The Daily - The Lingering Questions about the Attempt to Kill Trump

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

In the week since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the security mistakes that led to the shooting have come into sharp focus, prompting Kimberly Cheatle, the head of the Secret Service, to resign.Glenn Thrush, who reports on the Justice Department for The Times, discusses what we now know about the service’s lapses that day.Guest: Glenn Thrush, a reporter on the Justice Department for The New York Times.Background reading: See a visual timeline of the shooting at the Trump rally.In resigning, Ms. Cheatle said that one of the Secret Service’s foremost duties was to protect the nation’s leaders, adding that it “fell short of that mission” on July 13.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. In the weeks since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the security mistakes that led to the shooting have come into sharp and shocking focus and have now cost the head of the Secret Service her job. and have now cost the head of the Secret Service her job. Today, my colleague Glenn Thrush on the Secret Service's historic failure. It's Wednesday, July 24th. So, Glenn, you've been reporting on the investigation into the security failures around the assassination attempt of Donald Trump. And they were pretty catastrophic. So much so that the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheadle, was hauled before Congress to explain herself. And then, on Tuesday morning, she resigned.

Which puts the blame pretty directly on the Secret Service. It was a monumental failure, the worst failure in the Secret Service personnel who were tasked with protecting Donald Trump and the local authorities that the Secret Service works in coordination with to control the site around the perimeter of the event. Okay, so let's unpack that. What have we learned in the week since the shooting about the mistakes that led to this failure? Quite a bit, Sabrina, and none of it was good for the Secret Service and ultimately for Cheadle. Let's start first off with how the Secret Service divided the responsibility on the ground. So the way that this was set up is that there was a perimeter, and inside that perimeter was essentially the province of the Secret Service. So you can kind of think of that as the high security area.

It's the area in the direct proximity of where Trump was going to speak. Now, outside the perimeter, it gets a little sketchy. This is the province typically of local law enforcement. Now, they're working under the aegis of Secret Service, but it appears that the level of security, coordination, and attention to that area beyond this fencing was considerably less than inside the perimeter. Right. This was the thing that came up over and over again, that there were these buildings outside the perimeter that were kind of a blind spot for the Secret Service. And why was it that those buildings, in fact, were outside the perimeter? And the issue that's emerging, and I think is going to be the story at the end of the day, is communication or the lack thereof. So what do we

know about the communication on the ground that day? And maybe start with when the shooter arrived. Well, we think he arrived sometime after four o'clock in the afternoon, based on geolocation data monitored by the FBI, looking at his phones. The first visual identification that we know of comes at 5.06, when he's observed in this really eerie bit of video that shows him sort of milling around the warehouse, where he would eventually take the shot from. Then what happens is the local law enforcement officials see this guy lurking around and they identify him as somebody who might be suspicious. And they inform the Secret Service about it. It's not clear what was said or why it was determined that he was not a threat.

So they actually identify the shooter before anything happens, but they don't stop him. Yeah, like he's definitely on their radar, so much so that they take a picture of him. But the suspicions are not significant enough that anyone stops the event or delays anything. And it's at this point they kind of lose track of him. Hmm. So one of the next crucial moments is around 6.09 or 6.10. At this point, Trump's been on the stage for like five or six minutes. Look, they're all pointing.

A bunch of people in the crowd see him climbing onto the roof, and there are videos of this. Yeah, someone's on top of the roof. Look. There he is right there. And they start shouting at law enforcement to pay attention this is about two minutes before the shooting right around this time a couple of butler police officers go to check out the warehouse one of them hoist the other one up onto the roof and they confront crooks now picture this the officer who gets there other one up onto the roof, and they confront Crooks. Now picture this. The officer who gets there is basically hanging onto the roof with both hands, and he can't draw his weapon. So the shooter at that point turns to him, and the officer falls back down.

This was another big missed opportunity. There was still time to keep the shooting from happening at this point. Yet they don't keep the shooting from happening. Why not? Here's the problem. The roof Crooks was on was sort of a blind spot. There were teams of counter snipers on buildings at the rally, but they don't seem to have had a clear line of sight,

according to an analysis by my colleagues. There are a couple of reasons for this. One, the gunman appears to have been concealed by some trees. And then the second reason is the roof had a slight slope, so they couldn't quite see him. So shortly before the first shot was fired, you can actually see on the video the snipers repositioning themselves towards Crooks, but it was too late. The initial volley of shots then rings out. One of them hits Trump. Five more are fired, some of them apparently into the crowd, and we now know with deadly results. Simultaneously, snipers fire a shot that hits its mark

and kills crooks instantly. So this was a day of just catastrophic failures. Let's turn to Washington and the response to all of this. How does the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheadle, respond to this when she's called before Congress on Monday? Well, Cheadle was subpoenaed to testify before the House Oversight Committee. This hearing of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability will come to order.

And she really walked into the lion's den here. My name is Kimberly Cheadle, and I'm the director of the United States Secret Service. I appreciate the opportunity to appear before you today. And she started off the hearing by stating the painfully obvious. The assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades. This was the most significant security failure the agency had had in decades. As a director of the United States Secret Service,

I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency. Okay, so let's get into some of the questions lawmakers, and frankly, a lot of us, had when she walked in there. I mean, one of them, and one of the things that's been in my mind, is how was it possible that the building the shooter ended up being on ended up outside the perimeter, not

inside the security perimeter? How did she explain that? Not surprisingly, a bunch of lawmakers asked her about this, including Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthy of Illinois. The security perimeter was drawn such that the AGR building was placed outside of it. NBC News has reported that in the days before the rally, the Secret Service had identified the building as a vulnerability that required special attention, correct? That's reporting from NBC? Yes. So I am still looking into an active investigation. I know, but it's been nine days.

I mean, you should know that, right? And Cheadle really didn't provide a clear answer. She didn't give specifics. She said that there is a Secret Service investigation ongoing and everybody would have to wait for the results to know exactly what happened and what the findings were. Does your responsibility and the Secret Service's responsibility to protect a principal

stop at the perimeter of an event? Our responsibility is to ensure the safety and security of the event itself. But she did take some responsibility ultimately. So you would say the fact that the rooftop was outside the perimeter is not an excuse for what happened? I am not offering that as an excuse. Okay. And said that the entire site, including the perimeter and outside the perimeter, was the responsibility of the service. So she did say the buck stops with us, but didn't actually say why the building was outside an area that they were directly responsible for, not local law enforcement. Exactly. And what did she say about why Trump was allowed to go on stage when there was a known suspicious person lurking

around? She really didn't provide a detailed answer on that one either. Jamie Raskin, who's the top Democrat on the committee, really leaned into that point. Why was he allowed to take the stage with a suspicious person having been identified in the crime? So I appreciate the question. And her answer was pretty interesting. And I think this is where the entire investigation is headed. If the detail had been passed information that there was a threat, the detail would never have brought the former president out onto stage. So you distinguish between someone who is suspicious and someone who's threatening? Is that right? There are a number at protection. It's this distinction between a suspicious person and a threat. This person was identified as, quote, suspicious, end quote, not threatening.

So she's using kind of technical language here, but what does she mean really about the difference between suspicious person and a threat? Well, that's not entirely clear. That seems to be something of a gray area. If you go to political rallies, you will see all kinds of folks milling around. And, you know, if the Secret Service stopped political events for everybody who looked a little bit hinky, there would never, ever be any political speeches. But there is a clear line between someone who is casing out a potential area or seems like they might possess a weapon or is conducting surveillance. And I think this entire investigation is going to hinge on whether or not they had enough data points to determine that Crooks had ascended up the ladder from being

a suspicious person to being someone who could threaten the former president. She makes this distinction because for her, there's a meaningful difference in terms of how the Secret Service should respond or is supposed to respond. But what about once he's clearly identified as a threat? I mean, when people are there shouting, there's a guy on the roof with a gun. This is the critical juncture here, right? We're talking about a two to three minute period where it seems like local law enforcement knew that he was something more than just a regular old suspicious person,

that he posed a threat. What happened next is really the key. Did they decisively communicate that there was a threat to the Secret Service? Was that information passed to other people, or did folks drop the ball? That we don't know. And as you say, a lot of the investigation is going to center on that. Yes. I wouldn't be surprised if they documented this second by second. There's something else that surfaced in the days after the assassination attempt, which was, you know, the Trump campaign said that it had in fact asked for more security resources and that their request was denied by the Secret Service.

Did this come up in the hearing? Yeah, it did. They asked for additional help in some form or another. You told them no. It provided kind of limited clarity, though. How many times did you tell them no, and what did you tell them no to? Again, I cannot speak to specific incidents, but I can tell you in general terms. There was a lot of muddy back and forth, but specifically regarding the staffing at Butler.

Again, I'm not going to get into the specifics of the numbers of personnel that we had there, but we feel that there was a sufficient number of agents assigned. I think the big takeaway was that Cheadle said very clearly that the Butler event was staffed sufficiently with security, that they had enough personnel to deal with whatever threat presented itself. So it wasn't like this happened because they were understaffed for some reason. Exactly, yeah. So by the end of the hearing, we still don't have many or really any satisfying answers about how all of this was allowed to happen. satisfying answers about how all of this was allowed to happen.

Look, Cheadle had one of the most epically terrible days on Capitol Hill that any witness has had in quite some time. And as she continued to deflect... I can speak to you in generalities. No, no, I don't want generalities. I want specifics. You could just see the lawmakers on both sides of the aisle getting angrier and angrier and more and more frustrated as the day dragged on. You can't remember. You got a little Alzheimer's, dementia going. I mean, you can't remember. Looks like you guys were cutting corners. That's what it looks like to me. You should have come today ready to give us answers. I call upon you to resign today. Not only should you resign if you refuse to do so, President Biden needs to fire you.

It was one of those rare moments on Capitol Hill where you have bipartisan agreement on something, and their agreement was that she needed to go. Without objection, the committee stands adjourned. And as I was watching it, I was getting all these texts from law enforcement people and officials who were telling me that there was just no way that she was going to be able to survive 24 hours. And they turned out absolutely to be right. By Tuesday morning, the Secret Service announced through a spokesman that she was in fact stepping down. And President Biden said that he was going to look for her placement pretty soon.

So what happens going forward? I mean, this is, of course, not a purely academic question. It directly relates to our current moment because we're in the midst of this very intense election campaign. I think it's really important to note that Cheadle, in her testimony, made it clear the Secret Service isn't waiting for the results of the investigation, and it was sort of independent of leadership, but that they were making reforms right now to tighten security. And if there's one good thing that could have possibly come out of this whole fiasco, it's now that they seem much, much more focused on efficiently coordinating with local law enforcement, figuring out how the lines of communications are going to work better, and being a little more stringent in terms of identifying threats. But what adds an incredible layer of difficulty to this is that the shooter himself thomas crooks

didn't advertise himself as a threat he led a very quiet life he kept to himself there's no indication that he had a co-conspirator or that he worked for a foreign government and in the course of attempting to design the best possible system to protect politicians in this country, that's a big factor. Figuring out who might be a threat is becoming more and more difficult. We'll be right back. So, Glenn, what have we learned about this shooter, Crooks, in the weeks since he did the shooting? I mean, last time you and I talked, we didn't know very much.

Well, we've been able to fill in some of the blanks, myself and my colleagues at the paper. He was from Bethel Park, which is a modest suburb south of Pittsburgh. And let's talk about the family a little bit. He lived at home with his parents, who were both counselors. Both of his parents had physical disabilities. His mother, Mary Crooks, was visually impaired. Neighbors used to see her walking to the train station with a cane. And people told us that the dad had significant mobility problems. Neighbors say that they used

to be sort of a friendly family, but they've become much more insular in recent years. They didn't communicate with the outside world quite as much. And the house itself seemed to be somewhat disorderly. I was told that when the FBI came to the house right after Crooks had been killed, they found it to be cluttered, kind of like a compulsive hoarder's house. So the family seems to have been pretty isolated then. But what do we know about Crooks himself? He is described sort of the same way by some of the people he attended school with, that he was polite, that he was friendly, highly

intelligent. We were able to obtain some of his school records. He was a straight A student. He participated in class discussions. He truly excelled in science and math and was also known to be very competent working with technical stuff and computers. But he was also kind of isolated and quiet. People say he did not have a large circle of friends. And he had virtually no social media presence, which is extraordinarily rare for a 20-year-old in America in 2024. Extraordinarily rare, especially since one of the things that I keep seeing about him was that he spent a lot of time online playing video games.

He was online playing video games, and also he did a lot of searches. And this is really the most insight that we have in terms of his motive, was his search histories, presumably taken by the FBI off of his laptop. And a lot of this information comes from a call that FBI officials had with lawmakers last week. And what we learned is that he searched famous politicians. In addition to President Trump, he searched Joe

Biden, but he also searched Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Christopher Wray, the FBI director. And he looked up the dates of the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, along with dates of Trump rallies. And he also seems to have looked into the British royal family. So there was really nothing to suggest that he was obsessed with Trump in particular, or really any specific political group or person? They have not found a manifesto, and they didn't even find any sort of political paraphernalia in his room. So there's a sense, I think, among investigators that he was really interested in famous people more than pursuing any kind of a partisan path. The one thing I would say as a caveat is investigators keep telling us they're still looking and they don't know what they're going to find. Okay, so we don't know much about why

Crooks did this, but what have we learned about how he did it? What new has emerged? We now know that he seems to have been really determined and to some extent pretty well organized. In the weeks leading up to the shooting, he made a lot of online purchases. He bought fertilizer in pellet form and some fuel for an explosive. And then he crammed them all into an empty ammunition canister and made what authorities say was a rudimentary explosive device. He also bought some remote controls that are pretty commonly found on the internet that are used to operate fireworks.

So he seems to have been trying to do some sort of remote control explosive. Then on July 7th, basically a week before the shooting, and just a few days after the Trump rally was announced publicly, he seems to have traveled up to Butler to suss out the site, according to geolocation data that the FBI

obtained from his cell phones. Sometime before the shooting, he goes into his job at a nursing home, which is located actually within walking distance from his house. And he's working as a kitchen aide there. And he asks his bosses for the Saturday of the Trump rally off. And he tells them nothing other than he has something important that he wants to do. A day before the shooting, he apparently takes one of the guns from his dad's collection,

which was not that uncommon in his household, according to law enforcement officials, and he goes to the shooting range. The morning of the shooting, he goes to a local gun shop, and he goes to the shooting range. The morning of the shooting, he goes to a local gun shop, and he buys somewhere between 50 and 100 rounds of semi-automatic ammunition. And at some point, we don't know if it was before or after that, he drives up to the rally site one more time to scope it out. But this time, and this is where it gets really extraordinary, he brings with him a small drone, and he essentially uses it to fly a pre-programmed path so that he can survey with some specificity what the layout of the site is. And it was a little after 5 p.m. on Saturday when local law enforcement observed a young man with stringy hair milling around the perimeter of the rally,

and they identified him as being suspicious. So based on everything we've learned about Crooks and about how the shooting happened, he was intentional, of course, but he still doesn't seem like someone who actually has the profile of a political assassin. Yeah, with the caveat that investigators might find some connection, he looks a lot like the alienated young men that have been responsible for school shootings and other mass shootings. He spent a lot of time alone and online. He had developed, by being online, phenomenal technical expertise. There is something very 21st century about this.

In many of these shootings, we've learned to accept some level of ambiguity. It's less about finding one cut and dried motive than a set of circumstances in a person's life. And I think that's where we're headed on this one. Glenn, one of the things that's so striking to me is that, you know, because we don't have any real answers here about why he did this, that has sort of created this blank canvas for anybody to paint their own picture, like to derive their own meaning for

this event, because crooks didn't give us one. Yeah, and we've seen all kinds of conspiracy theories floating around. And people have also made up political motives, even though the FBI has told us time and again that they haven't found any evidence of that. Sometimes they've fabricated them. Sometimes they've imputed these motives. But look, just because we don't have a motive doesn't mean there isn't a meaning. And from the moment he realized he'd been hit, and you can see it on the video, Trump understood the political benefits of this situation. It came the week before the Republican National Convention, and it fed a storyline that Republicans had been saying about Donald Trump since he got into politics, that Trump was a fighter, that he was a survivor, that he represented the American spirit.

But it also added a new one, that Trump was somehow blessed, that he was protected by God and providence. And it lent the candidacy an elevation it had never had before. We don't know how long it's going to last, but for a week, Republicans had a different, more dignified Donald Trump who had just been through the fire. Glenn, thank you. Thank you. We'll be right back. state convention delegates to become the Democratic presidential nominee.

The Times reports that her state party endorsements now represent about 80 percent of the nearly 4,000 delegates who will vote on the first ballot at the party convention. She also picked up two more influential endorsements from the two top Democrats in Congress, Senator Chuck Schumer and Representative Hakeem Jeffries. They said they waited to endorse her until after she had enough delegates to win the nomination. As the momentum built around Harris as the potential candidate, Good afternoon, Wisconsin! she flew to Wisconsin to officially kick off her presidential campaign. Generations of Americans before us led the fight for freedom.

And now, Wisconsin, the baton is in our hands. And after weeks of speculation, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey said he plans to resign from the Senate in late August, bowing to intense pressure from his Democratic colleagues who had pushed him to step down after he was convicted of taking bribes and acting as a foreign agent. Menendez's resignation spared his party from what would have been an ugly fight to oust him at a time when it was trying to refocus all of its energy on retaining the White House and the Senate. Today's episode was produced by Nina Feldman, Diana Nguyen, Stella Tan, and Rob Zipko, with help from Muj Zaydi. It was edited by M.J. Davis-Lynn, fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Marian Lozano and Diane Wong, and was engineered by Chris Wood. Special thanks to David Boddy, Devin Lum, and the rest of our colleagues on the Visual Investigations team. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily.

I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you tomorrow.