security.
At some point, a state police official raised a question about the roof of a warehouse that stood within 500 feet of the stage from which Trump was to speak.
The Secret Service’s answer — according to a state police commander’s testimony in a congressional hearing Tuesday — was that a local police unit would handle that building.
“We were told that Butler ESU was responsible for that area, by several Secret Service agents on that walk-through,” said State Police Col. Christopher Paris, referring to the Emergency Services Unit, a SWAT-style tactical unit made up of officers from several local counties.
That was one of many new riveting details about the shooting on July 13 that emerged from Paris’ testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee. He described a security situation that was disastrously undermined by breakdowns in communications and responsibilities, by the complex manner in which a photo of a suspicious man was relayed among the various law enforcement agencies, and by the last-minute decision for local snipers to leave an elevated vantage point to search for the suspicious man on foot.
The suspicious man turned out to be a gunman intent on killing the Republican presidential nominee. The would-be assassin, later identified as Thomas Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, used the warehouse roof to fire off a round of shots, injuring Trump, killing a rally attendee and wounding two others.
Paris’ appearance was far different in substance and tone than the one a day earlier by Kimberly Cheatle, then director of the Secret Service, in a hearing in front of the House Committee on Oversight and Reform. Cheatle, though acknowledging the failure of her agency, frustrated the committee by repeatedly refusing to answer questions, prompting lawmakers from both parties to call for her resignation. She quit on Tuesday.
Paris’ testimony marked the first time that any official had identified an agency responsible for monitoring the rooftop of the AGR International warehouse, from which Crooks had fired at Trump.
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