By Michael Kirby
“The assassination attempt to President Elect that day has left a mark on our community,” said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.), opening the second and final public hearing of the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump on Dec. 5. The July incident, which took place in Kelly’s native Butler, Pennsylvania, was detailed in a report issued by the panel.
The Task Force, led by Kelly and Ranking Member Jason Crow, was directed to “investigate all actions by any agency, department, officer or employee of the federal government, as well as state and local law enforcement or any other state or local government or private entities or individuals, related to the attempted assassination of Donald J. Trump on July 13, 2024.”
Given the dangers of mission failure to protect lives and property, the panel considered how the actions of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) fell short up to and through the incident on July 13. In the end, the panel concluded that, “the tragic and shocking events in Butler, Pennsylvania, were preventable and should not have happened” and shared 23 recommendations to enhance the Secret Service’s capacity to fulfill its “zero fail protective mission.”
Public safety agencies can learn countless lessons from an incident of this magnitude, particularly related to mutual-aid and interagency coordination. Whether for an event or as ongoing arrangements, planning before the alarm strikes must be matched by coordinated action backed by coordination during an incident. Butler is a case study.
Unpreparedness led to unawareness
Communications – whether between colleagues in a room or on shared radios or frequencies as in the case of mutual aid – was repeatedly identified in both the hearing and the panel’s report. “Nearly every Secret Service and [local law enforcement] officer present on July 13 testified to the Task Force that communications onsite could have been better.”
Lacking preparation beforehand, law enforcement then lacked communications onsite. Kelly said agents faced “a flawed setup” and then failed “to speak up about problems they observed,” so much so that investigators found no evidence “that any Secret Service in proximity to President Trump at the rally who might have been in the position to get him off the stage knew that there was a suspicious or armed person on a rooftop until after shots were fired.”
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said, “Secret Service’s luck ran out that day, because the systemic failures didn’t start on July 13. They were probably occurring [already], but luckily, President Trump moved his head and he wasn’t killed.”
While Acting USSS Director Ronald Rowe testified that radio operations were moved from a “line of business directorate” to a more relevant technical security division, this was after the fact. Under questioning from Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.), still a reserve deputy marshal in his state, about “isolated assets on rooftops that had no direct radio communication, other than the delay of through their command post and their cell phones,” Rowe said local and agency snipers were co-located. Their position did not know what others knew. According to Higgins, sharing radios was part of the plan, “but it wasn’t executed on that day,” which he called another failure.
Rowe said agents are charged with ensuring shared incident command posts, related support, “and we either have their radio or they are with us, and we are testing those communications in advance to make sure that they are rock solid.” But Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), calling the operation “lackadaisical,” noted there were “agencies that had never even talked to Secret Service that day.” Visibly angry, Green told Rowe that “these are really basic things.”
Rep. Glenn Ivey (D-Md.) said that at least some of the day’s radio communications were not recorded. The former prosecutor had asked “to hear what happened that day.” Congressional investigators were left with email and text messages – “the sort of things people did on an ad hoc basis to deal with the emergency in a quick way,” he told Rowe.
Detailing the failures
Some of the key points from the report’s executive summary:
- An expressed lack of manpower and assets was not sufficiently addressed, resulting in coverage gaps on the ground.
- Local snipers on the property understood their responsibility to be overwatch of the crowd and venue, not the area outside the secure perimeter.
- Technology meant to supplement venue security was out of commission for hours.
- A fragmented communication structure and poor decision-making prevented vital information from reaching pertinent law enforcement personnel.
- Secret Service personnel with little to no experience in advance planning roles were given significant responsibility.
Key points from interviewees at the hearing:
- Operations plans were not shared (p. 16): “Commander [Redacted] testified that he did not send the Butler ESU [operations] plan to anyone with Secret Service. He testified that the Secret Service did not ask for the plan.”
- Roles weren’t made clear (p. 87): “At multiple points during the week leading up to the rally, the Secret Service advance team could have stepped in to clarify communications roles and responsibilities; however, that did not happen.”
- Needed materials weren’t given out (p. 112): “It was not until Thursday, July 11, just two days before the rally, that the Secret Service coordinated with all state and LLE partners regarding security posts and staffing requirements. However, at no point before, during, or after the Thursday walkthrough did state or LLE receive any operations plans, briefing materials, or written security post instructions from the USSS.”
- Some weren’t invited to a shared post (p. 87-88): “PSP Lt. [Redacted] did not hear Senior Special Agent [Redacted] or anyone else from the Secret Service invite or request state or LLE join the Security Room. Butler County DES Director [Redacted] stated that he did not recall LLE being invited to the Security Room either.”
- Personnel operated on different radio frequencies (p. 93-94) and fell back to personal cell phones (p. 23, 90) when radios didn’t work: “In addition to USSS, there were four law enforcement entities operating on different radio frequencies: PSP; Butler ESU; BTPD; and the Butler County Sheriff’s Office. Additionally, Butler DES and medical personnel used a different radio channel.”
Recommendations
The panel detailed 23 recommendations related to issues that directly led to the Butler incident. A few apply to public safety agencies, whether for a planned event or contingency:
- Have a plan and share the plan;
- Involve every party in planning and at the command post to ensure situational awareness;
- Define common communications, such as radio equipment, frequency and channels – then test;
- Brief regularly and avoid reliance on cell service or email during event; and
- Prioritize experience and expertise in assignments.
Prudence dictates adapting the panel’s findings and recommendations to your mission. Rather than protecting a VIP, your charge is saving life and property. For example, rather than co-locating snipers, units from faraway jurisdictions operating together should have already met at some point and speak a common language on common radios.
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Prep for the unseen also on a longer time horizon
Moskowitz noted that the USSS “is still struggling with the same problems” identified on 9/11. While “it’s not sexy,” he pointed out – based on experience with hurricanes and the Marjory Stoneman Douglas mass shooting – that “every city, every county, every state, every federal agency, every sector is doing different procurement.”
The former state emergency manager could have been talking to anyone in Rowe’s seat in charge of getting the right equipment in the right hands. “I’m telling you: We’re not going to fix this problem until that happens.” Leaders do well to learn from unexpected case studies – and not wait for the big one.
About the author
Michael Kirby has worked since 2008 for a credentialed news bureau on Capitol Hill that provides digital video and information services to news organizations across the web. Kirby graduated from the University at Buffalo in 2007 with a BA in philosophy, minoring in history. He is interested in many legislative topics, and always has an eye on public safety-related news because he grew up around the firehouse.