America's Talking - Failures of Secret Service Mount as Senators Demand Accountability

Episode Date: August 3, 2024

The failures of the Secret Service around the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump are mounting but members of Congress say there’s not been enough accountability. Trump suffered a wound to the ear, a spectator was killed and two others were critically wounded when a sniper opened fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, at a campaign rally on July 13. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week after a U.S. House hearing failed to get answers. On Tuesday in a U.S. Senate hearing, Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe told U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, those on the ground making decisions that day have not been fired. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hello and welcome to America in Focus powered by the Center Square. I'm Dan McAulb, Chief Content Officer at Franklin News Foundation, publisher of the Center Square Newswire Service. We are recording this on Friday, August 2nd. The congressional investigation into the U.S. Secret Services failures leading up to and during the attempt and assassination of former President Donald Trump at a July 13th campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, heated up this week as a bipartisan group of senators

grilled acting director Ronald Rowe about the lack of accountability and answers weeks after a sniper's bullet grazed Trump's ear and killed a spectator. Joining me to discuss this is Casey Harper, the Center Square's Washington, D.C. Bureau Chief. Casey, where are we at with this investigation? Yeah, I mean, this hearing that we had this week in the Senate with the new Arnold Rowe, the new acting head of the Secret Service, finally started to give us some of the details that Americans and lawmakers have been asking for.

It's really the hearing that should have happened last week when former Secret Service head Kimberly Cheatle appeared before Congress. Of course, we discussed this hearing. It was televised. It sort of became a viral moment. And I think maybe if Cheatel had done last week what Roe did this week, she might have been able to save her job, though it may have been a foregone conclusion that she would be pushed out. out. Because last week, when Cheeto was asked basic questions by lawmakers about what happened, what went wrong, you know, I mean, very simple questions. She couldn't answer them. She said, we're only nine days into this investigation. You know, we don't have, you know, the FBI is looking

to this. We can't give these answers just yet. And lawmakers became very upset and said, basically, why are you here? Like, how can you not give Congress basic answers to these questions, especially when you've been in the media giving more detailed answers, for example, in an interview with ABC News. And that hearing may have been two weeks ago. But anyway, you know, Cheeto took a lot of fire and pretty much resigned shortly after that, despite previously the DHS secretary saying he backed her and was going to back her for that hearing was the final nail on the coffin. And so we saw Cheeto go out. We saw Roe come in. And he came before lawmakers this week. And there were still some fiery exchanges, a lot of heat, but he was much more ready to give

some answers to hard questions. And there's a few things that stood out, Dan. First off, apparently, in the Secret Service did have a drone that they wanted to use the day of the Butler rally that where Trump was nearly killed. But they were having connectivity, technical difficulties basically with the drone and we're not able to use it. And that drone likely, according to experts in Roe, I believe, would have prevented the shooting or very likely because, you know, the shooter was laying on a white rooftop, prone on a white rooftop. And so while it may have been a little bit difficult to see him from Trump's vantage point, no, not that difficult. An aerial shot would have clearly shown the outline of a human figure on a white rooftop, right? And we know from, you know, different media reports that the shooter had his own drone that he flew at the site just a couple of.

just the day of the shooting. And so he was able to use that presumably to scout the area and look for firing lines and things like that. So that's the, that's a stand takeaway. And then I'll beforehand it back to you. What I noticed was essentially that while he took much more responsibility than Cheatel, this row did try to push things off on local law enforcement. And we've seen this kind of knife fighting. in the media between local law enforcement and Secret Service, where Secret Service is trying to

blame local law enforcement and local law enforcement saying, what are you talking about? You're the Secret Service. We're just following whatever orders you give us. You tell us where to stand. And that's where we stand. I mean, you guys are in charge of protecting the president and we're just helping you. So you can't really, you know, blame us. But he did kind of try to push to blame.

And one thing that was interesting is local law enforcement did not have a good way of communicating with the Secret Service. they were kind of siloed in their communications. And so even though, you know, even if they had maybe seen him, they weren't able to communicate well. And so that was a big, a big failure on the security and the security apparatus. And pretty concerning. And hopefully, Dan, we assume they're going to fix these things going forward.

I'm going to take us just in a bit of a different direction for just a moment here. Casey, former President Trump this week also accused social media of essentially trying to downplay. the assassination attempt specifically Google and Facebook doing searches there for assassination attempt hid some of the Trump stuff you wrote about this

week tell us about that Yeah I mean so we saw that You know basically started on X formerly known as Twitter where users Were users were posting You know videos to themselves or screenshots where they were trying to search Trump stories Or Trump's assassination and it wasn't popping up

or even the photo on on Facebook was being censored. And this was at first kind of like, oh, just right wing conspiracy or something. But it kept building up steam. And Facebook actually admitted that this was a mistake, that they were censoring this photo and they shouldn't have been doing it. Google kind of played it off more and said,

this is just an anomaly, you know, whatever this happens to people. But it was interesting, the Facebook admitted their mistake. And so a lot of people saying, well, Facebook just got caught. know. But they did admit it. And Trump just he pointed to this is just another example of the uphill battle he's fighting with social media companies being against him with, of course, Google is very liberal. I mean, you can look and see donation data, for instance, and Google employees gave is one of the biggest donors to Democrats, right? And so there's no secret that it's a very liberal company. And there might be some anti-Trump motives within that company to do things.

against him. And of course, the traditional news media is all in for Harris right now. So Trump is pointing out this all-in battle that he's fighting uphill battle against all these digital locuses of power, basically. All right. Let's swing it back to the investigation. As you mentioned, former director Kimberly Cheetah was forced out. She resigned a little over a week ago. Acting director, Ronald Roe was grilled before Congress. There are plenty of

Republicans in Congress saying U.S. Homeland Security Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, whose department oversees the Secret Service should also resign. Do you expect any more fallout from this, Casey? What's next? I think we could see some fallout from other Secret Service officials. I've seen some things online where people within the Secret Service are very upset with how this is handled, how they're being stifled. You could have some whistleblowers come forward. I think there would be a big appetite for a secret service whistleblower to come forward. You know, what does this counter-sniper think? You know, we still haven't heard, you know, that would be a pretty incredible interview,

a pretty incredible testimony before Congress. And if that counter-sniper were able to point some fingers, I mean, it could put pressure on other people. I don't think Mayorkas is going anywhere until the end of this presidential term. Republicans have been trying to impeach him, get rid of him for months and months, unsuccessfully. He only has a few more months in Biden's term. I think he's going to riot it out and transition to some other job, possibly in lobbying or something else. I'd be surprised if Harris would keep him on if she went to the White House. And Trump, of course, would not keep him on.

So his days are numbered, but not because of this Secret Service investigation, in my opinion. Though I think lower level of Secret Service officials could still be forced out if more whistleblowers do come forward. I agree with you there, Casey. York, in fact, was impeached by the U.S. House, the Republican-controlled House, but never stood trial in the Democrat-controlled Senate, so I do agree with you that he'll be safe. Thank you for joining us today. Casey, listeners can keep up with this story and more at thecentersquare.com.