A Senate report released Sunday revealed "stunning failures" by the US Secret Service (USSS) that allowed a gunman to shoot then-former President Donald Trump during a July 13, 2024 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The report by Senator Rand Paul, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, "exposes a disturbing pattern of denials, mismanagement, and missed warning signs".
It found "multiple, unacceptable failures in the planning and execution of the July 13 Butler rally" that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks to climb onto the roof of a nearby building and fire eight shots from an AR-15 style rifle at Trump, grazing him in the upper right ear.
In addition to injuring Trump, Crooks' shots wounded three audience members, one fatally, before he was fatally shot by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
The bipartisan investigation that used interviews with Secret Service personnel and reviewed over 75,000 pages revealed the Secret Service "denied multiple requests for additional staff, assets, and resources to protect President Trump during the campaign".
"USSS agents failed to communicate crucial information regarding the suspicious individual to President Trump's shift detail, which had the ability to prevent him from taking the stage," the report said.
The investigation found "a severe lack of coordination and communication between USSS and state and local law enforcement from the advance process through the event".
Agents chose not to retrieve radios from local law enforcement, limiting coordination, the report said, highlighting that known "vulnerabilities" were identified in advance but not addressed.
The report also said that despite the security breach, the agency "did not fire a single person" and "formally disciplined only six personnel".
"What happened was inexcusable, and the consequences imposed for the failures so far do not reflect the severity of the situation," it said.
