The recent shooting of former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally has raised serious questions about the security failures that enabled the attack.
While there was significant Secret Service presence as well as local law enforcement on the scene, a gunman was able to get onto the roof of a building about 150 meters away from Trump and fire at both him and members of the crowd. That development has prompted concerns about missteps made by the Secret Service and gaps in the coverage provided for the former president at the event.
“We are speaking of a failure,” Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said in remarks about the attack.
Scrutiny of what went wrong has spurred President Joe Biden to order an independent review of the issue. House Speaker Mike Johnson has called for one in the lower chamber as well. “The Secret Service is working with all involved Federal, state and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again,” Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said in a statement regarding the shooting, noting that the agency would be fully cooperative with these investigations.
There’s still a lot we don’t know as these reviews get underway, but early reports reveal potential lapses in coordination among federal and regional law enforcement, and a limited security perimeter that could have played a role.
For events like this, the Secret Service typically designates a security perimeter. It’s then responsible for protecting and screening the buildings and people within those confines.
The shooter scaled a building just outside that perimeter, about 148 meters away from Trump’s podium. Due to its location, the Secret Service did not sweep it, CNN reported. Instead, local law enforcement was responsible for that area, the Secret Service has said.
That type of collaboration is standard and something the Secret Service often uses across different events due to the scope of resources required. “It is a fairly routine matter for all of our agencies to work jointly with the Secret Service,” Pennsylvania State Police Lt. Colonel George Bivens said at a press briefing.
Local law enforcement has noted, however, that the Secret Service was “the lead” on security. That’s left the two groups effectively trading blame about who was ultimately responsible and suggesting that there may have been gaps in communication.
Additionally, the building the gunman shot from, which belonged to a glass research company, had been identified as a possible threat by the Secret Service prior to the Trump rally, NBC News reports. Given the building’s proximity to Trump, and these revelations, questions have emerged about why the Secret Service didn’t direct local police to station officers on the roof, due to how close the building was. The Secret Service has said there was a local law enforcement team located inside the building, something experts have described as less effective for deterring a gunman than officers on the exterior.
A few people at the rally also told the press that they saw the shooter as he climbed the rooftop; they tried to tell the police. A Washington Post analysis found that officers were warned by members of the audience about a minute and a half before the shooting began. Why those warnings went unheeded will be a key question for investigators to understand.
Also notable: The shooter had been seen pacing on the outskirts of the event, and local officers had flagged him as a suspicious individual to keep an eye on prior to the attack. The Butler County Sheriff’s Office told CNN that an officer approached the gunman on the roof, at which point the shooter pointed his weapon at the officer, forcing him to “take cover.” Law enforcement officers’ failure to apprehend the shooter before he fired multiple shots, hitting Trump in the ear, killing a member of the crowd and injuring two others, remains a major question.
The errors around the Trump shooting put a new spotlight on recent missteps by the Secret Service, which include an intruder inside White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s home in 2023, and another intruder entering the White House in 2014. They heighten the focus on past concerns agents have expressed about being overworked and burnt out, and they echo prior worries about how the Secret Service has been underfunded, something Congress sought to address with a big boost in appropriations this year.
The Secret Service has also rejected conspiracy theories that some conservatives have floated about how the Trump campaign’s prior requests for more security have been denied, noting that his detail was bolstered earlier this year.
“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources and that those were rebuffed,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told CNN. “This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources & technology & capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo.”
A group of House Democrats who had supported a bill to strip Trump’s Secret Service detail if he was sentenced to prison has faced criticism as well. That measure, which has not passed the House, would have applied if he received a sentence of at least one year in prison, which has not happened and may not happen.
The assassination attempt also underscores the country’s massive gun problem and the limitations of armed security as the central mode of combating it. The US’s gun homicide rate far outpaces that of its counterparts, and is 26 times higher than other high-income countries, per gun control advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety. Researchers have found that armed law enforcement has failed to prevent or stymie other shootings in part because police aren’t able to respond in time or only able to react once it’s already happening. Per a 2022 Texas State University study, police subdued the shooter in less than a third of active attacks between 2000 and 2021.
