WASHINGTON — Senate lawmakers are expected Tuesday to grill the acting director of the Secret Service about law enforcement lapses in the hours before the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in the latest in a series of congressional hearings dedicated to the shooting.
Ronald Rowe became acting director of the agency last week after his predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned in the aftermath of a House hearing in which she was berated by lawmakers from both parties and failed to answer specific questions about the communication failures preceding the July 13 shooting.
Rowe will be joined by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a joint hearing of the Senate committees on the Judiciary and Homeland Security.
The hearing comes one day after the FBI released new details about its investigation into the shooting, revealing that the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had looked online for information about mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the May assassination attempt of the Slovakian prime minister.
The FBI also said that Trump has agreed to be interviewed by agents as a crime victim; the bureau said last week that the former president had been struck in the ear by a bullet or fragment of one. Trump said Monday evening that he expected that interview to take place on Thursday.
But the bulk of the questions Tuesday are expected to be directed at Rowe as lawmakers demand answers about how Crooks was able to get so close to Trump. Investigators believe Crooks fired eight shots in Trump’s direction from an AR-style rifle after scaling the roof of a building of some 135 meters (147 yards) from where Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.
One rallygoer was killed and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service countersniper.
At her hearing last week, Cheatle said the Secret Service had “failed” in its mission to protect Trump. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.
Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the rally. She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.
Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.
In a Monday night interview on Fox News, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him from the shooting but said someone should have been on the roof with Crooks and that there should have been better communication with local police.
“They didn’t speak to each other,” he said.
He praised the sniper who killed Crooks with what he said was an amazing shot but noted: “It would have been good if it was nine seconds sooner.”
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