July 30, 2024 - The Benny Show - Benny Johnson
03:41:34
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The acting Secret Service director will testify on Capitol Hill today about the assassination attempt on former President Trump as we learn new details about how the would-be assassin accessed the roof he shot from. | |
| Brooke Singman is here with the details. | ||
| Yeah, guys, Ronald Rowe took over as acting Secret Service director when Kimberly Cheadle resigned, and he's expected to testify before a joint Senate panel at 10 a.m. Eastern. | ||
| Rowe is expected to reveal new details about the agency's communications leading up to and directly following the assassination attempt on former President Trump. | ||
| He's also set to break down the security plan used by Secret Service and police. | ||
| Now, Fox News is told Rowe will provide a more substantive testimony than former Director Cheadle, despite the... | ||
| Probe and to their response, though, former President Trump says the Secret Service agents showed great bravery during the assassination attempt. | ||
| Listen. | ||
| I just want to say one thing about Secret Service. | ||
| They were very brave because they were coming and bullets were flying over me because I went down. | ||
| I had a lot of people on top of me, a lot of very big, strong people on top of me, I want to tell you. | ||
| And they were very brave. | ||
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What was Melania's reaction? | |
| She was watching. | ||
| I said, so what was your feeling? | ||
| She can't really even talk about it. | ||
| Which is okay, because that means she likes me. | ||
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Or she loves me. | |
| FBI Deputy Director Paul Abate will also testify this morning. | ||
| It comes as the FBI reveals the gunman accessed the roof he shot from by climbing up the building's HVAC and pipes. | ||
| He then traversed several rooftops before stopping on the roof that he eventually opened fire from. | ||
| Thomas Matthew Crook's motive is still unknown. | ||
| And we are now learning Secret Service agents reportedly delayed Trump from taking the stage at an event this weekend due to another security lapse. | ||
| Two people were actually removed from the Bitcoin event in Nashville, but Secret Service says the former president was not in danger. | ||
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Guys. | |
| He's going down! | ||
| Shoot him! | ||
| I'll allow it. | ||
| F***. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| All right, baby. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| Are we good? | ||
| Are we locked and loaded? | ||
| Jeez, man. | ||
| Yesterday, what a mess. | ||
| What a disaster. | ||
| It makes me so angry because we put so much effort into the show. | ||
| And we put so much effort into, like, building everything out. | ||
| And then the entire system collapsed yesterday. | ||
| And when we sort of miss our chance to go live, everything else, all the gears, don't hit anymore for the rest of the day. | ||
| So we gotta just keep moving. | ||
| So it got me very, very angry and very sorry. | ||
| I got thousands of messages from people. | ||
| What happened to your show? | ||
| Where were you? | ||
| Like, we apologize. | ||
| We put it up on X, but the streaming service that we used to put up the show didn't work. | ||
| Completely glitched out and wouldn't play clips, wouldn't connect with our social media, and everything just went completely haywire yesterday. | ||
| And so we apologize for that. | ||
| It was totally out of our control. | ||
| And we are back now. | ||
| Crystal clear. | ||
| We've worked with the... | ||
| We think we figured out what was going on. | ||
| It was a problem with the streaming service themselves connecting with our social media. | ||
| And it has now been resolved. | ||
| And so here we are. | ||
| Back, baby. | ||
| Today is Tuesday, July 30th, 2024. | ||
| And the FBI and the Secret Service will be grilled together. | ||
| Suzanne! | ||
| We have the Secret Service director, the new one. | ||
| Kim Cheadle has resigned, in disgrace. | ||
| The new one, plus the FBI, on the stand together in the Senate today. | ||
| We're going to be covering that. | ||
| Joe Biden attempts to destroy the Supreme Court as he clings to power. | ||
| Nobody even cares at all about him and Kash Patel. | ||
| And Senator Roger Marshall will be joining the show. | ||
| My name is Benny Johnson, and this is The Benny Show. | ||
| So we have... | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure today, the new acting Secret Service director, who, according to our sources, is worse than the old Secret Service director, Kim Cheadle, who, again, resigned in disgrace after a congressional hearing. | ||
| Now, the Senate is going to be doing the questioning today, and Chuck Grassley has been the big dog. | ||
| When it comes to asking questions inside of the Senate, Chuck Grassley has been releasing the best footage and the best commentary and getting the best text, all of the data that you want to get for this, the most successful assassination attempt on a president in modern history, Chuck Grassley has been delivering. | ||
| And so, ladies and gentlemen, we have the Chuck Grassley hearing that will be live in moments. | ||
| It's supposed to go live at 10 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. | ||
| Chuck Grassley has been doing, again, the Lord's work when it comes to exposing what truly happened on that day. | ||
| And we very much look forward to premiering for you a documentary that we put together as we visited Butler, Pennsylvania. | ||
| This show visited Butler, Pennsylvania last week. | ||
| And we're working very, very hard to put the pieces together. | ||
| Mike Johnson announced a special task force. | ||
| To look into the Trump assassination, the failures, that task force is staffed by people who are subservient to the Department of Justice, to the deep state, to the organs of Washington, D.C. There are never Trumpers on that committee. | ||
| We're going to expose all of them. | ||
| That committee is a fake. | ||
| It's not real. | ||
| It is not properly staffed. | ||
| They're not the right people on that. | ||
| We stand against it. | ||
| And members of Congress are coming to us enraged, actually, about... | ||
| The way that that committee was put together. | ||
| And so we are going to, there is a separate committee that is going to be funded entirely by Corey Mills and is going to be staffed with actual real investigators who really want to get to the bottom of what happened there. | ||
| And Corey Mills is going to do his own concurrent investigation. | ||
| It's going to be awesome. | ||
| All of that occurred yesterday and we weren't live because of technical errors. | ||
| And so we weren't able to talk through it all, but that was announced yesterday afternoon. | ||
| So ladies and gentlemen, We're going to be setting the table here for a pretty wild hearing in the Senate. | ||
| Chuck Grassley is the king of oversight. | ||
| He's somebody who has really put his pedal to the metal on what happened that day. | ||
| First off, let's go to the timeline. | ||
| Go. | ||
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Timeline from July 13th, Butler, Pennsylvania. | |
| Here we go. | ||
| Nine o 'clock in the morning on that Saturday. | ||
| There was a meeting schedule, apparently, and the United States Secret Service did not show up. | ||
| And who were they meeting with? | ||
| Sniper teams from three different counties that surround Pittsburgh, Allegheny County. | ||
| That's Butler County, Beaver County, and Washington County. | ||
| At 1 o 'clock in the afternoon, four hours later, all those sniper teams, those three locals now, get on a group chat. | ||
| 426 in the afternoon. | ||
| Here's the Beaver County sniper. | ||
| He ends his shift. | ||
| Why he ends that shift, I do not know. | ||
| But he ends his shift and then alerts the teams of a suspicious person at a picnic table. | ||
| And then at 5.38 now, the Beaver County sniper sends the pictures of the suspects sitting at that table to be on the lookout. | ||
| This is a full hour now before Trump comes out. | ||
| 5.45, here we go. | ||
| Beaver Law Enforcement recommends they alert command. | ||
| That's 26 minutes at 5.45 before 6.11 and the first shots are fired. | ||
| The ultimate question here is, what the hell happened in Secret Service Command? | ||
| These are the real questions, okay? | ||
| What happened in the command center? | ||
| Check out this tweet from Susan Crabtree, who's been doing incredible work on this for Real Clear Politics, White House reporter. | ||
| Why did the Secret Service Command Center not tell agents to prevent Trump from going on stage? | ||
| This is the penultimate question, all right? | ||
| So now, adding up all the evidence together, we have crooks on the scene. | ||
| We have crooks behaving wildly. | ||
| We have crooks on the rooftop, surrounded by cops. | ||
| We have new footage of all that. | ||
| The Zapruder film, this entire event has been released, and it's crazy. | ||
| And so the question is, why was Trump allowed to take the state? | ||
| That's the real question, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| You might call it the solid gold question. | ||
| It's a question that we hope that the Senate gets to today. | ||
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| Allegiance Gold is, of course, the gold company that I use. | ||
| They are the gold company that protects the future. | ||
| I don't trust the American dollar. | ||
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| It's a completely fake system. | ||
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| Don't get fooled. | ||
| Okay, baby, here we go. | ||
| It sounds like the senators are getting seated. | ||
| And they're going to be doing their opening questions. | ||
| And yeah, ladies and gentlemen, let's go to the Senate hearing with the Secret Service, the new Secret Service director and FBI. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
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Let's go, go, go. | |
| Go. | ||
| Bipartisan investigation that Senator Paul and I have launched, which we launched shortly after the assassination attempt took place. | ||
| Our teams are still collecting critical information, speaking to law enforcement, and piercing together the details of this event. | ||
| This past weekend, a bipartisan team of our investigators, along with key staff from Senators Blumenthal and Senator Johnson's office, traveled to Pennsylvania to speak with local law enforcement officials, review critical information from security officials who were working alongside the Secret Service, And to see the site firsthand. | ||
| And I want to thank the incredibly brave local law enforcement officers in and around Butler County who responded that afternoon and who met with my staff this past weekend. | ||
| They have helped to answer tough questions as well as discuss in detail how the event actually unfolded. | ||
| I also want to thank the owners of Butler Country Farm Show and the American Glass Research for allowing my staff and law enforcement to walk the grounds and examine the roof of the building the gunman was able to assess. | ||
| We greatly appreciate your assistance. | ||
| I've also requested documents, along with Senators Paul Blumenthal and Johnson, related to security preparations, intelligence gathering on potential violence prior to the attack, and detailed explanations of the security response from federal, state, And local authorities. | ||
| As part of our ongoing investigation, we also seek to speak with additional federal law enforcement personnel, including Secret Service agents who were responsible for securing the event. | ||
| Today's hearing is an important opportunity to ask critical questions and to begin to give the American people the transparency and the answers that they certainly deserve. | ||
| There are still many unanswered questions. | ||
| We need additional information about the Secret Service's advanced planning efforts, the decisions surrounding sniper and counter-sniper team use, placement, and coordination. | ||
| We also need answers about what appears to be a problematic communication system that limited efforts to relay information and respond to events as they unfolded real-time. | ||
| And while today is focused on asking difficult questions about what went wrong, I also want to thank the men and women of the Secret Service, who in an instant will lay their lives on the line to protect our nation's leaders. | ||
| They have incredibly challenging jobs, and they must continue their mission no matter what our hearing and investigation reveals. | ||
| I'm also grateful to our Senate Judiciary Committee colleagues for joining us in this important discussion. | ||
| Given their key role in oversight of both of the agencies represented before us today, And it's very clear that the U.S. Senate is focused on a productive conversation that will generate real answers and real reforms. | ||
| And I appreciate all the work from members of both of our committees to help us achieve this absolutely essential goal. | ||
| I would now like to recognize Ranking Member Paul for his opening remarks. | ||
| 18 days ago, a would-be assassin managed to climb onto a roof 400 feet from the stage where the former president, And leading presidential candidate Donald Trump was speaking. | ||
| The assassin's bullet struck President Trump, narrowly missing a fatal blow thanks to a last-minute head turn. | ||
| Tragically, not everyone was so fortunate. | ||
| A beloved husband and father in the audience was killed, his life stolen in an instant. | ||
| Two others remained seriously injured, their futures uncertain. | ||
| The lives of law enforcement officers working the event and those in the audience have been forever changed. | ||
| Yet the media has shamefully moved on to other stories, and Google has been caught trying to suppress iconic images of a bloody Donald Trump, images showcasing the resolve of our nation in the face of the attack. | ||
| But the American people have not forgotten, and we will not forget. | ||
| There is no question that this was a monumental failure by the Secret Service. | ||
| They had one job and they failed. | ||
| We know that. | ||
| What remains unclear is who specifically failed, how they failed, and what must be done to ensure that something like this never happens again. | ||
| America deserves to know that those responsible for this failure Frankly, not going to be in charge of securing the upcoming Democrat National Convention. | ||
| We need to know that someone's been placed on suspension, that someone won't be in charge of the next Donald Trump rally. | ||
| Now, I was encouraged to hear that the acting director, Roe, has initiated a disciplinary investigation in addition to the ongoing Secret Service policy review. | ||
| This is an important step. | ||
| However, real accountability will require a comprehensive examination of all the facts, which still remain unclear. | ||
| This past Friday, my investigative team went to Pennsylvania to meet with local law enforcement and document the scene. | ||
| One of the concerning things my team was told is that no one from Secret Service has talked to them since the shooting. | ||
| I don't know how an investigation into what failed can be conducted without talking to the officers and agencies who were relied upon to do much of the work. | ||
| Many questions remain unanswered about the planning and performance of security for July 13th. | ||
| While a host of errors led to this security disaster, we now know local enforcement officers were suspicious of the shooter 90 minutes in advance of the shooting. | ||
| There are two glaring issues we need to focus on. | ||
| First, why were the AGR grounds and the roof left unattended? | ||
| Why was the AGR building the shooter's perch left outside the perimeter? | ||
| Local law enforcement told my staff that they specifically flagged the vulnerability of the building to the Secret Service and were told that it would be taken care of. | ||
| Clearly, these vulnerabilities were not addressed. | ||
| Why was Donald Trump allowed to take the stage? | ||
| And why wasn't he removed from the stage when a suspicious individual was taking increasingly suspicious activities? | ||
| Over 20 minutes before President Trump began his speech, the Secret Service Command Center had been made aware of an individual with a rangefinder. | ||
| At least 10 minutes before it was confirmed, the Secret Service's counter-sniper team had been made aware of the suspicious subject and provided a photograph and a detailed description. | ||
| Why was the event not delayed until the individual was found and checked out? | ||
| Interviews with local law enforcement paint a different picture in critical places from what we have been told by the Secret Service in other briefings. | ||
| Now we need to hear from the Secret Service agents responsible for security that day. | ||
| Our committee has formally requested interviews with those agents, but we have not yet been allowed to speak to them. | ||
| I expect Director Rowe today to tell us when we will be allowed to talk to these people. | ||
| Finally, let me close with this. | ||
| Mistakes, grave mistakes were made on July 13th, but that does not take away from the bravery of dozens of federal, state, and local officers that day. | ||
| We are grateful for their sacrifices and professionalism. | ||
| They deserve the truth now also. | ||
| It is our duty And our utmost responsibility to ensure that we learn from this failure and hold those responsible accountable. | ||
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I'd now like to recognize Chairman Durbin of the Senate Judiciary Committee for his opening remarks. | |
| Thank you, Senator Peters. | ||
| This is a rare joint meeting of the two committees, but we have matching jurisdiction, and I think it's the most efficient way to get to the truth. | ||
| So thank you for letting us join you today. | ||
| We've all seen the movies. | ||
| We've read the books. | ||
| The international assassin with sophisticated technology, elaborate plans, well-honed skills, sets out to kill a leading political figure in the United States. | ||
| But how does that match the reality of what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a 20-year-old introverted college student outsmarted one of the most sophisticated American law enforcement agencies in history? | ||
| Came within an inch of killing a former president of the United States. | ||
| That's why we gather today to ask these hard questions. | ||
| There's more to this story and other aspects that we ought to consider as well. | ||
| We cannot lose sight of the factor that contributed to the violence on July 13th. | ||
| Widespread, easy access to AR-15 military-style rifles. | ||
| While we rely on the Secret Service to protect elected officials, we must acknowledge the unique challenges they face in light of the proliferation of weapons of war on our street. | ||
| Pennsylvania, like many states, allows individuals to openly carry a loaded rifle without a permit. | ||
| To make matters worse, assault rifles can easily be purchased from unlicensed dealers without a background check because of dangerous loopholes in our gun laws. | ||
| This same kind of firearm has been used to carry out mass shootings in Newtown, I hope this hearing can be an example of | ||
| how we will work together on a bipartisan basis. | ||
| To not only understand this shocking event, but to ensure it never happens again. | ||
| We must do this without the incendiary language and conspiracy mongering that too often dominates our political discourse today. | ||
| Ongoing investigations by the Secret Service and the FBI are critical. | ||
| But Congress, the victims' families, and the American people deserve transparency and accountability now. | ||
| I'll now turn to my partner on the Judiciary Committee, Ranking Member Lindsey Graham. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Several of us from the military have a military background. | ||
| If this happened in the military, a lot of people would be fired. | ||
| And if a lot of people are not fired, the system failed yet again. | ||
| Having said that, the people who are brave and jumped on the stage to protect the president need to be applauded. | ||
| We need to learn what happened, make corrective action. | ||
| But somebody's got to be fired. | ||
| Nothing's going to change. | ||
| Until somebody loses their job. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
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It's the practice of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee to swear in witnesses. | |
| So if our two witnesses could please stand and raise your right hand. | ||
| Do you swear that the testimony you will give before this committee will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? | ||
| So help you God. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| You may be seated. | ||
| Our first witness is Ronald Rove, Jr. | ||
| Mr. Rove is currently the Acting Director of the United States Secret Service. | ||
| Prior to this role, Acting Director Rove was the 23rd Deputy Director of the Secret Service. | ||
| He has had a distinguished 25-year career in the Secret Service from coordinating major security operations to collaborating with other government and law enforcement agencies. | ||
| Additionally, he has served as the Chief of Staff to the Director. | ||
| As Deputy Assistant Director for the Office of Protective Operations and as Deputy Assistant Director for the Office of Intergovernmental and Legislative Affairs. | ||
| Mr. Director, thank you for appearing before this committee today. | ||
| You are now recognized for your opening statement. | ||
| Good morning, Chairman Peters, Chairman Durbin, Ranking Member Paul, Ranking Member Graham, and distinguished members of the committees. | ||
| Thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. | ||
| A critical part of the Secret Service mission is protecting our nation's current and former government leaders. | ||
| The attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday, July 13, 2024, in Butler, Pennsylvania, was a failure on multiple levels. | ||
| I join you and all Americans in condemning the horrific assault on former President Trump, Corey Comparator, James Copenhaver, Before I begin, though, I want to commend the heroic actions of the men and women of the United States Secret Service on July 13th. | ||
| Our special agents shielded the former president with their bodies while shots were still being fired. | ||
| selflessly, willing to make the ultimate sacrifice without hesitation. | ||
| I am extremely proud of these actions and those taken by the countersniper team to neutralize the threat that prevented further loss of life. | ||
| I would also like to express my gratitude to our federal, state, and local partners. | ||
| We rely on these critical relationships, which have developed over decades of daily collaboration, As you're aware, there are multiple ongoing investigations of the attack and the security failures that occurred that day. | ||
| I pledge my full support to those inquiries so the Secret Service, your committees, and the American people have a thorough and complete understanding of what happened leading up to and during July 13th. | ||
| I will not wait. | ||
| For the results of those findings to assess where we failed that day. | ||
| I have taken and will continue to take immediate steps to ensure we do not repeat those failures. | ||
| Since my appointment as the acting director one week ago, I identified gaps in our security on July 13th and have implemented corrective actions. | ||
| One of my first actions as acting director was traveling to the Butler Farm Show site to better understand how our protection failed. | ||
| I went to the roof of the AGR building where the assailant fired shots and I laid in a prone position to evaluate his linebacker. | ||
| of sight. | ||
| What I saw made me ashamed. | ||
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Wow. | |
| career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured. | ||
| To prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, I directed our personnel to ensure Every event site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It's clear to me that other protective enhancements could have strengthened our security at the Butler event. | ||
| As such, I have directed the expanded use of unmanned aerial systems at protective sites to help detect threats on roofs and other elevated threats. | ||
| I've also directed resources to facilitate our protective site communications, particularly our communications with our state and local partners. | ||
| In addition, I have instructed the asset request for Secret Service protective details to be approved expeditiously and have ordered the maximum use of requested personnel at protective sites to address this heightened security environment. | ||
| I've heard your calls for accountability, and I take them very seriously. | ||
| And given the magnitude of this failure, the Secret Service's Office of Professional Responsibility is reviewing the actions and decision-making of Secret Service personnel in the lead-up to and on the day of the attack. | ||
| If the investigation reveals that Secret Service employees violated agency protocols, those employees will be held accountable to our disciplinary process. | ||
| With respect to congressional investigations and requests for information, I instructed my staff to provide full cooperation and respond expeditiously on a continuing basis to ensure you have the information you need to conduct your critical oversight. | ||
| In my testimony before you today, I will provide details on the Secret Service's advanced security planning for the Butler Farm Show site. | ||
| Facts as we know them regarding the incident itself, known breakdowns in executing the security plan, Interesting. | ||
| was a factor in the failure. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| For my written statement, I am prepared to provide an overview of the security planning leading up to and during the July 13th attack. | ||
| However, I would like to point out that based on what I know right now, neither the Secret Service counter-sniper teams nor members of the former president's security detail had any knowledge that there was a man on Wow! | ||
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Whoa! | |
| Prior to that, they were operating with the knowledge that local law enforcement was working an issue of a suspicious individual prior to the shots being fired. | ||
| I regret... | ||
| That information was not passed to Congress and the public sooner with greater frequency. | ||
| And I think this lack of information has given rise to multiple false and dangerous conspiracy theories about what took place that day. | ||
| And I want to debunk these theories. | ||
| Let me address one conspiracy directly. | ||
| The Secret Service countersniper neutralized the assailant within seconds after the assailant fired his weapon. | ||
| That countersniper had full discretion to use deadly force to stop an attacker and did not need to seek authorization to fire. | ||
| I am immensely proud of the selfless dedication of our employees to the mission. | ||
| Every day, across the globe, the men and women answer the call to protect our nation's leaders, and the standard is no fail for a reason. | ||
| During our current high operational tempo, I want... | ||
| And I need to ensure that the Secret Service workforce are uplifted so they can focus on carrying out the mission. | ||
| They have my full support, and I'm confident in their abilities to ensure the safety and security of the people we protect. | ||
| They are worthy of trust and confidence, and they deserve your support as well as the support of the American people. | ||
| Chairman Peters, Chairman Durbin. | ||
| Ranking Member Paul, Ranking Member Graham, and members of the committees, thank you for the opportunity to testify at this joint hearing. | ||
| I will submit the remainder of my statement for the record, and I will answer your questions. | ||
| Secret Service didn't know about the shooter. | ||
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Paul Abade, Mr Abade, is the deputy director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. | |
| Insane! | ||
| In this role, Deputy Director Abate oversees all FBI domestic and international investigative and intelligence activities. | ||
| Prior to his appointment as Deputy Director, he has had a distinguished three decades within the FBI-leading counterterrorism efforts, and most recently as the Associate Deputy Director of the FBI, where he's responsible for the management of all FBI personnel, budget, administration, as well as infrastructure. | ||
| Mr. Bate, thank you for appearing before the committee here today. | ||
| You are recognized for your opening remarks. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Good morning, Chairman Peters and Durbin, Ranking Members Paul and Graham, and distinguished members of the committee. | ||
| It is a privilege to appear before you today to discuss the FBI's investigation of the attempted assassination of former President Trump on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Before going further, I want to again offer my and our condolences to the victims of this heinous attack. | ||
| To the family and loved ones of heroic firefighter and father, Cory Comparator, to Mr. Dutch, to Mr. Copenhaver, who continue to recover, and to former President Trump, who was also struck by a bullet fired from the shooter's rifle, our thoughts and prayers are with each of them and their families and loved ones. | ||
| Within minutes of the attack, the FBI field office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, received notification of the assassination attempt. | ||
| And responded to the scene immediately with a surge of resources, quickly moving forward on the investigation. | ||
| From the outset, the FBI has been investigating this attack as an assassination attempt and an act of domestic terrorism. | ||
| Our team continues to conduct a full, thorough, and objective investigation and will continue to follow all leads and avenues of investigation to logical conclusion, leaving no stone unturned. | ||
| While it's not typical to provide details of an ongoing investigation, this, as we all know, is an extraordinarily tragic set of circumstances of the utmost national importance, making it essential to inform the American public and Congress what is known right now with full transparency. | ||
| The investigation remains focused, of course, on determining motive, identifying any potential co-conspirators or others with knowledge of the attack. | ||
| And building out a timeline of shooter Thomas Crook's actions in advance of and during the attack. | ||
| Thus far, though absolutely nothing has been ruled out, the investigation has not identified a motive, nor any co-conspirators or others with advanced knowledge. | ||
| To date, the FBI team has conducted more than 460 interviews, executed search warrants including at the shooter's residence, and seized electronic media to include phones, laptops, hard drives, and thumb drives. | ||
| legal process has been issued to dozens of companies and we've received more than 2000 tips from the public The full resources of the FBI have been brought to bear in furtherance of the investigation Agents analysts professional staff experts. | ||
| I've personally visited the site I want to thank all involved for their ongoing and tireless efforts to get the answers that we need. | ||
| Specialized resources deployed included evidence response teams, victim services specialists, laboratory and operational technology division resources to process physical and digital evidence, a shooting reconstruction team. | ||
| Additionally, our explosive experts have analyzed the three IEDs recovered, two from the shooter's vehicle, one from the family residence, and our behavioral analysis unit, importantly, is helping to build a profile of the shooter to include his mental state. | ||
| Next, I want to provide a brief highlighted overview of the timeline that has been established to date through witness interviews and other information. | ||
| Again, this is our understanding at present and is subject to change and further refinement as more facts are collected. | ||
| On July 3rd, the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania was announced. | ||
| On July 6th, the shooter registered to attend the rally and performed a search for, quote, "How far was Oswald from Kennedy?" On July 7th, the shooter traveled from his home to the Butler Farm Show grounds and remained there for approximately 20 minutes. | ||
| We assessed the show's advanced planning and reconnaissance on his part. | ||
| On July 12th, the shooter traveled from his home to the Clareton Sportsman Club, where he practiced shooting. | ||
| On the morning of July 13th, at approximately 10 a.m., the shooter returned to the farm show grounds and remained there for about 70 minutes before returning home again. | ||
| At approximately 1.30 p.m., while at the residence, the shooter's father gave him a rifle for the purpose, he believed, of going back to the sportsman club. | ||
| About 25 minutes later, the shooter purchased ammunition while en route to the Butler Farm Show grounds. | ||
| The subject then arrived at the scene and was moving around the Farm Show grounds close to the American Glass Research AGR building, from which he ultimately committed the attack. | ||
| Shortly thereafter, at approximately 3:51 p.m., the shooter flew a drone approximately 200 yards from the farm show grounds for about 11 minutes. | ||
| The drone and controller were later found in the subject's car. | ||
| Analysis has not revealed any photos or video taken by the drone, but we can confirm that he was live streaming at the time and would have been able to view it on his controller. | ||
| The first reported sighting the shooter by local law enforcement was at approximately 4:26 p.m. | ||
| At approximately 5:10 p.m., the shooter was again identified by local law enforcement as a suspicious person around the AGR building. | ||
| And at approximately 5:14 p.m., a local SWAT operator took a photo of the shooter. | ||
| At about 5:32 p.m., local SWAT observed the shooter next to the AGR building, using his phone, browsing news sites, Subsequently, approximately 25 minutes prior to the shooting, the U.S. Secret Service command post was notified of a suspicious person. | ||
| Officers lost sight of the subject from approximately 6.02 p.m. to 6.08 p.m., but continued to communicate with each other in an attempt to locate him. | ||
| Recently discovered video from a local business shows the shooter pulling himself up onto the AGR building rooftop at approximately 6.06 p.m. | ||
| At approximately 6.08 p.m., the subject was observed on the roof by local law enforcement. | ||
| At approximately 6.11 p.m., a local police officer who was lifted to the roof by another officer saw the shooter and radioed that he was armed with, quote, a long gun. | ||
| Within approximately the next 30 seconds, the shots were fired. | ||
| The evidence recovery team found eight shell casings at the scene next to the shooter's body. | ||
| We believe the subject, the shooter, fired eight rounds. | ||
| While the investigation has not determined motive, the investigative team continues to review information from legal returns, including online and social media accounts. | ||
| Something just very recently uncovered that I want to share is a social media account, which is believed to be associated with the shooter in about the 2019-2020 timeframe. | ||
| There were over 700 comments posted from this account. | ||
| Some of these comments, ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature. | ||
| While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share and note it today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter's potential motive and mindset. | ||
| These are the facts, in part, that the investigation has revealed to date. | ||
| While the shooter is dead, our work is very much ongoing and urgent. | ||
| Thank you, and I look forward to answering any and all questions. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Abate. | ||
| We'll now proceed. | ||
| Chairman Durbin and Ranking Member Graham will ask the first two questions. | ||
| I will then ask question Ranking Member Paul, and then after that, we will alternate between members of the Judiciary, recognized by Chairman Durbin, and members of the Homeland Security Committee, recognized by me. | ||
| With that, Senator Durbin, you're recognized for your questions. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Peters. | ||
| I would like to begin by making a statement that it's not in the form of a question, and you'll understand why when I say it. | ||
| In 20 days, We're going to start the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. | ||
| I have been briefed by the law enforcement agency's plans for security for that event. | ||
| Tens of thousands of people will be there, including some of the highest-ranking politicians in the United States. | ||
| I trust that both of your agencies can answer in the affirmative if I ask you whether you're actively engaged and working with the development of security plan, taking into consideration the lessons of July 13th. | ||
| Senator, that is 100% yes from the Secret Service. | ||
|
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Yes, from the FBI as well. | |
| Sir, we've been working on this for well over a year in preparation. | ||
| I'm not going to ask for details for obvious reasons, but I do want to ask a question about the Secret Service staffing. | ||
| Congress has nearly doubled the budget for the Secret Service over the last 10 years, from $1.8 billion in fiscal year 2014 to $3 billion in fiscal year 2024. | ||
| Actors are now in the same time period. | ||
| The number of agents in protective operations has fallen from 4,027 to 3,671 during that same time period, an approximate 9% reduction. | ||
| That's a good question, actually. | ||
| So, Senator... | ||
| With respect to where we are today on staffing, and then I'll address the 10-year where we were. | ||
| And this year alone, we are going to end the year on the positive of 200-plus agents. | ||
| That's the first time in a number of years that we've been able to do that. | ||
| Part of that was gaining some efficiencies in our hiring process. | ||
| But what I want to emphasize is that we have not dropped standards. | ||
| Only 2%. | ||
| 2%. | ||
| We are filling our classes at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center. | ||
| We are doing this ramp up as part of what lies ahead of us with the LA Olympics in 2028. | ||
| With respect to what has happened in years prior, this is a difficult and challenging job, being a Secret Service agent. | ||
| Living your life by somebody else's schedule. | ||
| Constantly away from your family. | ||
| Constantly having to meet increased operational and investigative demands, which we gladly do. | ||
| But it's not for everyone. | ||
| And I think there are times where people have to make tough choices and they decide to leave the agency. | ||
| But that doesn't mean that they were any less of an agent or that they weren't committed to the mission. | ||
| Because we are all committed to being patriots and serving our country and protecting our nation's highest leaders. | ||
| I think there was a variety of factors. | ||
| Some of it was the pandemic. | ||
| Some of it was the economy or other opportunities. | ||
| We have people that are very skilled in cyber that often leave the job. | ||
| Some of the protective skills that they acquire are also in demand in the private sector. | ||
| But some of the mechanisms that we've put in place just in the last year is also retaining our workforce. | ||
| And that's what we are focused on right now. | ||
| The Government Accountability Office has determined that restaffing from... | ||
| These losses have been slowed due to a number of factors, including the years-long background checks for prospective agents and the assignments agents must work through before being assigned to protection. | ||
| Given these constraints, what steps have you taken to improve recruitment? | ||
| So we're actually putting out targeted recruitment opportunities. | ||
| So we've just recently put it out within our uniform division for our counter sniper unit, our hazardous agent medical emergency response unit, our counter assault team on the special agent side. | ||
| So we're actually trying to gather the best and the brightest. | ||
| And I will tell you that we are having great success. | ||
| With a lot of these vacancies. | ||
| But what I want to reiterate is that, for example, on the counter-assault vacancy, we had 700 applicants that applied for this. | ||
| Really what we will glean after they make it through the process. | ||
| And they have to be able to hold a top-secret SCI clearance. | ||
| If we realize 15 out of that tranche, that's a 2% pass rate. | ||
| So it is very competitive, and we are trying to make sure that we are getting the best and the brightest without dropping standards. | ||
| One last question for either one of you. | ||
| What is the purpose of a range finder? | ||
| And once this assassin was identified as using a range finder, wasn't that proof positive that he was a dangerous individual? | ||
| So I'll say, Senator, that obviously somebody is trying to determine where they are in proximity to a location, a fixed location. | ||
| I'll defer to my colleague here, but I believe it was recreation or sports related. | ||
| I thought I had read that it was a golf range finder. | ||
| Nonetheless, it still would have provided him the ability to provide the distance that he was away from his intended target. | ||
| Wasn't that enough? | ||
| As far as raising suspicion? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I think he was identified as being suspicious by local law enforcement. | ||
| And nothing happened? | ||
| Well, I know that local law enforcement was attempting to locate him. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
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Thank you, Member Graham. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's go back to the resources. | ||
| Do you need more money? | ||
| Senator, listen, there isn't a single branch, a single agency in the executive branch that needs more money. | ||
| Everyone would take more resources. | ||
| We've had a great relationship with the Department of Homeland Security, the Office of Management and Budget. | ||
| Do you feel constrained to ask for more resources by anybody? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| We don't. | ||
| And actually, we haven't... | ||
| We have a great relationship with our appropriators and, obviously, the authorizing committees, and they have always looked out for the Secret Service. | ||
| So I would encourage you to think big when it comes to resourcing the department in light of what happened here. | ||
| At the time of the shooting, the Iranians were threatening high-level American officials, including President Trump, right? | ||
|
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Senator, it's widely known. | |
| FBI? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yes, Senator. | |
| That's 100% correct. | ||
| Did that factor into the security footprint? | ||
| So, Senator, what I will say is that it is widely known that the Iranians do not like us. | ||
| I refer you to the national security. | ||
| Well, it's not that they don't like us. | ||
| They threaten to kill certain people and they name them. | ||
| Correct, sir. | ||
| But I can't publicly comment. | ||
| It's not like, you know, I hate America. | ||
| I'm going to kill these three guys. | ||
| Right. | ||
| I cannot publicly comment, sir, on... | ||
| Well, they publicly comment on it. | ||
| I mean, it's not what... | ||
| Senator, what I'm trying to say is I cannot publicly comment on what intelligence, but I can assure you that we do a threat-based protective model. | ||
| I'd like to have that model provided to the committee. | ||
| Could you do that? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Could you also give us the protocols that are in place to secure a site like this? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| One, the protective detail around President Trump, I know them all very well. | ||
| They're brave men and women. | ||
| And these questions are not to belittle anybody. | ||
| They're trying to find out how the system fails so badly. | ||
| You say you're not reluctant to ask for more money. | ||
| What do we need to do to make it easier to hire people without lowering our standards? | ||
| I mean, I know it's a hard job. | ||
| Can we do anything to help you? | ||
| So I think we're willing to take that back, sir. | ||
| I think we're working on our time to hire. | ||
| Well, if you had more people, you'd have more time off. | ||
| That's true, sir. | ||
| Okay, well, let's get more people and more time off. | ||
| These are tough jobs. | ||
| I mean, people on this committee know. | ||
| I don't know how they hold a family together doing what they're doing. | ||
| It's the military really on steroids. | ||
| The encrypted app. | ||
| Paul, can you tell us about these apps? | ||
| Have they been broken into? | ||
| The guy had some apps that were encrypted? | ||
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I think we've experienced a range of returns on this. | |
| Some of the applications that he was using online were encrypted in nature. | ||
| Have we broken into them? | ||
| We've received returns. | ||
| There are some that we have not been able to get information back because of their encrypted nature. | ||
| Is there any way to solve that problem? | ||
|
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Senator, we've talked about this before. | |
| We need a solution that provides lawful access to law enforcement. | ||
| So you're telling me the guy that took eight shots at the president, former president, has apps that we can't get into that may, if you could get into, reveal some relevant information? | ||
|
unidentified
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That is correct, Senator. | |
| So if he were talking to some foreign power, and I don't think any foreign power would hire this guy, by the way. | ||
| So I'm not overly worried this was some great plot by the Iranians because they couldn't even think of this. | ||
| However, there could come a day where something like this is very important. | ||
| How do we solve this problem? | ||
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Senator, you know, as we've been saying, we need a solution that provides lawful access where when we go to a company— So you're telling me—I agree with you. | |
| I'm not blaming you. | ||
| We have encrypted apps of an assassin, a murderer. | ||
| And we can't get into them all these days after. | ||
| That needs to be fixed, folks. | ||
| I'm all for privacy, but to a point. | ||
| What if, in the future, somebody's using these apps to communicate with the foreign power? | ||
| I think we need to know these things. | ||
| We need to know them in real time. | ||
| So lessons learned is that everything failed. | ||
| Corrective action seems to me you need more money and more people. | ||
| At the end of the day, how many people do you think will be relieved that our duties, Mr. Rowe, because of this? | ||
| Senator, I publicly cannot, and I cannot weigh in on that right now, right? | ||
| It has to be a fair and neutral process. | ||
| From a fair point of view, would you say this is a major system failure at every turn, and those in charge of the system in question, not only was it embarrassing, They failed. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| So, Senator, again, if there were policy violations, those individuals will be held accountable, and they will be subject to our table of penalties. | ||
| Just send us to policies, if you could. | ||
| Yes, sir, we will. | ||
| But they will be held to our table of penalties, which will include up to termination. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
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Director Rowe, in your testimony here today, as well as in your written testimony, you said very, very clearly that you can't defend why that building with the shooter on top of it was not better covered. | |
| You were very clear. | ||
| You cannot defend that. | ||
| So my question to you is, my understanding is that there's a detailed site survey that is done prior to an event to identify potential threat points. | ||
| So talk to me about that. | ||
| I'm sure you've had a chance to look at it now after action. | ||
| And how did that site survey get approved when it was so clear that that was a major threat from that building? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Good question, actually. | ||
| Pittsburgh field office did the advance. | ||
| During that advance, not only were they discussing amongst themselves about mitigating the line of sight, but also they were discussing with other agencies that were supporting it. | ||
| Our counter snipers met with their counterparts. | ||
| The team lead and team lead met. | ||
| They walked the site. | ||
| They identified the AGR building. | ||
| And if I may, Senator, if I could point out something right now, if I may, and we will place this for the record, but this is the point of view. | ||
| AGR building. | ||
| This point of view is the point of view where the counter sniper team locally was posted. | ||
| The gold arrow indicates where the shooter fired from wow looking left Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That building was going to be covered. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| That there had been a face-to-face that afternoon. | ||
| That our team leads met. | ||
| This was the view. | ||
| True. | ||
| Let me show you another view, Senator. | ||
| This is an important question. | ||
|
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Thank you. | |
| This view is a reenactment by one of my agents. | ||
| Laying flat, there is a five-inch rise on the middle of that roof. | ||
| Let's see it. | ||
| The assailant would have had to present his bore over that to get his shot off. | ||
| The view underneath reflects the perspective that he would have had. | ||
| Again, I'd call your attention back to the first exhibit, if they'd have looked left. | ||
| Give me a seat. | ||
| This is very interesting. | ||
| And lines up with our research and investigation. | ||
| This is what our countersniper team saw. | ||
| Shooter, no elbows. | ||
| You barely make out the crown of his head. | ||
| Below it, the assailant up prone. | ||
| And let me just tell you, our countersniper, this individual, I know him. | ||
| I consider him a friend. | ||
| He has covered me operationally in conflict zones. | ||
| And when I did my time on the president's detail, he exemplifies the courage, the skill, and the ability to respond under great stress in such short time to neutralize the threat and prevent further loss of light. | ||
| Getting back to your question, Senator. | ||
| These were discussions that were had between the Pittsburgh field office, the local counterparts, and everyone supporting that visit that day. | ||
| And that's why when I laid in that position, I could not, and I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roofline when that's where they were posted. | ||
| We know why. | ||
| Why have we done more research than you? | ||
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The Secret Service state and local law enforcement were on multiple communication channels is my understanding during that time. | |
| And as a result, local law enforcement was only able to call in to a state command center. | ||
| That was then relayed from the Secret Service. | ||
| This seemed to be a recurring issue in emergency situations that we're finding with the federal government that there's not a seamless way to communicate, particularly if you're relying on local law enforcement to deal with what was clearly a major, major vulnerability. | ||
| Local law enforcement in Butler told my staff that they had no way of communicating directly with the Secret Service. | ||
| And if I listen to Mr. Bates saying there was about 30 seconds between when the local law enforcement reported that there was a man on the roof with a gun, 30 seconds. | ||
| If it's communicated directly to a counter-sniper team, would that be enough time to react prior to the firing of those shots? | ||
| Senator, if we'd had that information, they would have been able to address it more quickly. | ||
| It appears that that information... | ||
| I will tell you, though, that our tactical elements did not only have embeds from Butler County ESU with them, but they also had radios on the tactical net. | ||
| It is troubling to me that we did not get that information as quickly as we should have. | ||
| We didn't know that there was this incident going on, and the only thing we had was that Locals were working an issue at the 3 o 'clock, which would have been the former president's right-hand side, which is where the shot came. | ||
| Nothing about man on the roof, nothing about man with a gun, none of that information ever made it over our net. | ||
|
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So that will change? | |
| Yes, sir. | ||
| We are working right now to figure out the interoperability and also make sure that we do have access to those channels, whether through their counterpart system or some other means. | ||
|
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Very good. | |
| Ranking Member Paul, I recognize for your questions. | ||
| That is insane. | ||
| Director, I'm encouraged by your attitude and what you brought here today, what you've talked about as far as immediate changes that you've made, and I hope you'll follow through with that. | ||
| I'm encouraged by the fact that you acknowledge that it's indefensible that the roof was unattended. | ||
| Would you say the roof being unattended breaches standard protocol for setting up a security perimeter? | ||
| What I would say, Senator, is that that roof should have had better coverage. | ||
| We will get to the bottom of if there are any policy violations. | ||
| I would think indefensible would go along with breaching protocol, and I can't imagine how indefensible would not be breaching protocol. | ||
| What I would caution, though, is that I sense, you know, and you're the Secret Service, and these people are your friends, and they are heroic people who do good things, that we can't... | ||
| Let our friendships blind us from responsibility. | ||
| So someone's in charge of the security at the zone. | ||
| Would the Secret Service be in charge of the entire operation? | ||
| And they work with law enforcement, but they're in charge. | ||
| The person in charge of the entire operation is the Secret Service, not the local police. | ||
| You're correct, sir. | ||
| This is a failure of the Secret Service. | ||
| So that's what I mean. | ||
| And look, I don't wish anybody harm. | ||
| I appreciate the bravery of the Capitol Hill police. | ||
| I was at the shooting at the ball field. | ||
| I've heard 100 shots coming my way. | ||
| Fortunately, none came to me. | ||
| But I appreciate the bravery of all the people who protect us. | ||
| But there's also the idea that there are certain mistakes that don't make you a bad person, but they're just inexcusable, that if you made that mistake. | ||
| So, for example, let's say you determine... | ||
| Well, local police should have been on there, and they told us. | ||
| And local police says, no, they didn't tell us to do it. | ||
| And it's a he said, she said. | ||
| Still, ultimately, the agent in charge should be walking the grounds and say, there's a roof 100 yards away from the stadium with a clear sight. | ||
| Someone's got to be on the roof. | ||
| Local police, I told you to get on the roof. | ||
| Get on the roof. | ||
| Or you put the Secret Service. | ||
| So ultimately, the buck doesn't pass along to somebody. | ||
| Whoever's in charge is in charge. | ||
| But really, I think it would be helpful to all of us. | ||
| I know the process has to be meted out. | ||
| But there needs to also be a process for protecting the next Trump rally. | ||
| The fact that whoever was in charge in Butler next week is not in charge of a rally in Las Vegas. | ||
| And so I think you really should say that. | ||
| You should simply say that the leadership from that event is going through a process, but until that process, they won't be in charge of the Democrat National Convention. | ||
| That would reassure a lot of people that they won't be in charge of security. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| So I can tell you that the team planning the Democratic National Convention, that is a national special security event. | ||
| That team has been on the ground. | ||
| That's from D.C. with support from our Chicago field office. | ||
| But I just want to reiterate that our Pittsburgh field office staff They are wearing this harder than anybody right now in the Secret Service. | ||
| They feel completely demoralized. | ||
| And what I'm trying to do is also let them know that, listen, they need to be focused on the mission at hand. | ||
| I also have to walk a tightrope here and make sure that I'm not... | ||
| Tainting any future discipline action. | ||
| I understand, and I have great respect for all the officers, but ultimately someone had to be in charge, and someone made a terrible error, and it's an error of judgment. | ||
| The big error is the roof. | ||
| But another big error is we have 90 minutes of a suspicious person. | ||
| Now, Senator Durbin mentioned the rangefinder. | ||
| None of these are enough to shoot a suspicious person, but they certainly, you would think, would be enough to stop the proceedings. | ||
| That's where I think you get to the second major management or judgment error of this. | ||
| Now, Trump's done probably 100 rallies like this. | ||
| How often at one of his rallies are there 90 minutes of looking at one person and at least a half a dozen pictures of that person? | ||
| How often does that happen? | ||
| And is it against protocol to let a proceeding go on when you've got a suspicious person, 90 minutes worth of people talking about this person, and we don't stop the proceeding? | ||
| Does that defy protocol? | ||
| So, Senator, while there's 90 minutes in total from when he's first identified by local law enforcement, We have about a 30-minute window. | ||
| But in no time is there anything ever communicated about weapon or harm. | ||
| And I think that's where the threat... | ||
| You shoot people with a weapon. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Without a weapon, we're talking about people you stop and say, he had a backpack. | ||
| Which was probably big enough to have the AR-15 in it. | ||
| In all likelihood, the backpack has the weapon in it. | ||
| So a guy with a big backpack would never get to the perimeter. | ||
| So once again, a big mistake was not having the perimeter wide enough to prevent people from shooting outside the perimeter. | ||
| But the thing is... | ||
| He would have never gotten through the perimeter, right? | ||
| His backpack would have been checked. | ||
| But people with big backpacks are very suspicious. | ||
| And I would think he's seen six times. | ||
| But you've got 20 or 30 minutes of knowing about it. | ||
| But the thing is, there's all kinds of chatter going on about this. | ||
| And you would think the chatter going on with the local police is on a police radio. | ||
| And a policeman with that radio is standing in the control tent. | ||
| So you get that communication. | ||
| So there's a huge and massive breakdown. | ||
| But really, my question is, how often has this happened at other rallies where there's a half a dozen pictures and 90 minutes of people talking about a suspicious person? | ||
| I just can't imagine that it's real common. | ||
| So, Senator, at rallies, there are people that come to the attention of law enforcement for a variety of reasons. | ||
| Great questions. | ||
| And, you know, if they come to our attention for some other activity that might, you know, put it... | ||
| A little bit of, hey, we probably need to go check that individual out. | ||
| This happens, and that's why we attempt to locate them. | ||
| That's why it's important for us to try to find them. | ||
| And it's important to have the information. | ||
| And so local law enforcement did their very level best to try to locate them. | ||
| They did provide us the photos 30 minutes prior. | ||
| It's just he evaded any detection by law enforcement. | ||
| But once again, it's the overall person in charge. | ||
| It's a terrible breakdown. | ||
| It's a terrible management decision not to have stopped it. | ||
| There was a chance to stop the proceeding. | ||
| And the question is not whether there's enough information to take down an individual. | ||
| It's a much lower standard to say, hey, we're going to wait until we get this individual. | ||
| The roof and the 90 minutes of it, both, I think, are failure of your protocol. | ||
| And I think when that's determined, the person who made these decisions can't be in a position of authority again. | ||
| Senator Klobuchar. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Thank you to all of you for holding this hearing. | ||
| What great questions. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| We have. | ||
| Director Rowe, when we had the classified. | ||
| We have more information than Secret Service. | ||
| It's amazing. | ||
| For the agency and your own personal emotion and reaction to your visit and what had gone wrong. | ||
| For the people in my state that keep asking me, I just don't get how he got on the roof. | ||
| I know we've gone through great details and a lot of examination. | ||
| Could you just give a minute on What went wrong and how you think it can be fixed? | ||
| I think it's just going to help to dispel the conspiracy theories. | ||
| There are some people that think it didn't really happen, which, of course, is completely ridiculous. | ||
| It did. | ||
| There are some people that think all kinds of conspiracies went on within the government, which is also false. | ||
| But could you just tell them what went wrong so they understand? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| I've thought long and hard about this. | ||
| I think this was a failure of imagination, a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world, where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees. | ||
| I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions, the assumptions that we know our partners are going to do everything they can, and they do this every day. | ||
| But we didn't challenge our own assumptions of we assume that someone's going to cover that. | ||
| We assume that there's going to be uniform presence. | ||
| We didn't challenge that internally during that advance. | ||
| So, moving forward, I've directed that when we're talking to people and we're making requests, we are very specific about what we want. | ||
| We are providing... | ||
| Explicit instructions on exactly what our expectation is and what we need them to do and what we want them to do. | ||
| That's the only way that we're going to be able to move forward beyond this. | ||
| And let me just tell you that our state and local law enforcement partners are the best. | ||
| So this belief that somehow they are less than federal law enforcement or they're less than the Secret Service, they're out there patrolling communities every day. | ||
| They're the ones out there going into hazardous conditions every day. | ||
| They know their communities. | ||
| They have the ability to enforce state and local laws. | ||
| Our advance agents do not. | ||
| Right. | ||
| We need them, and we need them to be partners with us, and I think we need to be very clear to them, and that may have contributed to this situation. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| Same respect. | ||
| Next, one of the things you mentioned to me was, and to all of us, was in this other briefing, was just the texting protocol. | ||
| And I think a lot of us think about this in non-security settings, about how people are just texting all the time instead of talking and how it takes our eyes off, in your case, the target. | ||
| Could you talk about what might have gone wrong there and how you think things could change when there's... | ||
| The hope is that their eyes are constantly on the scene and on the potential targets and risks. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| So, again, we need people focused on the problem or on their area of responsibility. | ||
| It was great that there was a text chain, but that communication needs to go over the net. | ||
| It needs to go over a radio channel so that everyone has situational awareness of it. | ||
| And the point I was making in the closed-door briefing is that we have to get to a point now where we are using our radio systems to have that collective awareness of this. | ||
| I think one of the things that I've directed is that in addition to the interoperability, we're going to roll out common operating. | ||
| Picture a common operating platform that we utilize for national special security events. | ||
| We have the ability to roll that out to the field that has a Blue Force tracker in it that's able to, where you can put where all your state and local assets are, where our federal assets are. | ||
| But in addition to that, I want people using the radio. | ||
| So it's great that... | ||
| The tactical elements are talking to each other. | ||
| It's great that the shift is talking to each other, but we have to be able to make sure that whenever we come across a situation, that everyone has situational awareness of this. | ||
| In my time when I was operational on the president's detail, we were given the explicit instruction, hey, if you're going to pass it, if it's relevant enough that you feel like you need to pass that information, Do it over the radio. | ||
| And that was the protocol that we had. | ||
| And I think over the years, perhaps with the advent of technology and smartphones, perhaps we've gotten away from that. | ||
| But we need to get people back on the scope. | ||
| Back on mission, back focused on what they need to be responsible for. | ||
| Okay, and the next question I'll put in writing, thank you very much of you, Mr. Abate, but it's just pointing out that we've seen this rise in threats against members of Congress, which of course is relevant to this. | ||
| 8,000 just last year, more than four times over the past seven years. | ||
| Just I'll want to ask you in writing about the steps that the Justice Department is taking to prioritize these cases. | ||
| I know there's been some changes made. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| It's of our highest priority, and we're urgently working on it 24-7 every day to protect each and every one of you here. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thank you, both of you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Carper, recognize for your questions. | |
| Thanks very much. | ||
| Mr. Roe, Mr. Abate, thank you for joining us today. | ||
| I have the privilege of representing Delaware, the first state, to ratify the Constitution. | ||
| We did that over 200 years ago, and the Constitution sort of outlines how we elect our leaders. | ||
| And it changes with respect to technology over the years. | ||
| But there's, for as long as we've been a country, threats to our leaders when they pursue elective office. | ||
| We're going to be gathering some of those. | ||
| We'll be gathering in Chicago in just a few weeks. | ||
| There's going to be gathering in other parts of the country to help make sure that what's... | ||
| Was adopted in that original Constitution is actually carried out faithfully. | ||
| And it's just incredibly important that those who aspire to elective office, those who take on those challenges, are protected and their families are protected as well as those who surround them. | ||
| I share with my colleagues my prayers for those who have been killed or injured on July 13th. | ||
| We're grateful that one of our presidential candidates is okay. | ||
| But I have a question about what... | ||
| I still can't get over how a 20-year-old loner could somehow outsmart two of the smartest federal agencies and state agencies in law enforcement with an odds of like 1,000 to 1 and be able to almost pull this off. | ||
| It just blows my mind. | ||
| Hopefully we'll get to... | ||
| The truth in all of that, I'm a Navy guy. | ||
| I spent 20 many years of my life in the Navy. | ||
| I learned as a midshipman that when the ship runs aground at sea, the commanding officer is held responsible. | ||
| Whether the commanding officer is awake or asleep at the helm, whether the commanding officer is held responsible. | ||
| And I think we have to make, at the end of the day, I'm not interested in a plane being, but I'm sure it's been finding out who was responsible and making sure that they account for their responsibility. | ||
| My question is what policies are currently in place to facilitate real-time information sharing between the Secret Service and local law enforcement during an event? | ||
| And what changes to information sharing practices will the Secret Service make in light of the apparent breakdown in communications on July 13th? | ||
| Thank you for that question, Senator. | ||
| So we're looking at our procedures. | ||
| We rely on a counterpart system. | ||
| And the radio interoperability is a complex challenge. | ||
| It's not just about being able to find whatever frequency our local counterparts are on and then just piping it in. | ||
| There's some technical challenges that have to be there. | ||
| So to alleviate that, we've always relied on A security room where we have representatives from the local agencies. | ||
| Those individuals are there to, one, bring their own radio and then relay relevant information that would impact our security plan. | ||
| I think what I'm looking at, and again, in looking at this situation, is there was a unified command post and we had our security room. | ||
| And, you know, we had communications that day at the Butler Farm site were challenging, not just challenging for the Secret Service, but for challenging for locals. | ||
| There were some cellular issues. | ||
| There were radio issues. | ||
| And you saw that with the testimony from the colonel from Pennsylvania State Police last week in the House. | ||
| So I think as I'm thinking about this, I think we need to consider what What is our model moving forward? | ||
| And I think we need to be where the greatest amount of partners are when that information is being discussed. | ||
| The other thing that I'm looking at is we need to also make sure that we have redundancies as far as cellular on the ground or additional repeaters. | ||
| And so I've directed our chief information officer to do that, and we are rolling assets out now supporting campaign sites. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Mr. Vey, quick question. | ||
| Based on the initial information you gathered from the investigation, do you believe there were any actions taken by the shooter in the weeks, days, or hours leading up to the shooting that should have caused alarm and grabbed the attention of law enforcement? | ||
| He did not have any interactions with law enforcement leading up to this, Senator. | ||
| We haven't found anything yet that would have alerted law enforcement or FBI or Secret Service to his intention and activities. | ||
| In advance of this event. | ||
| I will note, however, to your prior question, that we do have a very strong relationship, an integrated relationship between FBI and Secret Service and every other federal, state, local agency you can imagine. | ||
| We have constructs like the Joint Terrorism Task Forces and Violent Crime Task Forces, where we're cross-embedded. | ||
| And when it comes to this event and others like it, we're always talking in advance. | ||
| In fact, with respect to this event, we did have a meeting between U.S. Secret Service and FBI in the days leading up to the event to determine, assess whether there was any information or intelligence pertaining to a threat against the rally or to former President Trump or anyone else there. | ||
| There was an absence of that in the lead-up specifically, and again, none of us had any information in our holdings with regard to the ultimate shooter. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| Thanks very much, both of you. | ||
| Next on the Senate Judiciary Committee is Senator Grassley. | ||
|
unidentified
|
There we go. | |
| Mr. Chairman, I would like to introduce my oversight letters and investigative documents into the record. | ||
| This is information I've already made public. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Without objection. | |
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| I'd also like to call my colleagues. | ||
| Attention to legislation that Senator Cortez Mastos and I've introduced would require Senate confirmation of the Director of the Secret Service. | ||
| I think this is very important because no other agency has a no-fail mission. | ||
| Mr. Rohr? | ||
| In your written testimony, you stated that to prevent similar lapses like the one on July 13th from happening again, you'll ensure every event site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it's implemented. | ||
| Based on your testimony, the security plan for the Butler event deviated from the Social Security standards. | ||
| How would vetting... | ||
| By multiple experienced supervisors, fix that. | ||
| So, Senator, I think having many eyes on a particular problem set helps. | ||
| That way you're not, you don't have tunnel vision. | ||
| You just focus in on one thing. | ||
| And so that's why I think it's important, not only at the field office level, but also at the detail level. | ||
| And part of what we had started doing with the former president's detail is having them send out site agents, having them send out supervisors. | ||
| I think you've answered my question. | ||
| Let me go on. | ||
| Also to you, in your written testimony, you stated that you, quote, regret that information wasn't passed to Congress and the public sooner and with greater frequency. | ||
| What's your communication plan going forward to ensure that the American people in Congress are fully informed? | ||
| So, Senator, we just started a rolling production that is bicameral. | ||
| So we made our first rolling production last week. | ||
| We made one yesterday. | ||
| We will continue to do that. | ||
| And my view is that sunshine is the best disinfectant, and we intend to provide information to Congress as it carries out its oversight. | ||
| Also, to you, I made public documents that show Secret Service deployed a counter-unmanned aerial system operator. | ||
| On July the 13th, according to the Secret Service, the drone system was supposed to be operational at 3 p.m. that day. | ||
| However, we've been told by Secret Service that because of cellular bandwidth problems, it wasn't operational until about 520 of that day. | ||
| If the system was operational, Secret Service would have had the ability to detect the shooter and his own drone use. | ||
| Why is the Secret Service dependent upon local cellular network? | ||
| Does the Secret Service have a backup plan in place? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And that is something that I briefed in the closed door. | ||
| And again, something that has cost me a lot of sleep because of the eventual outcome of the assailant. | ||
| That what if... | ||
| We had geolocated him because that counter-UAS platform had been up. | ||
| It is something that I have struggled with to understand, and I have no explanation for it. | ||
| It is something that I feel as though we could have perhaps found him. | ||
| We could have maybe stopped him. | ||
| Maybe on that particular day, he would have decided... | ||
| This isn't the day to do it because law enforcement just found me flying my drone. | ||
| People fly drones all the time on the peripheries of our sites. | ||
| And we go out and we talk to them and we ascertain what their intentions are. | ||
| On this day in particular, because of the connectivity challenge, as you noted, there was a delay and he flew his drone at 351 approximately. | ||
| So moving forward. | ||
| We are leveraging resources from the Department of Homeland Security and others to make sure that we have dedicated connectivity so that we're not reliant on public domain, so that we can ensure that whatever assets we have in place, those assets are operational. | ||
| And that is my commitment to you, that we are going to make sure we're going to do that, and that is something we are moving out on. | ||
| Thank you, and I hope that you'll answer some of my other questions in writing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Johnson, recognized for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Acting Director Roe, in our secure briefing last week, I made the point that if you don't want conspiracy theories to spread, you need to provide information. | ||
| I appreciate these photos today. | ||
| These things could have been released literally within days, and a whole lot more information as well. | ||
| So, Congress needs to provide oversight. | ||
| We don't have certain investigatory tools like you have, but what we can do is do interviews. | ||
| So, Acting Director Rowe, did you receive our letter from July 25th requesting interviews with 13 individuals of the Secret Service? | ||
| We are in receipt of that letter, Senator. | ||
| And Deputy Director Abate, have you seen that letter as well? | ||
| Do you know who we're requesting interviews with? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, I have not seen the letter. | |
| Do you know whether those individuals submitted to interviews with the FBI, Acting Director Rowe? | ||
| We're in the process. | ||
| Those employees are being interviewed if they have not already been interviewed, sir. | ||
| Are those interviews being transcribed? | ||
| The FBI interviews, sir? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Well, we have 302s on those. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator, we will. | |
| When will Congress get those 302s? | ||
| When will we get those transcriptions, those interviews? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, I'll take that back and we'll get those to you as soon as possible. | |
| So Acting Director Rowe, when will those individuals be made available for Congress, for this community to interview them? | ||
| Senator, we'll make them available. | ||
| How soon? | ||
| Because memories are short. | ||
| They can be influenced by events. | ||
| We need these transcribed interviews as soon as possible. | ||
| We will get that done, sir. | ||
| Does Secret Service use encrypted communications at events? | ||
| On our radio nets, we do, sir. | ||
| Are those memorialized? | ||
| Are those saved? | ||
| The radio traffic from Butler, we did not have recordings. | ||
| Do you normally? | ||
| Not on the road outside of D.C. or outside of a presidential or vice presidential stop. | ||
| Interesting. | ||
| So communications between secret service agents will not be available like we've gotten the communications from local law enforcement. | ||
| I'm sorry, Senator. | ||
| So we're not going to be able to get those communications. | ||
| You didn't save them. | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Which is very unfortunate. | ||
| It is, sir. | ||
| And moving forward, we've actually directed that we will now start recording those so that we will have them moving forward. | ||
| And by the way, I'm going to ask for a number of things at the very end to be entered into the record, but one of my preliminary findings is that the Secret Service did not attend the 9 o 'clock briefing the day of the event. | ||
| In your testimony, you said that a site briefing was conducted with Secret Service personnel and law enforcement partners supporting the event. | ||
| Those both can't be true. | ||
| So, local law enforcement do not believe Secret Service was present at the 9 o 'clock briefing. | ||
| Were they? | ||
| Or were they not? | ||
| So, Senator, with respect to the snipers that went on national television and gave an interview and said that they did not get a briefing from the Secret Service, they were supporting through mutual aid, and our personnel briefed the tactical team leader that was leading that element that was providing this counter-sniper. | ||
| The Secret Service provides explicit instructions to the locals. | ||
| Were explicit instructions provided to cover the roof of the AGR building and locals just not follow it? | ||
| Or were those explicit instructions not provided? | ||
| My understanding of what was communicated is that the locals had a plan and that they had been there before. | ||
| So an awful lot of the chatter on social media has to do with is there a partisanship in the Secret Service providing coverage for some individuals and none for others. | ||
| Secret Service coverage or additional coverage enhancements being denied. | ||
| Was there ever requested additional coverage for Mar-a-Lago? | ||
| Senator, we have provided additional resources to the Mar-a-Lago residents. | ||
| Was coverage asked for and denied ever? | ||
| I'll have to research that, Senator, but I'm happy to tell you we have made significant investments since the former president has left office. | ||
| Over $4 million of technology, resources, and alarms. | ||
| Documents will come out eventually to make the point one way or the other. | ||
| This is an important piece of information that Congress needs to have. | ||
| Senator, we'll make those available to you, the investments we've made. | ||
| There's a report today by Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics saying that you denied sniper coverage outside of a driving distance to D.C. Is that true? | ||
| That is a false statement, sir. | ||
| That is incorrect. | ||
| That is incorrect. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's the kind of information you need to refute with documentation. | ||
| Deputy Director Abate, you said this is an assassination attempt and domestic terrorism. | ||
| It's obviously assassination attempt. | ||
| Why make the distinction? | ||
| What is different about that? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We think it's important to cover all the possibilities here and the reality of what we're dealing with and what we've all seen, Senator. | |
| And we've learned lessons from the past. | ||
| The baseball, the tragic shooting at the baseball field was referenced here. | ||
| We've learned the lesson from that. | ||
| That was not opened properly, and we've made changes in the Bureau, and it's reflected here in terms of how this investigation is being approached with a completely open mind and inclusive of all the possibilities, including domestic terrorism. | ||
| I fear that makes investigation potentially partisan. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, I would like to request that my July 14th... | ||
| Letter to Attorney General Garland, Mayorkas, and Ray be entered in the record. | ||
| It asks for all kinds of information, documentation, asks a lot of questions. | ||
| My preliminary findings of July 21st and July 23rd, including timelines, a bunch of questions as well be entered in the record. | ||
| And then our updated timeline dated today. | ||
| This goes now by minute, by second. | ||
| And we will continue to update this timeline as more information becomes public. | ||
| This is the way you do investigation. | ||
| We need to find out literally second by second what happens. | ||
| So the American public understands the truth. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Without objection, so ordered. | |
| Senator Butler. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Thank you to both of our chairman and ranking members for holding this incredibly important hearing critically for the American people to understand the safety and security that is being provided to our national leaders. | ||
| Thank you both for... | ||
| For being here and for, again, answering the hard questions. | ||
| This is a time of, I think, heightened attention, deservedly so, not only for our national leaders, but for the teacher who decides that they're going to go and participate in their democracy or the firefighter. | ||
| Who wants to hear the voice and vision of the potential next leader of this country? | ||
| My thoughts and prayers really are with those Pennsylvania families who have lost loved ones or have been critically injured. | ||
| As I offer my questions today, it would be in service to preventing future incidents. | ||
| The one question of looking backward to the event on the 13th, Director Abate, can you just talk a little bit about how did Mr. Crooks, how was he able to get an AR-15 onto the roof of that building? | ||
| Does your investigation illuminate anything that we have learned to help to make that point more clear? | ||
| We don't have definitive evidence yet as to how he got the rifle up there. | ||
| Based on everything that's been collected thus far, photos, video, eyewitness accounts, we do believe he likely had it in the backpack. | ||
| Broken down in the backpack? | ||
| We're still assessing that. | ||
| Our laboratory has taken, looked at the rifle itself and measured that. | ||
| Against the backpack itself. | ||
| And if placed in this backpack, it would extend outside. | ||
| It would have been visible. | ||
| We don't have anyone who's observed him, who observed him with the backpack, with a rifle, a barrel or other part of it sticking out of the backpack. | ||
| But the rifle would not have fit fully into this backpack to be concealed and whole. | ||
| We have video that was recently found of the shooter walking in a distance. | ||
| From his car just before 6 p.m., about 5:56, I believe. | ||
| And based on everything we have, we assess that he returned to his vehicle at that time, got the backpack, and then proceeded back to the area and to the AGR building. | ||
| And then he's observed, of course, on the roof, just, you know, minutes later, holding the backpack in front of him. | ||
| In fact, there's... | ||
| Dash cam footage from a police vehicle that shows him briefly traversing the roof with the backpack in front of him. | ||
| And then it's just minutes after that that he's actually seen by the officer who I described with the rifle on the roof. | ||
| It's possible that he broke the rifle down, but we don't have conclusive evidence of that and took it out of the bag on the roof in those moments before and reassembled it there. | ||
| That's one of the theories we're looking at and working on right now. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| You take me right, Acting Director Roa, thank you for your years of dedicated service and jumping in in a hot time. | ||
| But you take me right to this point of communication. | ||
| There's been a lot of conversation about the, and even in your written and verbal testimony, you talked a lot about the communication and the disparate nature. | ||
| In which it's happening across the different channels. | ||
| All elements of an event communicated on the same channel. | ||
| If I lost my kid and I'm at a big rally, are local law enforcement talking on the same channel about me losing my kid, that they're talking about a suspicious individual? | ||
| So when it comes to the locals, they likely have some type of common... | ||
| Common channel that they work off of in a county or an adjoining municipality. | ||
| When it comes to the Secret Service, we do have various channels for various agents and our uniformed division officers working specific aspects of that advance. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So it's not possible that the delay in communication or the losing of the thread of tracking this individual was sort of lost in the commotion of all of the other communications that could have been or maybe was not separate from the communication channels that were happening. | |
| Senator, I can only speak to the Secret Service lines of communication, and we did not have anything beyond... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Last question, really quickly, because I'm out of time. | |
| Acting Director, was there any communication with the Secret Service that was talking directly with the former president's detail? | ||
| That feels like there's been some question by colleagues about why the call wasn't made to delay the event. | ||
| Help us understand the communication that Either was or was not happening directly with the former president's detail to make the call to delay 10 minutes. | ||
| We've all been to these events. | ||
| They never happen on time. | ||
| But to delay while this was being investigated. | ||
| What the hell is that question even? | ||
| They were operating on their net, which our security room was monitoring. | ||
| But again, having information of... | ||
| A suspicious individual. | ||
| There were other calls that day of individuals that came to the attention of law enforcement, of people that needed medical attention. | ||
| So it really, that particular, regarding the assailant, that never really rose to a level of, we should not put him out there. | ||
| Had we known that there was a dangerous individual out there, we would never let a protectee go out on stage. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Senator Heston, recognized for your questions. | ||
| Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I want to thank you and Chairman Derman and the ranking members. | ||
| For holding this joint hearing today. | ||
| And thank you to our witnesses, not only for being here, but for your careers of service to our country and to the men and women you lead. | ||
| I am really grateful that former President Trump is safe and extend my sympathies to the family of Cory Comparateur, who was fatally shot at the rally, and my sympathies to everyone who was injured. | ||
| On July 13th... | ||
| Major failures nearly led to the assassination of a presidential candidate who is also a former president of the United States. | ||
| The Secret Service has to be fully transparent about how this happened and how it's going to change moving forward. | ||
| Understanding there's also a need to balance Congress's engagement in oversight with allowing law enforcement to conduct an ongoing criminal investigation. | ||
| I want to thank the agents of the Secret Service for selflessly acting to protect elected officials and their families and our former presidents. | ||
| We're grateful for their sacrifices and their service, and I want to thank all law enforcement, and particularly law enforcement officers and first responders, who worked to minimize harm to the crowd on July. | ||
| Mr. Rowe, I want to start with you. | ||
| New Hampshire hosts many political rallies. | ||
| Protecting the speakers and attendees at these events requires extensive coordination between state and local law enforcement, the Secret Service staff, and obviously campaign event staff. | ||
| As a former governor, I've experienced some of the challenges that this type of coordination can create, but we know that this coordination is really essential to public safety. | ||
| It's clear that there were significant coordination failures on July 13th. | ||
| You told us earlier that the local SWAT team told the Secret Service that local law enforcement had eyes on the AGR roof. | ||
| But there are reports that members of a local SWAT team never met with the Secret Service in the days before the Butler rally. | ||
| What steps does the Secret Service take prior to political rallies to ensure that the agency is effectively coordinating with the candidate's security details? | ||
| So, as part of the advance process, Senator, as happened in Butler as well, there's a police meeting, and basically that initiates the advance. | ||
| That's bringing in all the, not only emergency management officials, but all the state and local law enforcement agencies that may have aspects of supporting or assisting in that. | ||
| The focus of that police meeting, one, is to exchange numbers and business cards and then coordinate times for walkthroughs. | ||
| There were walkthroughs of the Butler Farm site with local law enforcement agencies that were supporting that visit. | ||
| And that was directly as a result of having that police meeting to begin the process of figuring out, dividing up the labor areas of responsibility. | ||
| So what you're telling me is that at that meeting, the Secret Service, the first meeting led to the walkthrough that the Secret Service does with local law enforcement, and that at least some members or directors of the local SWAT team would have been part of that process? | ||
| Well, as I understand it, the Beaver County... | ||
| They were seconded to assist Butler, but the Butler ESU team were part of the advance process. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| How many agents did the Secret Service provide to plan and secure this event, and how many people from state and local law enforcement agencies supported the security of this event? | ||
| So in totality between law enforcement, state and local, and federal, there were 155 personnel at the Butler farm site that day. | ||
| All combined Secret Service. | ||
| It's in the 70s. | ||
| And then we had support from Homeland Security investigations that were providing poststandards. | ||
| And then we had approximately 70 or so various Pennsylvania state law enforcement. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| I want to go to one other issue before my time expires. | ||
| You've talked today and in our secure briefing about the interoperability. | ||
| Of the Secret Service's counter drone capability, that it failed early on, and so it didn't catch the drone flown over the site by the shooter. | ||
| First, what changes are, you've addressed this a little, but what changes is the Secret Service making to ensure that it has backup technology? | ||
| But also, what efforts did the Secret Service undertake to coordinate with other law enforcement regarding anti-drone capability at the rally site? | ||
| We're working to determine that right now, Senator. | ||
| We're getting the redundancies in place. | ||
| Counter UAS authority, it is a little complex. | ||
| State and locals don't necessarily have this ability to do that. | ||
| It does require coordination with the FAA because it could impact commercial travel. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| And Mr. Chair, I'm just going to follow up. | ||
| And I think one of the things that you're hearing from a lot of folks, but I'm not sure we're really clear on yet, is how is it that somebody who clearly is arousing concern from law enforcement isn't identified as suspicious? | ||
| And how is it that that... | ||
| That information doesn't get to the former president's details. | ||
| So I'll follow up in writing. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Cornyn. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | |
| Director Rowe, can you explain why the shooter's drone worked? | ||
| Because there was no counter UAS present, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, you had a drone system, but you had bandwidth problems. | |
| The bandwidth apparently was adequate for the shooter's drone, but not for the Secret Service. | ||
| Can you explain that? | ||
| I have no explanation for it, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We also know that in the military context, electronic warfare or jamming capabilities are commonly used on the battlefield. | |
| Does the Secret Service have jamming capabilities or drones? | ||
| We have drones, sir, and when it comes to, I have to be very careful about how I answer this one in an open forum. | ||
| What I can tell you is that we have technical security measures, sir, to address, I think, what you're asking me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, the question is, can you take down a suspicious drone? | |
| Because this can be used not only for surveillance by the shooter, which obviously it was here, but also drones can be weaponized and be used as a threat to the president or, in this case, President Trump. | ||
| Do you have the capacity to stop a weaponized drone? | ||
| What I will tell you, sir, is that we have technical security measures that we utilize at permanently protective sites. | ||
| We also have the ability, in a limited fashion, at temporary sites. | ||
| What I can tell you is that on this day, the counter-UAS system had technical difficulties and did not go operational until after 5 o 'clock. | ||
|
unidentified
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So, in this case, the shooter had a rifle, but somebody who wanted to kill a president or a former president or a candidate for president would not need a rifle. | |
| They could use a drone, correct? | ||
| It is a potential threat vector. | ||
|
unidentified
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So this individual was identified as a suspicious person. | |
| Can you explain to us when a suspicious person becomes identified as a threat? | ||
| Well, I think it's also when a weapon or some other dangerous item is then presented. | ||
|
unidentified
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A rangefinder would not render someone a threat as opposed to... | |
| Somebody who was under suspicion? | ||
| I think the rangefinder is what initially brought him to the attention of local law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
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And why would the president be allowed to take to the stage while a suspicious person had been identified and before the Secret Service or local law enforcement were able to investigate the circumstances? | |
| So at that time, Senator, suspicion had not risen to the level of threat or imminent harm. | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, you didn't. | |
| Ultimately, that suspicious person did become a threat. | ||
| Do you think if the president had been asked not to take the stage during the time it took to investigate, to eliminate that suspicion, wouldn't that have been the appropriate way to deal with it? | ||
| Senator, it certainly is one way to do it. | ||
| This is a challenge for law enforcement in general, is that being able to... | ||
| You identify somebody that comes to your attention, and you're trying to determine what are their intentions. | ||
| This is a challenge for law enforcement. | ||
| The individual actually came to the attention for suspicion. | ||
| He's on the outer perimeter adjacent to the secured site. | ||
| Law enforcement is circulating for him. | ||
| But again, without additional information... | ||
| At that point, we're not rising to the level yet where perhaps we should pull him off or delay him. | ||
|
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And I'm just suggesting that maybe, just maybe, President Trump's appearance should have been delayed while that suspicion could be adequately investigated. | |
| I've always thought of the Secret Service as the best of the best. | ||
| When it comes to their willingness to put themselves in harm's way to protect the life of their person they are detailed to. | ||
| And I think you described the very rigorous process by which people are screened. | ||
| And I think you mentioned the 2% standard, people who are interested in serving, only a very small fraction of those individuals are actually accepted in the Secret Service because of the high standards that your agency has. | ||
| But explain to me why the Secret Service, being an elite law enforcement agency, would delegate to local law enforcement or others who did not meet that same 2% standard. | ||
| In other words, isn't that something that Secret Service should have covered as opposed to delegating it to local law enforcement? | ||
| So, Senator, again, this is where... | ||
| I went back to earlier when I said it was a failure to challenge our assumptions. | ||
| We assume that the state and locals had it. | ||
| By no means do I want to diminish the commitment, and I'm sure you agree. | ||
| State and local law enforcement do their jobs every day and protect the communities that you represent. | ||
|
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No doubt about it. | |
| So I think what we made an assumption that there was going to be uniformed presence out there. | ||
| That there would be sufficient eyes to cover that, that there was going to be countersniper teams in the AGR building, and I can assure you that we're not going to make that mistake again. | ||
| Moving forward, I've directed our Office of Protective Operations that when our countersnipers are up, their countersnipers are up, and they're on the roof as well. | ||
| And we do this all the time with our colleagues in the New York City Police Department when we cover the United Nations General Assembly, and so that is our TTP moving forward. | ||
|
unidentified
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Director Rowe, I would just submit to you that those assumptions can be lethal. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Senator Scott, you're recognized for your questions. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman. | ||
| Let me just follow up with what Senator Corners asked. | ||
| Do you know who makes the drone that Secret Service uses? | ||
| That Secret Service uses? | ||
| Yeah, the one that didn't work? | ||
| Who's the manufacturer? | ||
| Is it an American-made manufacturer? | ||
| I believe it is, Senator. | ||
| We'll provide that to you in a queue for sure. | ||
| So we talked about this the other day. | ||
| Very few times in history do our presidents get shot at. | ||
| So you know that this is something that the American public is very interested in. | ||
| So, as Senator Johnson said, there's a lot of questions being asked. | ||
| I was at church Sunday, and three people came up to me and asked me if there was a second shooter. | ||
| So there's all this information that you guys are not responding to. | ||
| When I was governor of Florida, I had two mass shootings. | ||
| I had the Pulse nightclub shooting. | ||
| I had the Marjorie Sillman Douglas shooting. | ||
| And we did two or three times a day, local, state, and federal law enforcement, FBI, everybody involved. | ||
| We answered questions. | ||
| What I asked you the other day is, why aren't you doing that? | ||
| What you've allowed, what both of you have allowed, you've allowed the public to assume the negative, which I don't get. | ||
| I think you should have been doing, and I think you should have been doing all along at least once a day press conferences. | ||
| I think that you've got to tell the public what's going on. | ||
| Having a hearing is really nice. | ||
| But I think, I mean, how often are we going to do this? | ||
| I mean, you're clearly not going to do it here for another month and a half. | ||
| So I asked you the other day, why aren't you doing press conferences? | ||
| Are you going to commit to doing press conferences? | ||
| I think what you all said the other day, you're going to ask Secretary Mayorkas and Director Wray if you guys could do those daily press conferences and start giving the public information. | ||
| And what's the answer? | ||
| So, Senator, that's why, one, I'm here today. | ||
| I'm here today to provide information and answer those questions. | ||
| And we are moving towards doing more frequent releases of information. | ||
| We are willing to do that press conference, and once we get through this hearing today, we are going to, in all likelihood, do one this week. | ||
| Okay, so what's the commitment to the public that you're going to do press conference? | ||
| I mean, are you going to... | ||
| Right. | ||
| I mean, it's, what, 17 days. | ||
| I mean, the information... | ||
| I mean, we are sitting 17 days into this, and I'm getting asked questions that I can't believe are true, but the public believes it's true. | ||
| So what you all are doing is you're ruining your reputation. | ||
| Impact the integrity of the federal government. | ||
| It makes no sense to me. | ||
| So are you going to commit to, are you going to do it once a month? | ||
| I mean, and the FBI, same thing, not just you. | ||
| What did Director Ray say? | ||
| Did he say he couldn't do it? | ||
|
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Senator, if I may jump in here. | |
| First, thank you all for your guidance in this regard. | ||
| And in fact, we haven't done something every day, no doubt about that. | ||
| But we're focused from the FBI side on the investigation in part as we've laid out here today. | ||
| We actually, based on your guidance, we did a media engagement, not a stand-up type press conference just yesterday, and laid out in full everything that I've shared here, even beyond that, just in the interest of time. | ||
| We are, because of the intense interest in this and the implications and the national importance, we've literally provided everything through media and through journalists and here, all of the information that we have derived from the investigation. | ||
| We remain committed to do that in full, answering any and all questions and sharing any and all information we obtain. | ||
| Do you guys realize the value of going in front of the press and answering all their questions? | ||
| I mean, you realize if you don't do it that way, everything gets filtered. | ||
| You get to put out all the information, and you should be providing, I mean, you should be every day saying, this is what we know now. | ||
| This is like Senator Johnson put together a timeline. | ||
| You should have put together a timeline. | ||
| You should have really put out, this is what we know right now, and this is what we don't know. | ||
| Like you've said, you don't know how the gun got up there. | ||
| Right? | ||
| You've said it. | ||
| But why, why, why have, that should have been out all along. | ||
| Say, we're looking at it, it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| We've done this, we've done this, we've done this. | ||
| If you do, I mean, this, I just don't get it. | ||
| Why, why would you do it? | ||
| You're ruining, I've said this about, about the FBI. | ||
| I mean, the people that work at the FBI, people who work at Secret Service, they're great people. | ||
| You're a black hole. | ||
| You lose the support of the American public because people don't believe you're being direct with them. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| I completely disagree with your approach. | ||
| I just want to finish. | ||
| I've got, like everybody else, I did a letter July 18th. | ||
| I haven't gotten any answers yet. | ||
| Great questions. | ||
| And I'd love to get the answers to this because this is what the public is asking for. | ||
| They want more information. | ||
| They want to know what happened, who's going to be held accountable, and how we're going to make sure this never happens again. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great questions. | |
| Great questions. | ||
| Thanks, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you for being here to both of you, and more important, thank you for your professional dedication, your personal bravery, and your devotion to the ideals of law enforcement. | ||
| I know for both of you, this moment is a painful one. | ||
| And Acting Director, I've heard you speak in a private setting very emotionally and passionately about the need to take responsibility and take action that will assure And I know that you share a commitment, along with Director Abe, to full public disclosure to the maximum extent possible. | ||
| We can make speeches at you, and I've made one myself in that private setting about the need for broader, fuller disclosure to the public, not just in press conferences, but in the course of your investigation about what you know and... | ||
| I feel you can disclose without compromising your investigation. | ||
| Let me ask you, last week, Senator Peters and Paul, along with Senator Johnson and myself, sent requests to both of your agencies to produce documents. | ||
| We've only received a handful so far. | ||
| Can you commit to when we can expect those documents? | ||
| We will get them to you as quickly as we can, Senator. | ||
| Can we expect them this week? | ||
| We will work to meet that deadline, sir. | ||
| And when can we expect all the communications, the text messages that agents have sent to each other? | ||
| Eventually, all of it is going to come out, as you know. | ||
| When can we expect all of those documents? | ||
| We will gather them up and get them to you, Senator. | ||
| You, I think... | ||
| took the position as to the local law enforcement responsible for the shooter on the roof, the snipers that were in place, that it was their job to take him out. | ||
| But ultimately, doesn't the buck stop with... | ||
| It stops with us, sir, but let me just clarify. | ||
| The perspective that they had on that roof, when I show you the perspective from what our snipers saw, he's on the downside of that ridge roof. | ||
| Their perspective from the AGR building, looking out, their area responsibility. | ||
| Looking left, they should have been able to see. | ||
| You can see in that photo in Exhibit A, which we will make part of the record and turn over to the committee. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| He's already crossed over that bridge or the walkway and stepped up onto that roof. | ||
| I'm not saying that they should have neutralized him, but if they had just held their post and looked left, maybe. | ||
| There's a lot of maybes there, Senator. | ||
| A lot of maybes, but somebody... | ||
| We need to know who specifically was responsible for doing what. | ||
| Who was responsible for saying to former President Trump, sir, it's not safe to go out there yet. | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| Who was responsible for making sure that those Local law enforcement were doing their job. | ||
| Who was responsible for tracking down that suspicious person who fit the profile? | ||
| 10 to 25 years old, young, male. | ||
| The FBI has warned us about it. | ||
| Year after year after year, Director Wray has come before us and said the threat is from domestic extremism. | ||
| The lone gunman. | ||
| We're all aware of it in law enforcement. | ||
| So I think we need individual accountability here, and people need to be held responsible. | ||
| In fact, lose their jobs. | ||
| Correct. | ||
| If necessary, to send a message that this massive intelligence and surveillance failure, as well as the enforcement failure. | ||
| accountability. | ||
| Let me just ask in the short time I have left, what is the nature of the Iran threat? | ||
|
unidentified
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I'm sorry, Senator, can you repeat the question? | |
| What is the nature of the Iran threat, the threat to former President Trump that has been mentioned? | ||
|
unidentified
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Let me be clear here, the terrorist regime of Iran Have been targeting people, our country, for many, many years now. | |
| We've talked about that here before. | ||
| I want to be clear about that. | ||
| From the FBI stamp, we know publicly they've targeted former President Trump. | ||
| They've called for his assassination, along with other current and former government officials. | ||
| That's public information. | ||
| Was there a specific or imminent threat on July 13th? | ||
|
unidentified
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We have no information that there are any co-conspirators or that foreign or domestic, including Iran, related to this. | |
| But we're not, I want to be clear, we have no evidence of that. | ||
| We're not ruling anything out. | ||
| We're looking into all possibilities and leaving our minds open to Was that on the minds of the Secret Service on July 13th, that there might be some threat from Iran? | ||
| Deputy Director Abe just said, we're aware of the public, the public sentiment and statements of the government of Iran to do harm to Donald J. Trump, and we use a threat-based model. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thanks, Mr. President. | ||
|
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Senator Alsofi, I recognize for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you both for your testimony today and for your service. | ||
| Mr. Rowe, I want to begin discussing Secret Service staffing. | ||
| And the extent to which HSI or other personnel are augmenting or backfilling inadequate Secret Service capacity, generally and on the day of the assassination attempt. | ||
| To what extent are HSI personnel, for example, filling close protection roles that would normally or optimally be filled by Secret Service personnel? | ||
| Thank you, Senator, for that question. | ||
| As we have done, even back when we were with Treasury, we enlist during campaign years the assistance of other law enforcement agencies in that department. | ||
| So when we were in Treasury, we used ATF, we used IRSCI. | ||
| When we transferred over to the Department of Homeland Security, we have brought that practice with us. | ||
| So going into a campaign year or during a national special security event like the United Nations General Assembly, we will enter into a memorandum of assistance for the campaign with HSI. | ||
| HSI will provide post standards, essentially federal agents, law enforcement, to be able to help secure a site. | ||
| When it comes to close protection, the only time that we will utilize them is during a United Nations General Assembly, where they may be utilized to protect a low-level head of state or provide security at a hotel in New York City where those protectees are staying. | ||
| So on the day in question, all of the former president's close protection detail were full-time. | ||
| Secret Service personnel? | ||
| They were, and they were assigned to the Donald Trump detail. | ||
|
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Okay. | |
| Interoperability with other federal and state and local law enforcement agencies. | ||
| Specifically on communications. | ||
| What have you determined to date played a role in Failures to swiftly communicate between agencies the suspicion or identification of a threat. | ||
| Well, I think there was a delay in reporting, not having that real time. | ||
| So as they were closing in on him, as information is known as... | ||
| Be more specific when who were closing in on him. | ||
| As local law enforcement were closing in on him. | ||
| As he's seen scurrying across the roof, right? | ||
| That information... | ||
| And we're getting to the bottom of that. | ||
| We're working on trying to figure out what was the delay. | ||
| Why didn't we hear that coming out of the Unified Command? | ||
| So based on the information I have right now, what I can tell you, Senator, is that apparently not having that real-time information is what really hindered us in being able to understand more than it was just the locals working an issue at the 3 o 'clock. | ||
| There was actually a little bit something more urgent than that. | ||
| Does it appear that that is due to a lack of communications links between relevant officials and agencies or poor communications practices and a failure to report? | ||
|
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I don't want to rule out. | |
| I want to have a neutral opinion on that. | ||
| So I don't know if it was poor. | ||
| Poor practices. | ||
| I can tell you that the interoperability, not being able to have that technical fix, which is a lofty goal to be able to do that, is something that has been a hindrance. | ||
| But that's why we use a counterpart system. | ||
| So there in fact is not the capability when an intergovernmental interagency team is deployed to secure a site like this and to mount, if necessary, a quick reaction. | ||
| There is not currently the capability for, for example, state law enforcement SWAT personnel or local law enforcement officers to communicate directly with Secret Service officers on site. | ||
| So, technically, you could do it, but it would take... | ||
| A long time to get it done and for a one-day or an eight-hour operation, it requires a lot and it would be months. | ||
| Of planning, of knowing that we are going to go to this particular jurisdiction and that we're going to need your frequencies, the keys, and we're going to need to load you into our radios and you're going to be needed to load it into ours. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, this presents potentially, I think, an opportunity for the Homeland Security Committee. | ||
| I mean, not just in an executive protection context, but any complex incident response, any counterterrorism, any natural disaster context, the inability swiftly to link. | ||
| I would think, and based on my experience, being able to talk to other agencies in real time certainly would assist in that response. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, do I have time for one more question? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I know others have touched on this. | ||
| One of the things that's been most baffling to the public has been the failure to fully secure This structure, which even to a layperson's uninformed eye, clearly presents as a site from which an attack on the former president of this event could be mounted. | ||
| And it had particular characteristics that made it even more of potential value to an attacker. | ||
| Just walk us through one more time. | ||
| Is there not an established doctrine or practice or checklist by which such sites are assessed for threat and determine whether or not to be within or without of the security perimeter? | ||
| So, Senator, controlling high ground is something that is a must for us whenever we go into a location. | ||
| Well, I know we're all eager for more information on why that task was not completed in this case. | ||
| Thank you for your testimony. | ||
| A water tower. | ||
| So why weren't you on the water tower? | ||
| Why was President Trump allowed to take the stage at 6.02 p.m., exactly 17 minutes, after multiple suspicious person reports were provided, complete with photos and information suggesting that the assailant had a rangefinder, something that ordinary people don't use in this kind of circumstance? | ||
| Good question. | ||
| Senator, again. | ||
| It was suspicion, not weapon, or there was never communication of that there was an individual with a gun or threat or other bad intentions. | ||
| How many suspicious person reports did you receive that day? | ||
| I'll get back to you on the exact number, but there were other individuals that came to the attention of law enforcement that day. | ||
| Would President Biden ever be allowed on stage under similar circumstances with an unresolved set of multiple suspicious person reports provided, including indicating that there was a rangefinder involved? | ||
| Senator, I can tell you that a suspicious person on the outer perimeter with local law enforcement attempting to locate would happen, but I would need more information as far as whether or not we would allow the president to go on or off. | ||
| Again, for us, it comes down to weapon, a potential threat. | ||
| Is the individual carrying an IED? | ||
| Is there a weapon? | ||
| Is there some other factor that now ramps up? | ||
| Understood. | ||
| Understood. | ||
| If there were eight shell casings found next to the assailant's body, but he was neutralized after the first shot, where did those other shots come from? | ||
| Where did the other shots go? | ||
| As far as the assailant's shooting? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| So did the assailant get out eight shots or were those shell casings left from the day before? | ||
| Where did they come from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The shooter center, we believe, fired eight rounds. | |
| We had the shooting reconstruction team go out there for a period of days and collect all that. | ||
| Bullet holes, bullet fragmentation, all taken back, and we're still putting together the trajectory and ballistic analysis, although we do have fragments of the bullets, and bullets have been collected in the distance from the shooter's weapon. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| Gotcha. | ||
| It's my understanding there was a sniper team assigned to a window with complete overlook, complete view of the roof, the same rooftop, sloped rooftop, where the shots were fired. | ||
| It's also my understanding, according to some whistleblower accounts, That that post was abandoned. | ||
| What can you tell me about that? | ||
| Why was it abandoned? | ||
| So I saw that from the colonel's testimony, sir, and it's something that I've asked, and our mission assurance is getting to the bottom of. | ||
| And there were two two-man counter-sniper teams from the locals that were in that AGR building. | ||
| And so at some point they just left? | ||
| I don't have an answer for you on that, Senator, but it seems to me that if even one of them left, there should have been remaining some additional eyes left in that building. | ||
| That seems like something that maybe should be one of the very first questions you address. | ||
| I'm actually surprised that you don't know that already, and I'd ask that you submit to us in writing what you learn as soon as you learn it. | ||
| Will you commit to that? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| What can you tell me about? | ||
| Let me just state this this way. | ||
| Multiple requests were made. | ||
| By Trump's protective detail and by Trump's campaign team to the Secret Service for additional resources. | ||
| I'm told that those were denied. | ||
| And as I recall, the Secret Service spokesperson initially denied that such requests were made and denied. | ||
| Why not tell the truth from the outset? | ||
| What were they trying to do there? | ||
| So, Senator, I don't think there was any intention to mislead. | ||
| Seems like a pretty material fact, doesn't it? | ||
| I saw that report. | ||
| Go ahead, sir. | ||
| Will you commit to me that you will submit to us in writing what requests were made, by whom, and to whom, and when they were denied? | ||
| I will, sir. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Look, at the end of the day, we're looking at a situation in which, at a minimum, people knew that this guy had a gun at least two minutes before the shooting happened. | ||
| I want to know what you can tell me about what happened during that final two-minute period where a whole bunch of people in the crowd saw and were shouting, he's got a gun. | ||
| During that two-minute period, perhaps at the beginning of it, the local police started to climb the rooftop, and there was at least 30 seconds after which local police were able to personally observe the shooter with a gun, had the gun pointed at him. | ||
| What happened during that time period, and why on earth was President Trump not removed from the stage at that moment? | ||
| So, again, Senator, the reason why President Trump was not removed was, again, we did not have anything more than locals working an issue at the 3 o 'clock, wasn't determined as to whether or not it was the same individual or not, and there was no report. | ||
| The same individual as what? | ||
| The same suspicious individual. | ||
| Right, but we've left the category of suspicious individual at that point. | ||
| You've got a guy with a gun on a rooftop. | ||
| 136 yards away from the stage, you know that he's got a gun at that point. | ||
| What happened during that time period that did not result in President Trump, his protective detail, being notified of that, and him immediately being removed from the situation? | ||
| What I will say, and then I'll turn it over to Deputy Director of Bait. | ||
| No information regarding a weapon on the roof was ever passed to our personnel. | ||
| How is that even possible? | ||
| Yeah, good, good, good, good! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whoa! | |
| This is probably something my colleague can expound on. | ||
| Information that was in law enforcement, local law enforcement channels, but did not cross over and make it to Secret Service awareness. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, just to clarify the timeline, so the individual was first seen by law enforcement on the roof at... | |
| About 6.08. | ||
| We're still working to perfect the timeline based on the radio comms and all that. | ||
| It wasn't until at 6.11.03 seconds, the officers saw him and called out his arm. | ||
| That was the first sighting where he had the rifle on the roof. | ||
| And that was relayed to the Secret Service Command Center? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My understanding is no. | |
| Secret Service, it was not relayed to them. | ||
| It's a narrower time frame, though. | ||
| It's probably about maybe up to half a minute between the time he's seen with the rifle and when the shots are fired. | ||
| But there's still time. | ||
| At that point, if there were an open channel of communication in which they were able to tell him, he's got a gun, take him out. | ||
| You could still take... | ||
| President Trump off the stage. | ||
| You could have him duck. | ||
| You could have the shooter neutralized. | ||
| Do you not have a channel of communication by which they can say, gun, take him out? | ||
| So again, Senator, that information stayed in state and local channels and did not make it over to secret service. | ||
| Did they not consider that relevant? | ||
| You're saying that the local police didn't consider that relevant enough to pass along to the Secret Service? | ||
| Sir, I think that they were in the midst of dealing with a very critical situation, and they articulated that over the radio, as I understand it. | ||
| However, it was never relayed over to us. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Lee. | ||
| Senator Holy? | ||
| Insane! | ||
| Insane! | ||
| A up please. | ||
| Let's make sure everybody can see it. | ||
| This is the photograph I believe that you took, your team took of the roof, the AGR roof. | ||
| Yeah, that's the one. | ||
| Okay, so from this vantage point, as the law enforcement who are in those windows, as they look left, they should be able to see the shooter clearly there on the AGR second floor roof. | ||
| My question is, why is there not a Secret Service counter-sniper on that roof? | ||
| So, Senator, when we post up, our... | ||
| The methodology is to look out, look at things that can see in on our protectees so that they can provide that coverage. | ||
| But why is there not a Secret Service countersniper there with clear line of sight? | ||
| That roof has a clear line of sight to the former president. | ||
| Why didn't you put a Secret Service countersniper there? | ||
| The Secret Service's countersniper role is to neutralize those threats that are looking in on us. | ||
| Do you think maybe you might want to revise that protocol in light of what happened here? | ||
| They were protecting the principal. | ||
| The principal got shot. | ||
| I understand that, sir. | ||
| So do you think you might want to revise the protocol? | ||
| Let me ask you this. | ||
| Who was the lead site agent who made the decision to leave the AGR building completely outside of the security perimeter? | ||
| Who was that? | ||
| Senator, I cannot give you that name. | ||
| This person is operational. | ||
| They're still doing investigations. | ||
| They're still doing protective visits. | ||
| Have they been relieved of duty? | ||
| Senator, they have not been relieved of duty. | ||
| I know their name, by the way. | ||
| Why have they not been relieved of duty? | ||
| They are still cooperating, not only being interviewed by the FBI, but also by our Office of Professional Responsibility. | ||
| And we will let the facts of the Mission Assurance and any further investigations play out. | ||
| Isn't the fact that a former president was shot, that a good American is dead, that other Americans were critically wounded, isn't that enough mission failure for you to say that the person who decided that that building should not be in the security perimeter probably ought to be stepped down? | ||
| Senator, I think you're using the word decided, and I think we need to allow the... | ||
| Senator, you're zeroing in on one particular agent. | ||
| I want to find out exactly what was the entire decision process. | ||
| So I think I want to be neutral and make sure that we get to the bottom of it and interview everybody in order to determine if there was more than one person who perhaps exercised bad judgment. | ||
| Well, sure. | ||
| My question is, why don't you relieve everybody of duty who made bad judgment? | ||
| So, yeah, you're right. | ||
| I am zeroing in on somebody. | ||
| I'm trying to find somebody who's accountable here. | ||
| So you're telling me that the person who made the decision not to include this in the perimeter has not been relieved of duty. | ||
| What about the person who's in charge of the interoperability of radio frequencies between local law enforcement and Secret Service? | ||
| Has that person been relieved of duty? | ||
| No, Senator, because interoperability is a challenge, is a greater challenge than just... | ||
| One person. | ||
| On that day, we had a counterpart system. | ||
| It failed. | ||
| As the person who decided, who made the decision to send Donald Trump onto stage knowing that you had a security situation, has that person been relieved of duty? | ||
| No, sir, they haven't. | ||
| Has the person who decided not to pull the former president off of stage when you knew that, in your words, the locals were working a serious security situation, has that person been relieved of duty? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| Again, I refer you back to my original answer that we are. | ||
| What more do you need to investigate to know that there were critical enough failures that some individuals ought to be held accountable? | ||
| I mean, what more do you need to know? | ||
| What happened and I need my investigators to do their job and I can't put my thumb on the scale. | ||
|
unidentified
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Otherwise, what do you mean put your thumb on the objective? | |
| You're asking me, Senator, to completely make a rush to judgment about somebody failing. | ||
| I acknowledge this was a failure. | ||
| Is it not prima facie that somebody has failed? | ||
| The former president was shot. | ||
| Sir, this could have been our Texas School Book Depository. | ||
| I have lost sleep over that for the last 17 days, just like you have. | ||
| And fire somebody to hold them accountable. | ||
| I will tell you, Senator, that I will not rush to judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity. | ||
| And not rush to judgment and put people unfairly persecuted. | ||
| Unfairly, sir. | ||
| We have to be able to have a proper investigation into this, Senator. | ||
| You said earlier that you've got to make sure that your protocols are followed. | ||
| And unless there's a protocol violation, people wouldn't be disciplined. | ||
| I would just say to you, I don't really care that much about your protocols. | ||
| I think if your protocols don't provide for the fact that when a former president is shot... | ||
| When an American is killed, when other rally-goers, innocent people who just showed up on the day when they are shot at and critically wounded, if that isn't a protocol violation, prima facie, you should revise your protocols. | ||
| Senator, I think this is where you and I agree. | ||
| This was a failure, and we will get to the bottom of it. | ||
| Well, I hope you're going to do something about it. | ||
| Let me ask you something else. | ||
| RealClearPolitics reports this morning that you were directly involved in denying additional security resources and personnel, including counter snipers, not just to this event, but over the last two years that President Trump's team repeatedly asked for these additional resources, and you personally were involved in denying them. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| Senator, as I stated earlier, that is not true. | ||
| So you never denied any resources to former President Trump's team? | ||
| No, not me. | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| And you weren't involved in any of that? | ||
| You were never involved in the decision-making? | ||
| No, sir, I was not. | ||
| Let me ask you just one or two other things here quickly. | ||
| Well, whistleblowers tell me that, in fact, law enforcement were stationed to be on that roof and that law enforcement abandoned their post because it was too hot. | ||
| Is that accurate? | ||
| Senator, I have heard that as well. | ||
| Again, they posted up inside. | ||
| And I think moving forward, as I said earlier, we're going to ensure that state and local counter snipers are on roofs. | ||
| But do you know if someone was supposed to be on the roof? | ||
| Do you know if someone was in fact? | ||
| That's what the whistleblower tells me. | ||
| That may or may not be accurate. | ||
| Do you know that to be the fact? | ||
| Was somebody posted to the roof, local law enforcement or whomever? | ||
| I do not know that to be a fact. | ||
| Well, can I ask you why you don't know that? | ||
| Again, Senator, we are looking at this and they should have been on that roof. | ||
| And the fact that they were in the building is something that I'm still trying to understand. | ||
| I just want to express my frustration, Director, that 17 days or whatever it's been, that whistleblowers are telling us more than you are and you don't know, you haven't ascertained if there was supposed to be law enforcement on the roof. | ||
| That seems like a pretty basic fact. | ||
| I'm also told that local law enforcement suppliers offered the Secret Service drones and you declined them. | ||
| Is that true? | ||
| So, Senator, one, I've been very transparent and forthcoming. | ||
| Your agency has not been transparent and forthcoming, so please, let's not go there. | ||
| I have been forthcoming, sir. | ||
| That remains to be seen. | ||
| You've been on the job a few days. | ||
| So far, you've fired nobody. | ||
| Now, the drones. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Were you offered drones? | ||
| There was an offer to fly a drone on that day. | ||
| And why did you deny it? | ||
| Again. | ||
| I think the ability of local law enforcement to provide an asset, we probably should have taken them up on it if it was offered. | ||
| Senator Cruz. | ||
| Insane! | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Joe. | ||
|
unidentified
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Wow! | |
| Mr. Rowe, thank you for being here. | ||
| I agree with what you said at the outset, that the individual Secret Service agents demonstrated remarkable personal courage, putting their bodies in between the line of sight of the shooter and the president. | ||
| That being said, the bravery of the line agents is quite different from the decisions of Secret Service leadership. | ||
| Secret Service leadership committed catastrophic security failures, indeed the worst security failures for the Secret Service since 1981, since the attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan. | ||
| It is incumbent upon this committee to determine why. | ||
| Those security failures happened. | ||
| Just after the shooting, Secret Service put out an official statement from your spokesperson that says there's an untrue assertion that a member of the former president's team requested additional security resources and that those were rebuffed. | ||
| This is absolutely false. | ||
| In fact, we added protective resources and technology and capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo. | ||
| Was this tweet accurate? | ||
| With respect to Butler, Pennsylvania, it is accurate, sir. | ||
| It is accurate that the Trump team had not asked for additional security and had not been rebuffed. | ||
| If you're talking about Butler, Pennsylvania, all assets requested were approved. | ||
| If you're talking about the media reporting of assets requested... | ||
| There were times when assets were unavailable and not able to be filled, and those gaps were staffed with state and local law enforcement tactical assets. | ||
| So I'm reading from the Washington Post, July 20th, 2024. | ||
| Secret Service said to have denied requests for more security at Trump events. | ||
| The opening paragraph. | ||
| Top officials of the U.S. Secret Service. | ||
| Repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel sought by Donald Trump's security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination, according to four people familiar with the request. | ||
| Is that right, that repeatedly the Trump detail asked for more resources and repeatedly Secret Service leadership turned that down? | ||
| That is not accurate, Senator. | ||
| Assets are requested. | ||
| There's a process that is made. | ||
| How many requests did the Trump team or the Trump detail ask for? | ||
| I can get you that number in a queue. | ||
| You don't know now. | ||
| I can speak to the ones that reported in the Washington Post, and we can go through them if you like. | ||
| But you don't know how many requests there were? | ||
| In general, how many requests since 2021 that the former Trump detail has made a request for assets? | ||
| You've had two weeks. | ||
| You had a spokesperson put something out that is false on its face. | ||
| By the way, did you approve this statement when it went out? | ||
| I don't know if I did or didn't, Senator. | ||
| Has this spokesperson, is he still employed? | ||
| Does he still have a job? | ||
| So he lied on behalf of the Secret Service. | ||
| He still has a job. | ||
| Did your predecessor, the former director, does she approve this statement? | ||
| Senator, our comms team, they send out statements. | ||
| They do deconflict them, and they put them out. | ||
| Did she approve this statement? | ||
| I don't know if she did or did not. | ||
| And you don't know if you did either? | ||
| I don't recall approving it, Senator. | ||
| I don't recall. | ||
| Will you commit to provide this committee in writing? | ||
| Senator, I will commit to providing responses and getting you the information that you are seeking. | ||
| May I ask you something? | ||
| And who makes the decision to deny those requests? | ||
| Did you make that decision? | ||
| Any of them. | ||
| A detail will make a request for either staffing, technical assets, that is handled between the field office and the detail. | ||
| It goes up to a logistics office. | ||
| Okay, so there's a bureaucracy. | ||
| Is there a decision-maker? | ||
| It's not a bureaucracy, Senator. | ||
| Give me the person that's a decision-maker. | ||
| Is there one? | ||
| Senator, it's a conversation. | ||
| It's not just an absolute yay or nay. | ||
| So let me tell you what I believe. | ||
| I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests. | ||
| And I think the Biden administration has been suffused with partisan politics. | ||
| Did the same person who denied the request for additional security to President Trump also repeatedly deny the request for security to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose father was murdered by an assassin and whose... | ||
| Uncle was murdered by an assassin. | ||
| Did the same person make that decision? | ||
| Senator, what I will tell you is that Secret Service agents are not political. | ||
| Okay, you're not answering my question. | ||
| But you know what? | ||
| Leadership appointed by the President is political. | ||
| I have a simple question, yes or no. | ||
| Did the same person deny the Trump request that also denied the RFK request? | ||
| That's a yes or no question. | ||
| Senator, that is not a yes or no question. | ||
| One. | ||
| There is a process for a candidate nominee to receive protection. | ||
| Does the buck stop anywhere? | ||
|
unidentified
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That is a bicameral, bipartisan process. | |
| It's a bicameral, bipartisan process? | ||
| You are not a Congress. | ||
| You don't have a camera. | ||
| Mr. Kennedy submitted a request that was referred over to the CPAC. | ||
| Okay, you're refusing to answer the question. | ||
| Let me ask, because the failures on that day were catastrophic. | ||
| By the way... | ||
| Is it true that on the day of the Butler event that Secret Service transferred agent from President Trump to the First Lady? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| That's not true. | ||
| That's been widely reported. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| There was one airport agent that actually went on the manpower request for the Trump detail. | ||
| They handled the arrival at the airport for the First Lady. | ||
| What was the relative size of the Trump detail compared to the detail that is assigned to the President or the First Lady? | ||
| Senator, the former president travels with a full shift, just like the president. | ||
| So the exact same size? | ||
| Is that your testimony, that President Trump had the same size detail that President Biden has? | ||
| On the day of in Butler, the agents surrounding him, it is the same number of agents surrounding the president today. | ||
| There is a difference between a sitting president who also not only— Hold on, you're using president in a way that is not clear. | ||
| Is it your testimony that in Butler, Pennsylvania, Donald Trump had the same number of agents protecting him that Joe Biden has at a comparable event. | ||
| I'm telling you, the shift, the close protection shift surrounding it. | ||
| That's what you asked me, Senator, and I'm trying to answer it. | ||
| You are not answering it. | ||
| Is it the same number of agents or not? | ||
| Senator, there is a difference between the sitting president of the United States... | ||
| Then what's the difference? | ||
| The difference? | ||
| 2X, 3X, 5X, 10X? | ||
| National command authority to launch a nuclear strike, sir. | ||
| I'm not asking how many more agents... | ||
| ...that travel with the president that the former president will not get. | ||
| Sir, you are refusing to answer straight... | ||
| Sir, stop interrupting me. | ||
| Stop interrupting me. | ||
| Go ahead, Senator. | ||
| You are refusing to answer clear and direct questions. | ||
| I am asking the relative difference in the number of agents... | ||
| Between those assigned to Donald Trump and those assigned to Joe Biden. | ||
| I'm not asking why you assign more to Joe Biden. | ||
| I'm asking, is the difference, is it 2x? | ||
| Is it 3x? | ||
| Is it 5x? | ||
| Is it 10x? | ||
| Senator, I will get you that number so you can see it with your own eyes. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Marshall, you're recognized for your questions. | |
| Wow! | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow! | |
| Director Rowe. | ||
| There was probably 10 buildings within sniper range of President Trump on that afternoon. | ||
| Why was the building being used by the sniper, not in the security zone? | ||
| That's a question that I've asked, Senator. | ||
| There was a decision that we were going to construct the site, and it was going to maintain within the Butler Farm Show site. | ||
| That building, that AGR, was right on the curtilage of our outer perimeter. | ||
| And it's something that I, again, having been there and walked it, I had a hard time understanding. | ||
| So there's no protocol that says anything within 300, 500 yards, direct line of the president should be in or out of the security zone. | ||
| There's not a protocol that describes that. | ||
| So, Senator, what we try to do is we try to either control the high ground or mitigate line of sight concerns. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| You've stated that on multiple occasions, President Trump's team was denied. | ||
| More of a detail, more assets. | ||
| Who denies that? | ||
| Who is the person that denies that, generally speaking? | ||
| So, Senator, there's a process. | ||
| Again, there's a conversation had with the detail. | ||
| There's got to be a buck stopping. | ||
| There's got to be someone. | ||
| Who is the person? | ||
| Is it a level within the D.C. agency? | ||
| Is there someone in the Pittsburgh office? | ||
| Who denies that? | ||
| It has nothing to do with the Pittsburgh office, sir. | ||
| It is a conversation between not only the detail. | ||
| I don't want to know the conversation. | ||
| I want to know who makes the decision. | ||
| The decision, sir, it's our process between the Office of Protective Operations and the Office of Investigations. | ||
| Is there a title for this position? | ||
| We affectionately call it the War Room, and it's where all of our logistics files into. | ||
| So it's a room that makes the decision. | ||
| It is a staffing and assignments officer. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Is the Secret Service required to do a briefing with all entities of law enforcement involved in the event of the days leading up to the event and the day of the event? | ||
| We do a police meeting, sir, where we start the initial process. | ||
| So it's required. | ||
| Is it required? | ||
| Is it part of your standard operating procedure? | ||
| The police meeting is what initiates the advance, and that is what is required. | ||
| Was this meeting held? | ||
| On that day? | ||
| The police meeting took place on the days prior to that. | ||
| Do you have documents that that meeting actually happened? | ||
| If we do, sir, I will get them to you. | ||
| But you're saying that it did not happen on the day of the event? | ||
| Sir, I think what you're referring to is a briefing that the state and locals would have done with themselves. | ||
| We did a briefing with our own folks. | ||
| Did your people meet with local law enforcement the day of the assassination attempt? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| And you realize that the local law enforcement says no. | ||
| That that meeting never happened. | ||
| And that's why we need to get these people in to talk to us. | ||
| And this is why the FBI needs to be speaking up sooner than later and say that meeting did or didn't happen. | ||
| Surely there's some type of documentation of that meeting one way or the other. | ||
| Is there documentation of that meeting? | ||
| So, Senator, I can tell you that what you're referring to is the countersniper team seconded to Butler ESU. | ||
| Our personnel met with the team lead from Butler ESU, and they discussed areas of concern, areas of responsibility, and that did, in fact, happen at the site on that day. | ||
| Director, I think you would agree with me that there were multiple individual and institutional failures the day of this assassination attempt. | ||
| You have a $3 billion budget. | ||
| You're still 2,000 employees short. | ||
| And in 2022, the Secret Service had a 48% departure rate. | ||
| That tells me you either have a cultural problem or just gross incompetence. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Which one is it? | ||
| So, Senator, I would challenge that 48% departure rate. | ||
| Statistics that we have, it is not 48%. | ||
| But go back to the multiple failures that we saw on an individual basis as long as systemic. | ||
| I think it proves that there's either incompetence. | ||
| Or some type of a cultural problem within the SS? | ||
| So, Senator, I know you're not calling our workforce incompetent, and I know we do not have a cultural problem. | ||
| If anything, we are dedicated to making sure that we don't have mission failure. | ||
| And let me get you the hiring numbers that we have, because I think you will actually see that, no, we've actually done very well fairly recently with trying to make sure that we have the numbers that we need. | ||
| Of course, we need more people. | ||
| Everybody does. | ||
| Would you also disagree with me when it's reported that almost 50% of the rank-and-file officers don't trust leadership within the Secret Service? | ||
| Senator, I think it's the right of every worker to talk bad about their boss. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Hirono, you're recognized for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Clearly, there is a lot that the Secret Service has to answer for in this stunning security failure. | ||
| But I do want to follow up on Mr. Abate's testimony that an online profile of the shooter may have been found, and you said it contains anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant postings. | ||
| Can you elaborate? | ||
| Have you found anything further in the shooter's profile? | ||
| Senator, this was just discovered, as I mentioned, and it's being closely analyzed right now. | ||
| We need to verify that it is, in fact, that it belonged to the now deceased shooter and that he made these comments. | ||
| So that's why I felt it important in the interest of transparency to share that here. | ||
| But add the caveat that we still have a lot of work to do, which we're working on quickly to determine that. | ||
| It's of importance, I think, because if it is in fact the shooter that posted these comments, it's the first real indication where he's expressing what are described as extremist views and talking about political violence. | ||
| I take it that once you determine that it was, in fact, the shooter who posted these kinds of comments, that you will let the public know as well as this committee? | ||
| Absolutely, Senator. | ||
| I think, in fact, it is very important that many of the perpetrators of mass shootings, etc., have these kinds of postings online that are very anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic. | ||
| Oh, she's so dumb. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Everything. | |
| And it is really important as we determine the kind of profile for many of these shooters that we understand how critical it is that we are careful, how critically important it is that people are careful about what they're posting online, the misinformation, disinformation, everything else along those lines. | ||
| This is for Mr. Abate once again. | ||
| What kind of weapon did Crooks use in the assassination attempt? | ||
| This was an AR-15 style rifle manufactured by a company named Panther Arms. | ||
| And once again, many of the persons involved in these kinds of mass shootings used this particular kind of weapon. | ||
| We know from similar hearings that the Judiciary Committee has had that we are a nation awash in guns. | ||
| In your view, shouldn't we be doing more to prevent the easy accessibility of these kinds of firearms in our country? | ||
| Senator, we're focused on collecting the facts here, and I'm not going to comment on something like that. | ||
| Well, I know that there is a hesitancy to ask about firearms and all of that, and I should think that as a law enforcement person that you probably have some opinions along those lines. | ||
| But you don't want to articulate what to many people in our country. | ||
| There's a causal factor here, the easy accessibility of guns. | ||
| And I want to ask that question because I think it's important that the American people understand that we are a nation that... | ||
| is the washing guns and we have more mass shootings than any other country and yet we are unable, we have been unable to pass the kind of laws that prevent These kinds of firearms to be easily available that we have not done enough to promote gun safety in our country. | ||
| And Mr. Chairman, I wanted to articulate that as the elephant in the room that nobody wants to address, including apparently our law enforcement officers. | ||
| I am disappointed in that, but obviously we have work to do to create a much safer environment and to prevent persons who... | ||
| Have these kinds of ideological perspectives and who are, I would say, who have these kinds of profiles to have such easy accessibility to the kind of firearms that can cause mass death and destruction. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Senator Lankford, I recognize for your question. | ||
| Chairman, thank you. | ||
| Thank you to both of you for the testimony today. | ||
| Director Rowe. | ||
| Future Vice President J.D. Vance was in my state this past week in Oklahoma City. | ||
| I talked with some of the Secret Service folks that are there. | ||
| They're doing a terrific job. | ||
| I got a chance to be able to thank them personally for the tasks they're doing, and I know the Oklahoma folks in Secret Service, and they're very dedicated, incredibly sharp people on that team. | ||
| So I know this is a challenge to all Secret Service. | ||
| This is something every Secret Service agent wakes up every single day and wants to avoid. | ||
| So please continue to be able to pass on our gratitude for the work they do every single day and for what's happening out there. | ||
| I will. | ||
| So I appreciate that. | ||
| Mr. Bate, I want to ask you about some of the interviews that have happened. | ||
| Y 'all have done more than 400 interviews at this point. | ||
| For the counter-sniper team that was local law enforcement that was on the second floor overlooking that rooftop, have they been interviewed at this point? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| I believe that each of them have been interviewed. | ||
| Do you know offhand if they were at their post at that time, able to look across that? | ||
| They were at that post at some times? | ||
| Do we know they were at that post at 6.08 to 6.11? | ||
|
unidentified
|
My understanding, and I want to be fair, I have not read the reports directly, but I've been briefed on some of it. | |
| They were, at times, during the time frame we're talking about here, on post within the AGR building. | ||
| And I do believe, but I would want to confirm this at some point, one or more did venture out. | ||
| In an effort to locate and isolate. | ||
| We understand from the timeline that they were also looking for this individual that was suspicious that they had left that post to be able to try to look for him on the ground at different points to try to be able to see if they could get a different perspective. | ||
| What we're trying to figure out is during that time period that he actually climbed on the roof, assembled a firearm or took a firearm with him or picked one up whatever it might have been there that they were able to actually see him if they were able to look left has been acknowledged in this in the photos that are up there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, I don't know the exact timing and the movements of each officer that was out there, but what I would derive from it is they were all focused on locating the shooter, the suspicious person at the time. | |
| And then, as we've all seen, the one officer attempted to get on the roof directly. | ||
| There were efforts going on in those final minutes on the video. | ||
| We've got one officer being boosted up by another officer to look up on the roof because people on the ground had said there's someone up there and they have a gun that's crawling on that roof. | ||
| And so they climbed up to be able to see it. | ||
| He turned around with a rifle. | ||
| He came down. | ||
| And then at that point he gets on the local radio that he has and says there's someone on the roof with a gun. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| I believe that that's accurate. | ||
| So what's the rest of the radio communication? | ||
| We've heard that first call in. | ||
| We know it's about 30 seconds from the time he called in until the actual first shot rang out. | ||
| What else was discussed on the radio during that 30-second time period? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, I don't have... | |
| We have the radio communications. | ||
| They were... | ||
| The local radio communications were recorded and captured, and we do have that as part of the investigation. | ||
| You know, the key points to me, that local officer communicating that... | ||
| He sees the individuals. | ||
| He's armed. | ||
| That's at about 6 '11 in some seconds. | ||
| I think it's three seconds. | ||
| And then he identifies it as a long gun at about 6 '11 in 11 seconds. | ||
| And the shots, which all happened quickly together, I believe happened within probably 30 seconds. | ||
| So we're talking about over the radio because there's a command center there. | ||
| We're all radios, including the local, as they're all being listened to to try to be able to review. | ||
| There's a statement that has the word gun in it that's coming out across the radio. | ||
| We only know that first communication. | ||
| We don't know what came back and forth on that. | ||
| We'd like to get transcripts of that conversation that was done in local law enforcement. | ||
| But coming into that command center, there's also the word gun coming through one of the radio frequencies. | ||
| I would think that would be communicated pretty quickly to everybody. | ||
| Across the spectrum, 30 seconds is not long, but that's an NFL play plus a huddle plus the next play. | ||
| That's quite a bit of time still to be able to respond. | ||
| When Secret Service moved to be able to protect the president once the first shots were fired, within two seconds, they're gathered around him. | ||
| So we're trying to be able to figure out where the word gun got lost in radio communication here and what else was said. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Certainly, we will share the communications with you and the committees, Senator. | |
| I will note, just from my notes, there was effort within those minutes and seconds once the gun was announced. | ||
| There's other communications where the local police are talking about deploying a QRF and responding and that they've got the building surrounded. | ||
| It's not an avoid. | ||
| I don't want to give you the misinterpretation. | ||
| Typically, I would assume for Secret Service, if they hear over the radio, over something gun, they're moving to be able to protect the detailee, the person they're protecting at that point, the protectee, that they're moving pretty quickly at that point if that's what's actually coming out. | ||
| And so that's what I'm trying to be able to figure out how that... | ||
| Didn't get communicated out to the people that were directly in front of the former president at that point. | ||
| And the last question I'd have, I only have a second left, is just was there any overhead drone? | ||
| We've talked about counter drone, but any visibility that Secret Service had to be able to see the field and all the operation and their own ability? | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| And as was... | ||
| Asked by another senator earlier, it appears that there was an offer by a state or local agency to fly a drone on our behalf, and I'm getting to the bottom as to why we turned that down. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Kennedy, I recognize for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Abate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, this should be good. | |
| Am I saying your name right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| Thank you. | ||
| You are the Deputy Director of the FBI. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| Is there any doubt in your mind or in the collective mind of the FBI that President Trump was shot in the ear by a bullet fired by the assassin crooks? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator, there is absolutely no doubt in the FBI's mind whether former President Trump was... | |
| Hit with a bullet and wounded in the air. | ||
| No doubt there never has been. | ||
| I've been part of this investigation since the very beginning, and that has never been raised. | ||
| You're sure? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes. | |
| It wasn't a space laser. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| It wasn't a murder hornet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Absolutely not. | |
| It wasn't Sasquatch. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, Senator. | |
| It was a bullet. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It was a bullet, Senator. | |
| Fired by crooks. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, sir. | |
| That hit President Trump in the ear and almost killed him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
100%, Senator. | |
| Okay. | ||
| Glad we cleared that up. | ||
| I don't want to get off the subject here. | ||
| Did the FBI just settle two lawsuits, one wholly, one in part, in which the FBI agreed to give Peter Strzok $1.2 million and Ms. Lisa Page $800,000? | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's my understanding, Senator, that the Department of Justice was involved in that, not the FBI. | |
| The FBI had nothing to do with it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There may have been consultation with our general counsel's office, but... | |
| Does the FBI have to sign off on it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know the answer to that. | |
| I don't believe so, but I would want to confirm that. | ||
| I would like you to... | ||
| This would be the same Lisa Page who said to Mr. Strzok, quote... | ||
| Trump's not ever going to become president, right? | ||
| Right? | ||
| To which Mr. Strzok said, quote, no, no, he won't. | ||
| We will stop it. | ||
| That's the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page I'm talking about. | ||
| I need to know if the FBI signed off on this lawsuit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We will get that answer for you, Senator. | |
| And then I need to know who signed off on it. | ||
| Did you sign off on it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I absolutely did not. | |
| Would never sign off on something like that. | ||
| Did Chris Wray sign off on it, the settlement? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't believe he did. | |
| Okay. | ||
| You don't know what... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Nor do I think he would have. | |
| You need to let me know who signed off on this, if anyone at the FBI. | ||
| So it was Merrick Garland who agreed to do this. | ||
| Is that right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't center it. | |
| I do not know... | ||
| Well, hell, somebody had to agree to it. | ||
| I've settled a lawsuit before. | ||
| The client's got to agree to it. | ||
| You're the client. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Understood. | |
| I'm going to direct you to the Department of Justice to answer those questions. | ||
| Get me that information, if you would. | ||
| Mr. Rowe, help me understand this. | ||
| The assassin Crooks fired his first shot, as I understand it, at 6.12 p.m. | ||
| He was about 140, 150 yards away. | ||
| It's been reported that the snipers, the government snipers, saw him on the roof 20 minutes before. | ||
| Not two minutes. | ||
| 20 minutes before. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Senator, that's the first time I'm hearing this. | ||
| That is not correct based on the information I have right now, sir. | ||
| Well, when did the FBI snipers... | ||
| See him on the roof. | ||
| Just Secret Service snipers, sir. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| You're right. | ||
| That's an insult, sir. | ||
| No, I'm just kidding. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| When did the Secret Service snipers, one of whom ultimately shot the assassin crooks, first see him on that roof? | ||
| So, sir, immediately upon the shots being fired, our snipers... | ||
| I know that, but when did they first see him? | ||
| You got a guy. | ||
| Lying on a roof. | ||
| You've got snipers in an elevated position. | ||
| They can look down on the roof. | ||
| You've got the guy lying there with a gun pointed at the former president of the United States. | ||
| And they shot him. | ||
| Good for them. | ||
| He's now dead as Woodrow Wilson. | ||
| And that's a good thing. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| God forgive me, but it's a good thing. | ||
| But when did the snipers first see him? | ||
| As soon as he presented himself as a target and a threat to the president, sir. | ||
| And when was that? | ||
| He fires initially a volley, I believe it was three shots. | ||
| No, he fired at 6.12 p.m. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Okay, that's the first shot. | ||
| So within 15.5 seconds of the first shot, he's neutralized. | ||
| Here's what people are asking. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Crooks was up there. | ||
| The snipers at some point saw him, our snipers, because they killed him. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| When did they first see him? | ||
| It has been reported repeatedly that the snipers first saw him 20 minutes before. | ||
| That's more than a quarter in an NFL football game. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| You don't know the answer? | ||
| I do know the answer, sir. | ||
| I'm telling you that. | ||
| What is the answer? | ||
| No, they did not see him. | ||
| They never saw him. | ||
| No, sir. | ||
| How could they not see the guy? | ||
| How could they not see him? | ||
| They're in an elevated position. | ||
| They're checking rooftops. | ||
| They're looking around. | ||
| There's two government snipers. | ||
| How could they not see him? | ||
| There he was, big as Dallas, lying there with a gun, pointed at the president. | ||
| How could they not see him? | ||
| I believe he was obscured by that roof, sir. | ||
| He did not pop up. | ||
| The roof is flat with ridges. | ||
| He's below the line where they would have seen him, sir. | ||
| He did have concealment. | ||
| I'm not going to say it's cover. | ||
| He did have concealment and then ultimately gets into firing position and fires. | ||
| And within 15.5 seconds of his first shot, he's neutralized. | ||
| I've gone way over. | ||
| Yep, you gentlemen need to answer these questions. | ||
| Mr. Deputy Director, get me that information about those lawsuits. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Rosen, you recognize for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Chair Peters and Ranking Member Paul for holding this important hearing on the attempted assassination of former President Trump. | ||
| I am grateful. | ||
| For everyone's service and dedication. | ||
| However, it's critical that this committee get to the bottom of what happened that day so that we can prevent any future catastrophic security failures and ensure that nothing like this happens again. | ||
| And so, Director Rowe, given that the event took place in a rural area, we've talked a lot about connectivity issues. | ||
| Was law enforcement at a disadvantage due to a lack of? | ||
| Or limited connectivity? | ||
| And why has the Secret Service not adopted a dedicated satellite-enabled Wi-Fi connection, which would facilitate integrated communication, enable device connectivity to include drones, and allowing for the sharing of real-time intelligence? | ||
| So, Senator, thank you for that question. | ||
| So, based on what I've seen, that radio connectivity to cellular was an issue that day. | ||
| With respect to the satellite broadband, that is something that I've tasked our CIO, and then we're getting some support from the Department of Homeland Security on. | ||
| So, we will start to leverage whatever asset we have to ensure that connectivity. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, I can tell you that we have those SEER ratings in Homeland Security, those special event ratings that we have for things like the Super Bowl. | |
| We have it a lot in Las Vegas. | ||
| And they do bring these mobile units to be sure that we have all the dedicated Wi-Fi cell service and integration that is absolutely necessary for securing. | ||
| A huge event. | ||
| And so I look forward to hearing about that. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I want to talk a little bit about intelligence for lone wolf actors, because although we have not been made aware of any specific intelligence the Secret Service or others had in the shooter before the event, we do know that we have intel on Iranian threats. | ||
| And so, again, Acting Director Roe talked to us about how you utilize intelligence collection as a way of mitigating threats from state actors like Iran compared to what you do, compared to lone wolf actors, what it seems to be like the attempted assassin that we have here in Crooks. | ||
| And so, and what are the specific challenges with the intelligence collection as a mitigation tool against... | ||
| So, Senator, first let me preface by saying the Secret Service is not a member of the intelligence community. | ||
| However, we are their biggest consumers of information, and we receive that information regularly, especially as it pertains to our protective mission and the people that we protect. | ||
| We have embeds with the FBI through their National Joint Terrorism Task Forces. | ||
| Our agents We are basically in beds and are able to not only receive information but also follow up on investigations that may have a nexus or a direction of interest towards one of our protectees. | ||
| We have an excellent working relationship with the FBI. | ||
| We have an excellent working relationship with the intelligence community. | ||
| We are not collectors. | ||
| We are consumers of finished analytic products that the intelligence community or the FBI produces. | ||
| We do this daily, weekly, all of the time. | ||
| And it's not only for protectees, but also the events and sites that we protect on a permanent or temporary basis. | ||
| With respect to largely a lot of the people that come to our attention, And in the case of the assailant, you know, to me, as I overlay him over top of, say, John Hinckley, who tried to shoot President Reagan, I see an individual based on information that I have now, some of the great work that the FBI has done. | ||
| We have an individual who's a loner. | ||
| We have an individual who was focused on Donald Trump. | ||
| And Joe Biden. | ||
| Hinkley traveled the 80 campaign, and we know that he followed President Carter. | ||
| On March of 81, he happened to show up in Washington, D.C., and he saw an opportunity to try to attack President Reagan. | ||
| So when it comes to the Secret Service, and 1981 was a watershed moment for us, we have people that are, for whatever reason, fixated on carrying out an attack against the President of the United States. | ||
| Or one of our protectees. | ||
| And in this instance, you have the assailant who was a loner. | ||
| Obviously, he was researching. | ||
| He had researched the Democratic National Convention. | ||
| He had researched and Googled or used a search engine about the president, the former president. | ||
| And so I think he had moved towards an idea that he was going to try to do something. | ||
| And so when I look at this, we don't have a challenge with the FBI or the intelligence community. | ||
| I think what we always try to wrestle with is trying to line up and see people as they're starting to head down a pathway towards violence. | ||
| And it's something that we have spent a lot of time and resources in with our National Threat Assessment Center to try to gain a better understanding so that we can help our agents in the field as they're doing these protective intelligence cases and these investigations. | ||
| to be able to make a determination, is somebody generally a threat, or do they need mental health, or do they need some other type of service? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| I appreciate that. | ||
| My time is over. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Cotton, you're recognized for your questions. | ||
| At the onset, I want to express, as many members have, as President Trump did, the admiration and respect for the bravery and skill of the officers who were on site that day, Secret Service officers, as well as all the local law enforcement. | ||
| As it happened, my nine-year-old son, I said, for real? | ||
| And I said, yes. | ||
| And it was hard for him to process that. | ||
| But as a reminder, I told him, That there are men and women in the Secret Service and law enforcement and the military who are willing to die for our country. | ||
| And it's an important lesson, I think, that everyone should take away from this, that you had very brave men and women on the ground there who were doing their job to protect this country, to protect a former president and a nominee for president as they do every day for so many other protectees. | ||
| Obviously, there were failures in the planning and preparation for this event. | ||
| Mr. Rowe, we've heard that the shooter had a... | ||
| A golf rangefinder. | ||
| Was that not on the list of prohibited items at an event like this? | ||
| Currently, it is not on the list of prohibited items, but we're going to make that change, Senator. | ||
| I just... | ||
| John Kennedy can't get into an LSU football game with a flask. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, he can. | |
| Well, he probably can, but he's not supposed to. | ||
| It just seems like common sense that you don't need a laser rangefinder at an event like this. | ||
| And it feels like a lot of that was just the lack of common sense being exercised. | ||
| Are officers not empowered on the front line to use common sense to say, like, if a guy has a laser rangefinder, he should be detained, or at least stopped, and that's why he's carrying it around. | ||
| If you have a building like this that's not secure from 150 meters away, someone, even the front line, lowest level, most junior officer, should be able to kind of like... | ||
| Send up the red flag immediately and say, like, we need to halt everything right now and figure out what the hell is going on. | ||
| I mean, do officers not feel empowered to use that kind of common sense? | ||
| I would hope they would, Senator. | ||
| I can tell you from our uniformed division officers that run our magnetometer screening, they do a tremendous job. | ||
| And even though something may or may not be on the prohibitive items list, they are well trained and they do exercise that good common sense. | ||
| And you want this important message. | ||
| Okay, I want every one of your officers all around the country to hear that. | ||
| Their acting director wants them to exercise common sense. | ||
| It doesn't have to be policy or protocol or procedure. | ||
| They should exercise common sense. | ||
| Thank you for that. | ||
| So, it was reported right before Ms. Cheadle's hearing last week that, in fact, President Trump's detail had requested more resources and those had been denied. | ||
| She said that she did not deny those resources. | ||
| You've testified this morning that you did not either. | ||
| So, who did? | ||
| I mean, the Secret Service is not the post office. | ||
| It's not this vast bureaucracy. | ||
| Like, I'm not surprised to hear that you knew the counter-sniper. | ||
| It's a small agency, and you have a lot of career officers. | ||
| Like, surely you've gotten to the bottom by now. | ||
| On whose desk this request landed and who denied it? | ||
| So, Senator, sometimes when they make a request, they may not have the asset available. | ||
| For example, there may be, instead of, the detail may say, hey, we want... | ||
| 15 magnetometers. | ||
| Well, we'll look at it based on what the event size. | ||
| We'll say, listen, we're going to send 10 based on our protocols of screening so many. | ||
| We have a flow rate of how many people we can put through. | ||
| When it comes to a counter sniper or something like that, because I know that's been the subject of some media reporting where they have requested counter snipers. | ||
| We do have a finite number of counter snipers. | ||
| And so what we try to do is if we cannot fill that asset, and that's where we'll say, hey, we can't fill this assignment. | ||
| However, through the field office, they will use local law enforcement resources. | ||
| And so in those situations... | ||
| For example, in the one that has been the subject of a lot of reporting with PIC in South Carolina, they in fact did use local assets to be able to do that. | ||
| And there were three countersniper teams. | ||
| One of them was formerly with the Secret Service Uniform Division. | ||
| And so they actually used the same practices that we use. | ||
| So it's not that there was a drop. | ||
| And the capability, they actually use the best practices that we would use. | ||
| So the asset may be denied by Secret Service between the war room and that conversation with the detail in the field, but it doesn't equate to a vulnerability or a gap. | ||
| Okay, one final question about the Iran threat. | ||
| As you know, Iran made credible threats against several former Trump administration officials, many of whom still have. | ||
| Government provided security details to this day. | ||
| Ms. Cheadle removed Secret Service protection from Robert O 'Brien last year. | ||
| Were you involved in that decision? | ||
| So, Senator, he was a memorandum protectee, meaning that the president authorized protection for him. | ||
| We do not weigh in on who gets protection. | ||
| So you're still protecting some others. | ||
| I won't reveal their names. | ||
| are still protecting others and other other personal security offices and the federal government are protecting others other officials don't reveal their names like who who made the decision that Robert O'Brien no longer needed a security detail despite So I can tell you, sir, it wasn't the Secret Service. | ||
| We don't factor into that decision. | ||
| Can you take a look at why that happened now that you're in charge and consider the possibility that he might still need that protection, given all of his counterparts in the Trump administration still have protection? | ||
| I will do so, Senator. | ||
| Go ahead. | ||
| No, you go ahead. | ||
| Again, I'm not going to reveal the protective details, but I'm pretty confident that the agency can get this done. | ||
| And I think it needs to get done if you look at the kind of ongoing threats that he and all these others face. | ||
| I will, sir. | ||
| Despite all the resource constraints we've talked about today, he's not the President of the United States. | ||
| He doesn't have an 18-car Moto K, nor do any of the others. | ||
| I think he needs... | ||
| That protective detail. | ||
| And now that you're in charge, I'm asking you to take a new look at that and also talk to your supervisors inside the department about whether you can spare just that small, limited amount of resources, okay? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Welch, you're recognized for your question. | |
| I will, sir. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much. | |
| You know, there's, first of all, thank you both for the tremendous work you do and for all the folks behind you and under you. | ||
| So thank you for that. | ||
| I kind of want to follow up a little bit on Senator Cotton. | ||
| You know, there's three issues that have been raised. | ||
| One is the selection of who gets protection, and you've addressed that just now. | ||
| The other is whether it's a budget issue, which I don't necessarily think it is. | ||
| But then there's the operational question. | ||
| Was this an operational failure? | ||
| And it appears to me that's where the focus should be. | ||
| And one of the issues on the operations... | ||
| Is the capacity of people who are part of the team, both Secret Service and also the local law enforcement, their capacity to act on what they see. | ||
| And this is what Senator Cotton, I think, was talking about with common sense. | ||
| You know, you mentioned that the sniper was authorized immediately to act. | ||
| He wasn't checking in with anyone, right? | ||
| And he took out the shooter as quickly as he could. | ||
| According to the timeline, you had local law enforcement capture two photographs of the shooter at 510. | ||
| At 532, local law enforcement officers spot a suspicious person who turned out to be the shooter with a phone and a rangefinder. | ||
| In 546, the alert was so significant that snipers text photo of the shooter from where he was initially spotted to the U.S. | ||
| I mean, how is it that where you had these experienced law enforcement people who understood the gravity of the responsibility of protecting the presidential candidate, the former president, none of these actionable observations resulted in action? | ||
| I'll direct that first to you, Deputy Director Abade. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| From the FBI standpoint, we're simply collecting the facts. | ||
| We've interviewed most of the officers. | ||
| Now we'll end up interviewing all of them. | ||
| Okay, we'll go to Acting Director Rowe. | ||
| So on that, Senator, I think there was a sense of this guy is standing out, and that's why he came to the attention of local law enforcement. | ||
|
unidentified
|
No, I get that. | |
| That's my point. | ||
| He did stand out. | ||
| Correct. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But nothing happened. | |
| There were alerts, but there was like, you've got somebody suspicious. | ||
| Why didn't somebody go interact with this suspicious person, like, right away? | ||
| And they were attempting to locate him. | ||
| I can't answer that question as to why. | ||
| If they took a picture of him and they thought he was unusual, suspicious, not acting normal, why there wasn't, and I think, again, there was probably an assumption on the part of that officer that took that picture that, oh, some uniform or somebody will go eventually and walk up to this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, see, that's what seems like an operational failure. | |
| Somebody else will do it. | ||
| So is the responsibility of an officer... | ||
| To alert some other officer that they think somebody might be suspicious or the first officer who sees a suspicious person can take the next step to actually engage that person or talk to someone very, very close to it and say engage that person. | ||
| This guy was wandering around for quite a while. | ||
| He was. | ||
| I can't put myself in the mind of that officer. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm not asking you to do that. | |
| I'm asking this is operationally. | ||
| How does the process work? | ||
| Okay, so that is the job of the leaders as opposed to the officers. | ||
| Are they empowered to act immediately upon the observation of someone who looks very suspicious, particularly when they've got the rangefinder, they're in a place where it really wasn't about seeing the rally. | ||
| See, it was a place where you get a good view of former President Trump. | ||
| I mean, that is a leadership issue, right? | ||
| So, Senator, that officer didn't work for me. | ||
| That was a state and local officer that made that observation, took that picture. | ||
| So I can tell you from the Secret Service perspective, and we do this... | ||
| Routinely is that when people come to our attention, we locate them, we go up, we do a field interview, or we try to do a consensual encounter. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's the operational thing I'm talking about. | |
| If you do it within Secret Service, you all are in charge, and you are relying on local law enforcement assets. | ||
| Those folks, they did their job here up to a point where they identified this person, passed information along, but nobody acted. | ||
| The empowerment to that local officer, I would think, has to be transmitted through the Secret Service, maybe in the earlier briefings, but where you say, folks, you see somebody suspicious, you engage that suspicious person. | ||
| I don't disagree, Senator, and it goes back to my comments at the beginning of the hearing that we need to be very direct to our local law enforcement counterparts so that they understand exactly what their expectations are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I yield back. | |
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Tillis, you're recognized for your questions. | ||
| We'll return to this hearing after a brief session of the U.S. House. | ||
| No votes are scheduled. | ||
| You're watching C-SPAN. | ||
| I do. | ||
| And were both, there were two. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Stage left and stage right. | ||
| And I don't know if you have a vantage point of both of them or not. | ||
| I know you had one for the one who ultimately shot the... | ||
| That's the vantage point of the sniper who neutralized the assailant. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Is it a similar vantage point for the other? | ||
| Would they have also been impaired in terms of actually seeing him until he popped his head up? | ||
| So the sniper on the stage right side, Senator, they had an obstructive view because of that trick. | ||
| They had an obstructive view. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| So the one thing, this discussion that I don't believe that a sniper saw someone on the roof 20 minutes before just doesn't make sense to me. | ||
| It sounds like the one who took the shot probably saw him for the first time about a split second before he pulled the trigger. | ||
| Is that? | ||
| That's my assessment, Sarah. | ||
| Well, first off, I'd like to clarify the requests that have been made of a lot of people so that we get the information in a good form. | ||
| I think it would be helpful at least all the way back to, I think, November 5th of 2022, I believe, when President Trump announced that he was running for re-election. | ||
| I think it'd be helpful if we could just get a matrix of any requests for additional security. | ||
| The resolution of that request, was it honored? | ||
| Was it denied? | ||
| Was it downsized? | ||
| If you could give us that, I think that that's going to be the best way versus giving us mounds and mounds of paper. | ||
| If you can do that, I know you're looking at the same thing I've heard from you, that any subsequent field requests are being honored. | ||
| I believe that that's true. | ||
| Is that your testimony? | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Okay, thank you. | ||
| I'm more worried about the 24 to 30 seconds between the time, I believe, local law enforcement officer was hoisted on the shoulders of another police officer, saw a person armed less than 200 yards away from the president, who I believe jumped down. | ||
| What happened in those 24 or 30 seconds? | ||
| I mean, obviously, there's no such thing as a panic button. | ||
| You know, the first thing you'd think is you hit panic, you cover the president, get him off stage. | ||
| None of that happened. | ||
| What happened? | ||
| Is it just that I hear a text message? | ||
| What actually happened in the 30 seconds where a law enforcement officer knew that a gun was pointed in the direction of the president from a fairly short range? | ||
| What actually did those folks who did have knowledge of exactly what was happening and could probably infer what was about to happen, what did they do? | ||
| And Mr. Abate or Mr. Rowe, either one, based on your interviews. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Senator. | |
| From the interviews, the officers in the immediate vicinity were operating with urgency at that point to get to this person, but he was on the roof. | ||
| The officer who had looked over the edge, based on what I've been told, the shooter turned toward him with the rifle. | ||
| That's what the officer observed. | ||
| So he was under threat himself in that second. | ||
| So he had to retreat and step down and get back to the ground in order to protect himself and keep him safe from potential rifle fire. | ||
| But once he got to the ground along with other officers, there were Butler County, local officers, Pennsylvania State Police, they were moving- I think, clearly, we've got an operational problem here because we had more than 20 seconds. | ||
| To have somehow cut through all the crap and the communications, whatever impediments there were, have to be removed. | ||
| I mean, it's pretty clear to me. | ||
| First off, that law enforcement officer, I love law enforcement. | ||
| I wear the back of the blue pen every day. | ||
| They do great work. | ||
| Secret Service did phenomenal work on the stage. | ||
| But they failed because their job is to protect the public. | ||
| And they needed to put themselves in harm's way to stop him. | ||
| Now, I'll let the interviews go through, but there was a massive failure. | ||
| There were at least two law enforcement officers that knew a guy was about to pull the trigger at the president. | ||
| And, you know, I'm just not really happy with the fact that we couldn't have communicated, covered President Trump and tried to secure the situation. | ||
| I'm going to let the investigation go through. | ||
| But I think it's very, or go forward, I think it's very important to point out that we can't let a scenario go in the future where 20 seconds can lapse when a law enforcement officer within two football fields of a former president of the United States. | ||
| Has material knowledge that somebody's about to get shot at on stage, and we don't have instantaneous response. | ||
| You know, in the old days, maybe you'd just shoot a gun in the air. | ||
| I know for a lot of reasons why they didn't do that, but there had to be some way to actually defuse that situation. | ||
| It didn't happen on July the 13th. | ||
| I just want to end by saying, Mr. Rowe, I think you've been forthcoming in your answers. | ||
| I know you're frustrated. | ||
| I've seen you twice now. | ||
| You're clearly embarrassed by what happened. | ||
| You don't think there's any reasonable explanation. | ||
| And to my colleagues who are worried about communications, they should spend time in their local government and state legislatures to understand just how bad communication is between law enforcement and first responders. | ||
| We need to invest in this infrastructure. | ||
| That was also a part of the failure. | ||
| But if you can please get to me and get to this committee a chronology of requests accepted, denied. | ||
| And the reasons for, I think that's going to be very helpful. | ||
| I will, Senator. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Senator Blackburn, you're recognized for your questions. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you to each of you for your patience and for being here today. | ||
| Director Rowe, I want to come to you first because the countersniper has decided to speak out about the culture at your agency, and I think it is very telling. | ||
| And he... | ||
| Sent an email, and I'm going to quote from that. | ||
| This agency needs to change, and if not now, when? | ||
| The next assassination in 30 days? | ||
| But here's what I want to talk with you about, because in this email, he says, and I'm quoting again, the motto of the USS is CYA, and every supervisor is doing it now. | ||
| That's the end of his quote. | ||
| So you're the guy in charge. | ||
| And you're one of those supervisors. | ||
| You've been a career guy there at the Secret Service. | ||
| The public has lost trust in the ability to execute the mission to protect. | ||
| And I want to know how you feel about the fact that employees in your agency are worried about covering their behind. | ||
| And not worried about protecting a former president. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| So, I am hurt by that email, but not in the way you think I'm saying it. | ||
| I'm hurt because my people are hurting right now. | ||
| We need them. | ||
| Then why did somebody delete the email? | ||
| I'll get back to you on that, Senator. | ||
| The agency deleted the email. | ||
| May I address your question? | ||
| And I will get back to you as to whether the email was deleted or not. | ||
| My agency is hurting. | ||
| Emotions are raw. | ||
| I actually want to hear more from that UD officer, that technician. | ||
| In his email, he referenced that he had spent time serving our nation as a United States Marine, that he is a 20-year professional of the Secret Service. | ||
| I am committed to being a change agent, meaning I am committed to reviewing some of these things. | ||
| I looked at the points in his email very quickly. | ||
| I saw it as I was on my way over here this morning. | ||
| I want to have further conversations, not only with him, but also the countersniper supervisor. | ||
| If I may step back in, sir. | ||
| Yes, ma 'am. | ||
| All right. | ||
| So you want to talk with him. | ||
| What about other whistleblowers? | ||
| What about this culture? | ||
| Are you going to allow these whistleblowers to speak out? | ||
| Because it is troublesome if somebody went into the server and deleted that email. | ||
| And I would hope you will get to the bottom of that and be able to provide some answers. | ||
| Because this is, as you have heard from both sides, this is a situation that cannot be allowed to happen again. | ||
| Ever. | ||
| Mr. Abate, am I saying your name properly? | ||
| We've heard it pronounced three different ways today in the hearing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Abate, Senator. | |
| Abate. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Camilla. | ||
| You mentioned a social media account that espoused anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic views, but you did not say what platform that was on and what the username was. | ||
| And this is Crooks that we're discussing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator, that's Crook. | |
| I didn't want to comment on it because we haven't fully confirmed yet, and I thought that as soon as we confirm and certify, I will provide that to you. | ||
| And also the age at which he had those feelings. | ||
| And then we understand that the Gab account is pro-immigration, pro-lockdown, leftist views. | ||
| Is that accurate? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I haven't seen it directly, but I believe from what I've been told, that is accurate. | |
| With the GABA account, we're also, though that's been publicly revealed through the CIO and other things, we're still working to certify and verify that that's his account also. | ||
| But it does have differing points of view, it would appear. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And what age and how fresh is that GABA account? | ||
|
unidentified
|
The GABA account... | |
| Based on my recollection, the comments in there or the messaging is from about 2021, I believe. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And the other preceded that? | ||
| Maybe he was age 14? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yes, Senator. | |
| The other account that we talked about was in the 2019-2020 timeframe, so it would have been in the couple years right before the gab messaging. | ||
| Right before that. | ||
| Are there other accounts that you all are currently verifying? | ||
| And receiving information from? | ||
|
unidentified
|
We are. | |
| As I mentioned, we've issued a bunch of legal process and we're still awaiting returns from a number of the companies to include other social media companies as well. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Well, my time has expired. | ||
| Thank you for your patience today. | ||
| Thank you for the information. | ||
| We look forward to getting... | ||
| More information, and Director Rowe, we are going to hold you to being a change agent, because things at the Secret Service absolutely have to change. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, and I want to thank our witnesses for your testimony here today. | |
| Certainly what happened on July 13th could and should have been prevented from what I have heard today. | ||
| I'm certainly grateful to our witnesses for their candid answers and for helping to provide additional clarity and new information about the circumstances surrounding this attack. | ||
| Acting Director Rowe. | ||
| Some of what you have said today conflicts with information and accounts that we have received from local law enforcement that we've had the opportunity to talk with. | ||
| They have been voluntarily and I will say expeditiously cooperating with our bipartisan investigation, which we certainly appreciate. | ||
| But we now need to speak with Secret Service agents directly, who are directly involved. | ||
| And I would say that you need to make them available as soon as possible. | ||
| Those interviews can't start weeks from now or months from now. | ||
| Time is of the essence when memories are fresh and you can get the information that is most important to us. | ||
| So my question for you as we wrap up this hearing, Actor Director O, will you commit to having those agents available for this committee to interview as soon as possible? | ||
| In a matter of days. | ||
| Not weeks. | ||
| Matter of days. | ||
| Yes, sir. | ||
| Right. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Certainly the American people deserve to know what went wrong and they deserve accountability for those security failures. | ||
| And as we continue our bipartisan investigation into security failures that day and any underlying systemic issues, we'll continue working to follow the facts, get clear answers, and make important recommendations to ensure that a security failure like this Never happens again. | ||
| The hearing record will remain open for 15 days until 5 p.m. on August 14, 2024. | ||
| For the submission of statements and for the questions for the record, this hearing is now adjourned. | ||
| All right, ladies and gentlemen, that's just wild as 1.13 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. | ||
| I cannot believe what we just saw, the Secret Service. | ||
| Someone's lying! | ||
| Somebody's lying. | ||
| Also, we were texting with a few senators, and we're able to influence a number of questions that were asked today, so it makes us very, very happy. | ||
| Which senators, we'll just leave you to guess. | ||
| Let's just say they were the best questions. | ||
| So, Ted Cruz having a straight-up flamethrower of a breakdown. | ||
| With the acting Secret Service director, his last name's Roe, the FBI guy sort of muddling through, not really giving a ton of information, except for saying that the shooter is some type of racist? | ||
| That doesn't make any sense because we've seen that the FBI contacted social media site Gab. | ||
| About an account that allegedly belonged to the shooter that is a full-on Joe Biden simp account. | ||
| We know this. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, this is crazy. | ||
| It seems like they're trying to either lie, concoct, or create... | ||
| Somebody's lying, right? | ||
| Somebody's lying. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Let's go. | ||
| Give me the Torba tweet, please, right now. | ||
| Because I want to get through at least three lies. | ||
| Alright? | ||
| There are three lies. | ||
| Let's go, boys. | ||
| There are three lies. | ||
| One, the FBI here is saying that he's some type of racist anti-immigrant guy. | ||
| Okay? | ||
| That's really interesting. | ||
| Because the social media site called Gab has released the information about this guy's account after being contacted by the FBI. | ||
| And this guy was... | ||
| Pro-immigration, pro-Joe Biden, and has been posting, we're talking about Thomas Crooks, the assassin, has been posting regularly, posted regularly on Gab about how much he loves Joe Biden and his policies. | ||
| Scroll down, please. | ||
| Here's the letter. | ||
| Here's the proof. | ||
| So that's something that's ping-pong-balling around. | ||
| Everyone's like, what do you mean? | ||
| What the hell is going on? | ||
| It's probably not both. | ||
| That doesn't square. | ||
| That doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Second lie that doesn't make any sense. | ||
| Where was the Secret Service that day? | ||
| This is where Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz and Kennedy and Mike Lee kept, like, ramming up against the director of the Secret Service. | ||
| Where were you that day? | ||
| You say that you were at these briefings. | ||
| The local snipers say you weren't at these briefings. | ||
| Do we have that clip? | ||
| Local media snipers, ALX, let me know. | ||
| If we have that clip, local media snipers say they have no, no confirmation. | ||
| No access point to the Secret Service. | ||
| The local snipers, I'm going to tell you because I've met with them, are not lying here. | ||
| And that's going to be proven correct. | ||
| The local snipers have said that they have had no contact with the Secret Service. | ||
| So they put Trump in a kill box and there's no contact with the Secret Service. | ||
| Hear the guy saying it. | ||
| Somebody's lying, right? | ||
| Somebody's lying. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This morning, a new timeline is emerging in the attempted assassination of former President Trump as SWAT team members describe failures leading up to the shooting. | |
| I think we all failed that day. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Text messages from the Beaver County SWAT team assigned to help protect Trump show they noticed Thomas Matthew Crooks acting suspiciously at 4.26 p.m., nearly two hours before the shooting. | |
| We had a text group between the local snipers that were on scene. | ||
| I'd sent those pictures out to that group and advised them of what I'd noticed and what I'd seen. | ||
| What do you think is transpiring once you send in what you've sent in? | ||
| I assume that there would be somebody coming out to speak with this individual or find out what's going on. | ||
| But according to the Washington Post, members of Trump's security details say they were not made aware of that warning. | ||
| Was this a failure of communication? | ||
|
unidentified
|
I believe so in a lot of respects. | |
| Adding to the confusion, the SWAT team says they had no communication with the Secret Service until after the shooting. | ||
| We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service snipers whenever they arrived, and that never happened. | ||
| So I think that that was probably a pivotal point where I started thinking things were wrong because that never happened, and we had no communication with the Secret Service. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, who's lying here? | ||
| You think that guy's lying? | ||
| You think the local SWAT team guy is lying? | ||
| No. | ||
| Now, we know at this program why the snipers abandoned their post. | ||
| And we know what happened next. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, for your viewing pleasure, hold on, let me go ahead and grab this. | ||
| Here's the post that we've put up on X from our own research about what happened that day with the sniper nest. | ||
| Just a second, boys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm sending this into the studio. | |
| This is the post. | ||
| Or if you already have it, pop it up. | ||
| This is the post with the view from the Cypress Nest. | ||
| Now, I thought this was fascinating that the new Secret Service dude, which everybody's calling for him to resign now because it seems like he's demonstrably lied or refuses to take accountability for the failures of the Secret Service. | ||
| This dude, I was actually quite hopeful because this is the most important line of questioning. | ||
| The most important line of questioning is, what the hell happened in this room? | ||
| This room, right here, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Now, we've put up, there's a reason why this post got 4 million views on our account. | ||
| It's because we went to Butler, Pennsylvania, and we spoke with the sniper teams, and they told us what happened in this room. | ||
| What happened in this room, we know more than the Secret Service director. | ||
| First thing the Secret Service director does is put up a photo of this rooftop and this vantage point right there. | ||
| And he says, there's a sniper team. | ||
| Why didn't they take out crooks? | ||
| He didn't know. | ||
| We know! | ||
| Three-man sniper team. | ||
| One person got allowed to go home early. | ||
| No idea how that happened. | ||
| One person was told there was a suspicious individual outside the building. | ||
| He left the sniper post, leaving one sniper in the sniper nest from the local SWAT team. | ||
| That guy gets locked out of the building. | ||
| Forgot his key card. | ||
| So the last remaining sniper, who could have actually... | ||
| Engaged Crooks left and the entire sniper necklace was empty as Crooks' army crawled up the slope of the route to take the shots on Trump. | ||
| That's what happened. | ||
| That's what the report will show. | ||
| We've been ahead of this reporting every single time. | ||
| Amazingly, we know more than the Secret Service does. | ||
| We know more than the FBI. | ||
| It's like they don't want to do these interviews because they don't want to find out the truth. | ||
| That's what's remarkable here. | ||
| So, ladies and gentlemen, that's why there was no sniper. | ||
| Also, why was there no sniper on the water tower? | ||
| Everybody is screaming about a shooter on the water tower. | ||
| Let me tell you, I have impeccable sources from on the ground that day that we have developed. | ||
| There was no shooter on the water tower. | ||
| I'm telling you this, not because I'm, you know, we're skeptics on this program. | ||
| Please get me the water tower. | ||
| Oh, is it right there? | ||
| Okay, great. | ||
| Let's pop her up. | ||
| This is our drone footage of the water tower. | ||
| Our footage. | ||
| We flew this drone and took these shots. | ||
| You can see there the building that Crooks fired from. | ||
| And you can see the water tower. | ||
| Wouldn't this? | ||
| You wouldn't trust me to do security at your local dive bar. | ||
| But even I can tell you. | ||
| That this is the best vantage point for you to see any potential threats to the president. | ||
| Duh. | ||
| Like, duh. | ||
| Why are we smarter than the Secret Service? | ||
| At what point do you assume that this is simply a setup, a kill box to get Trump? | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, this is the vantage point that should have had a shooter on it. | ||
| The scandal isn't that they're... | ||
| Was a shooter. | ||
| The scandal is that there wasn't a shooter up here from the Secret Service who could have easily seen Crooks. | ||
| That building right there, that building right there is the building, the AGR building where Crooks fired from. | ||
| Do you see how you would have a perfect line of sight on Crooks? | ||
| We've been trying to explain this. | ||
| Again, you're days ahead watching this program than you would be if you're watching congressional hearings. | ||
| So that's the next lie, or the next gap. | ||
| And the final gap is, why haven't you fired anybody? | ||
| Like, nobody's been fired. | ||
| In fact, the people responsible for this are currently on detail. | ||
| Give me the Charlie Kirk timeline and the timeline with the Secret Service agent, because I'm a Secret Service agent whistleblower that was brought up multiple times during this speech. | ||
| Hearing. | ||
| Series of questions. | ||
| So first tweet we've got to pop up here is Charlie Kirk. | ||
| Charlie Kirk is somebody who is a dear friend of us. | ||
| He runs Turning Point USA. | ||
| And he decided to go public saying that Donald Trump spoke, President Trump, Republican candidate, presumptive President Trump spoke at a Turning Point event this week. | ||
| This week. | ||
| And he says the security seems more lax than even normal. | ||
| Nothing's changed. | ||
| It seems worse, is what Charlie just said. | ||
| So it's not really whistleblower, but it is reflection of what Charlie is seeing firsthand. | ||
| And of course, President Trump has spoken at dozens of turning point events. | ||
| So that organization would know. | ||
| So Charlie Kirk saying that the security seems worse than ever at these events. | ||
| So ladies and gentlemen, yeah, this is the one. | ||
| Then comes a Secret Service whistleblower. | ||
| Charlie's saying, I've wrestled the past weekend was the most lax I've ever experienced the security with the UF Secret Service. | ||
| This was sent today. | ||
| The entire staff and events team agrees. | ||
| Nothing felt improved. | ||
| If anything, security was more porous. | ||
| Now, mix that with a Secret Service whistleblower. | ||
| Saying that there's going to be another assassination attempt in 30 days because of the corruption within the Secret Service. | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| This was the email that was sent to the entire Secret Service uniformed division that got deleted but was screenshotted by RealClearPolitics. | ||
| Secret Service counter-sniper sent an email Monday night to the entire uniform division, non-agents, saying that he will not stop speaking out until five high-level supervisors are fired or removed from their current positions. | ||
| The agency needs to change, the sniper wrote in an email, if not when. | ||
| The next assassination in 30 days. | ||
| We've been falling short for years, counter-sniper lamented. | ||
| We just look good doing it. | ||
| I have conveyed these thoughts, not only to supervisors. | ||
| But to captains, they've only brushed me off. | ||
| This guy is apparently very experienced. | ||
| And his whistleblower testimony was deleted from the servers of the Secret Service. | ||
| You can see his entire email below. | ||
| You heard a number of questions about this today. | ||
| You heard a number of questions, including the last and some of the first questions, were about this today. | ||
| Saying, wait a second. | ||
| Your own snipers are saying that the next assassination of President Trump is going to happen in 30 days. | ||
| Charlie Kirk, who hosts President Trump regularly, hosts big events, right? | ||
| We are often speaking at him. | ||
| Says the security is worse around President Trump, not better, since the assassination attempt. | ||
| What exactly is going on here? | ||
| These are important questions that must be answered. | ||
| And I gotta tell you, I had high hopes for this Secret Service director guy. | ||
| People are calling him Director Lunkhead. | ||
| His name's Director Rowe. | ||
| People had high hopes for him. | ||
| He started by apologizing and then giving a lot more detail than we've heard in the past. | ||
| But then he ended by saying that his department is being persecuted, claiming to be persecuted. | ||
| Josh Hawley just absolutely want to scorch earth on him. | ||
| Effectively saying that he's not going to hold anyone accountable. | ||
| That nobody's been held accountable. | ||
| The people responsible for this are out in the field right now. | ||
| Protecting Trump. | ||
| And that now Trump has worse security than before. | ||
| According to the sources and according to the whistleblowers. | ||
| So you decide what needs to happen. | ||
| It's amazing the political nature of this. | ||
| These are political appointees by the Biden administration and we hold that. | ||
| Gross incompetence and negligence is indistinguishable from malevolence. | ||
| That's what we hold. | ||
| So the point of that is that they wanted something bad to happen to President Trump. | ||
| Something bad happened to President Trump. | ||
| A bullet hit him in the head. | ||
| And they want to ensure that it happens again. | ||
| Prove us wrong by going through and telling us how many changes you've made to protocol. | ||
| President Trump says he's going to... | ||
| Still do outdoor rallies. | ||
| I don't know about that one, man. | ||
| Prove me wrong by explaining how much more protocol and how much more layers of security and protection you're giving President Trump, and then have that reflected by the people on the ground. | ||
| Huh? | ||
| Nothing? | ||
| Crazy. | ||
| Yeah, Donald Trump says he's going back to Butler, Pennsylvania. | ||
| Boy. | ||
| All right. | ||
| We'll see what happens. | ||
| We'll see what happens, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| We want to say thank you very much for sticking with the program today. | ||
| We thought that this would go till noon. | ||
| We were told by the Senate that this would go till noon. | ||
| It ended up going late. | ||
| Since it did go late, we deeply, deeply appreciate, obviously, you staying with our coverage. | ||
| I do my best to just shut up, even though I have to hide. | ||
| I have to scream under my breath. | ||
| And sometimes we can't help ourselves. | ||
| Boy, man, was that a far better hearing than I thought it was going to be. | ||
| Some of those senators are just great at asking questions, and we're getting so much more information than we got at these original hearings from Ray or from Cheadle. | ||
| And now it seems like we're going to start hearing from the snipers themselves and the Secret Service agents themselves in public forums, and then you'll get to the real answers. | ||
| Because I've spoken with them, ladies and gentlemen, when we were on the ground in Butler. | ||
| When we were on the ground in Butler, we of course used our Patriot Mobile devices, by the way. | ||
| Staying connected on the road is essential in this work environment. | ||
| Patriot Mobile has brought us through the RNC convention, will bring us through the DNC convention, and they are our cell phone provider of choice. | ||
| They connect us, they connect our people, they allow us to do great work on the ground. | ||
| I cannot wait to share our documentary with you on the Trump assassination. | ||
| It's going to be awesome. | ||
| It's going to be out this weekend. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, please. | ||
| Go ahead, sign up for Patriot Mobile, America's only conservative Christian wireless provider. | ||
| Go to PatriotMobile.com slash Benny or call 972-Patriot, PatriotMobile.com slash Benny. | ||
| Right now, get a free month when you use the offer code Benny. | ||
| All right, ladies and gentlemen, it does seem like we're going to have a crazy time ahead. | ||
| The team wants me to play you this Trump clip from last night. | ||
| I apologize. | ||
| I have not seen this. | ||
| They say that this is Trump. | ||
| Promising more outdoor rallies and going back to Butler. | ||
| Pray for President Trump, as ever. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
|
unidentified
|
So you're going back to Butler to finish that speech, to give another speech. | |
| I'm going back to, it's interesting to finish it, you say, and now to proceed. | ||
|
unidentified
|
To be continued. | |
| Why? | ||
| It's a very interesting way of looking at it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I mean, I think that's, you know, I think I've said that that was a good idea. | |
| It's a good idea. | ||
| Why? | ||
| I think it's important symbolically. | ||
| I don't think we should be stopped by somebody that has severe mental problems or whatever his problem was. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're going to do rallies outside? | |
| Yeah, I'm going to do rallies. | ||
| The guy maybe had severe mental problems. | ||
| Maybe he was also a Biden voter and supporter based on all available evidence. | ||
| So maybe those two things are one and the same and indistinguishable, probably. | ||
| But this is what's going on. | ||
| Donald Trump is coming back to Butler. | ||
| We don't have an exact date yet, but we're probably going to have to head up there. | ||
| We're probably going to have to go to that rally, and that's going to be a big one. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, guarding President Trump. | ||
| We're guarding angels that day. | ||
| It is why we do our verse of the day to stay grounded in what is actually true. | ||
| A reminder that we are fighting the forces of darkness. | ||
| So we must have light, salt and light from Deuteronomy 1620 today. | ||
| Follow justice and justice alone so that you may live and possess the land of the Lord your God is giving you. | ||
| Ooh, baby! | ||
| Justice and justice alone, God is giving us a land, a place, a people. | ||
| That is what America is. | ||
| And so, please, make sure that we are just. | ||
| Make sure that you are following the light. | ||
| Make sure that you stay salty. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, the salt and the light will set us free. | ||
| Make sure that we are just. | ||
| We do not want to go nuts here. | ||
| We want the facts. | ||
| My favorite line of questioning, my favorite line of questioning today, I think it was from Rick Scott. | ||
| You can correct me if I'm wrong here. | ||
| But Rick Scott's like, because you haven't been forthcoming with the American people, you haven't given them facts, that you're going to have all these theories pop up. | ||
| And they're not conspiracy theories, by the way, idiots. | ||
| A conspiracy theory is something that is provably false, that people are... | ||
| Talking about, okay? | ||
| A conspiracy theory is something that's actually verifiably false, okay? | ||
| There's just theories. | ||
| There's just speculation. | ||
| And if you're not going to tell us the facts and show us the evidence, you will have to show us the evidence. | ||
| We won't just believe you, prima facie. | ||
| You must show us the evidence. | ||
| They're just theories. | ||
| So this is what the show is here for. | ||
| Our show is here to find more truth. | ||
| And quite frankly, if you were tuning in, you knew more than the Secret Service director. | ||
| It's pretty amazing. | ||
| Pretty amazing. | ||
| And so we thank you. | ||
| We thank the Benny Brigade. | ||
| We say we march on. | ||
| Benny Brigaders, we march on. | ||
| We will find truth. | ||
| And ladies and gentlemen, we're having a good time doing it. | ||
| We're happy warriors. | ||
| You can't defeat an army of happy warriors. | ||
| It's your boy Benny. | ||
| Thanks for watching. |
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