The Journal. - The Secret Service’s Failure to Protect Trump

Episode Date: July 15, 2024

On Saturday, a shooter attempted to assassinate former President Donald Trump. Now, the Secret Service is coming under scrutiny for failing to prevent it. WSJ’s Sadie Gurman and Ryan Barber on what we know about the shooter, and about what went wrong for the Secret Service. Further Reading: - Trump Rally Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks Said to Have Been Loner Who Rarely Voiced Politics  - Trump Shooting Is Secret Service’s Most Stunning Failure in Decades  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday, a bullet came just inches from taking former President Donald Trump's life. Get down, get down, get down, get down! Trump appeared to be hit in the right ear. He was immediately pulled off the stage by the Secret Service. A bystander was killed, and two people were critically injured. In a statement afterward, Trump wrote on social media, It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening.

We will fear not, but instead remain resilient in our faith and defiant in the face of wickedness. And in an address from the Oval Office, President Joe Biden called for a de-escalation of political discourse. There's no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exceptions. We can't allow this violence to be normalized. The political world now stands on edge, as the Republican National Convention starts today in Milwaukee.

And now, investigators are digging into who tried to kill Trump and how the shooter was able to get so close. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudsen. It's Monday, July 15th. Coming up on the show, what we know about the shooter and the failures of the Secret Service. PreDiabetes does. Take the one-minute test today at doihaveprediabetes.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and its PreDiabetes Awareness Partners. The man who authorities say shot at Donald Trump on Saturday was killed at the scene by the Secret Service. He was later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, a 20-year-old from Bethel Park,

Pennsylvania. Our colleague Sadie Gurman covers the Justice Department, and she and others in the newsroom have been trying to learn as much as possible about Crooks. I've covered law enforcement for 18 years or something, and so I started calling. We all just started calling our sources, but I just started hitting the phones of anybody in law enforcement that I could possibly think of to figure out what happened.

And I'm texting and calling FBI sources, sources in local law enforcement because I used to work in western Pennsylvania. And so I still know a lot of these people. But it became quickly clear that the former president had been shot and that the shooter had been killed by a Secret Service sniper. These were the first details that we learned. And the fact that a sniper fired the fatal shot that killed him suggested to me that the gunman might have been firing from an elevated position. and then pretty quickly thereafter other reporters were talking to witnesses who said that they saw this gunman on the roof of a nearby building and so we quickly were able to confirm that and you know it was becoming clear pretty quickly that this was going to be a monumental

moment in American politics and quite possibly history. And you and some of our colleagues were able to speak to people who knew the shooter. What did you learn about who this person was? Well, he was kind of a cipher. I mean, most people that we talked to who went to school with him, who lived in his neighborhood, described him as withdrawn. He was in advanced classes in school, so he was smart, but withdrawn. He had few friends. They used to sit in the back of the cafeteria at lunch. even sort of people said, like, you know, he looks like he could shoot up a school even before he did this. So, you know, it just kind of a mixed picture. But we know very little really about what's motivating this person. Were you able to learn anything about his political views? No, he seemed to keep pretty quiet about any political views that he might have had. And

that's something that's been challenging for the FBI to try to figure out his, you know, what might have been his ideology or motive, because he left very little political footprint. You know, there's not really any sort of writings or manifestos that we usually have in cases like this that make it clear what's on the mind of a shooter. We don't have that here. And so it's going to be more challenging to figure out exactly what drove this act. Crooks was a registered Republican, but he donated $15 in 2021 to a Democratic-aligned organization focused on voter turnout.

He hadn't been on the FBI's radar before the shooting, and investigators had found no indications of mental health issues. What kind of a gun did Crooks have at the rally? And where did he get it? It was an AR-15. This is a gun that we have seen in many, many, many shootings. It's iconic.

And this is his father's gun. It was traced back to his dad, and it was a gun that was in their house. Did Crooks have any firearms experience? Like, what do you know about his experience with guns? Well, that's something that investigators are looking at as well. We know that he was known to frequent a rifle range and he was a member of a rifle range in his community. But we don't know how often he went there.

But what we do know is that he went there often enough that his dad assumed he was there when he didn't see him in the house. How was it that he was, I mean, he seems like a pretty average citizen without real special training as far as we know. How was he able to get so close to killing a presidential candidate? I mean, that to me is the single biggest question that remains unanswered. It's certainly a major, major lapse in security, a law enforcement failure, summarily across the board. And so, you know, it's just, it's stunning to me still.

What has his family said about what happened? Well, investigators have been able to talk to his family, and we're hearing bits and pieces of what he told them, including that on Saturday, his father just assumed that he had left the house to go to the gun range, but became concerned later in the day when he couldn't reach him. And then when he saw the news of the shooting on TV, he called the police. Authorities said they found explosive devices in Crook's car, which was parked near the rally, and some bomb-making material in his home. The Wall Street Journal learned today that the FBI was able to get into Crook's phone,

but it hasn't yet helped determine his motives. At this point, law enforcement is saying that he acted alone, so, you know, it will be interesting to see if that remains to be true as the investigation proceeds. What is your takeaway from this moment? I think it changes the course of American politics. It certainly changes the contours of this election cycle. And I think it will lead to a major reckoning for law enforcement in terms of how we secure these major events at a time when political violence is on the rise. What Saturday's assassination attempt means for the Secret Service? That's next. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but prediabetes does.

Take the one-minute test today at doihaveprediabetes.org. Brought to you by the Ad Council and its prediabetes awareness partners. Our colleague Ryan Barber has been looking into the security failings that led to the shooting on Saturday. For the Secret Service, which has a never fail mission, this is just complete and utter failure. And this is exactly the event that plays out in their worst nightmares. And here it did play out in Butler, Pennsylvania, just months before voters are going to the polls,

just days before the convention where Donald Trump is set to be formally nominated as his party's nominee. So it's understatement to call it a calamity for the Secret Service. How does the Secret Service typically prepare for an event like a campaign rally, like the one that happened on Saturday? So for any event involving what the Secret Service would call its principle, they take an approach that agents like to refer to as the three concentric circles. It's essentially a three-tiered system where you have an inner circle of the immediate security detail. These are the agents that we saw immediately rushing to Trump after he was shot on Saturday and whisking him off the stage. And then from there,

some local law enforcement partners come into play. In the medium tier, that's really the area immediately covering the crowd. So they'll have magnetometers to make sure that people aren't bringing weapons into the crowd, the spectator area. They really want to secure that immediate area. And then there's the outer long range that they keep an eye on.

And what that can involve are counter-sniper teams, of which we're told there were four on Saturday, two from the Secret Service, two from local law enforcement. And it was one of the Secret Service ones that actually took out the shooter. How does the Secret Service normally protect against snipers? And what did they do or not do on Saturday? Yeah, so in advance of these events, it's common for the Secret Service and local law enforcement to visit these sites, to arrange for them to be monitored and secured during the event in question. They essentially kind of spec out these venues, and they look for sight lines. They look for buildings.

One thing I was told by agents is they'll visit businesses, and they'll say, hey, if you're going to have people in this building during this event, keep the windows shut. hey, if you're going to have people in this building during this event, keep the windows shut. Better yet, even keep the shades shut because if a window opens during this event, we're going to pay attention to it. And the reality is that a second part of the protection is they have these counter sniper units that are typically two-man teams, a shooter and a spotter who has binoculars and gauges distance and windage and things that can affect the accuracy of shots. And what they're doing is they're monitoring these far out sites. They're looking at tree lines. They're looking for windows, as I mentioned.

So what we're seeing initially here in the scrutiny is what's going to be a lot of focus on how the Secret Service works with local law enforcement as part of that system to secure some buildings and businesses in the vicinity of events like this. In this case, the shooter was firing off the rooftop of a facility that was about 400 feet away from the stage. So one area of scrutiny is going to be how this 20-year-old suspected gunman reached this roof with a rifle while the former president was speaking to supporters on Saturday. And what do you know at this point about how this shooter was able to get access to this roof? So what we know so far about how the shooter reached the

roof, there actually are some witness accounts of people who were outside of the security perimeter that the Secret Service and local law enforcement established. But there were some eyewitness accounts of seeing a man essentially bear crawl his way on this roof with what was clearly a rifle. And what some of these bystanders have said is they were pointing to police saying, hey, hey, hey, there's a man with a rifle crawling on this rooftop. There's a guy on the roof with a rifle. And the police were like, huh, what? You know, like they didn't know what was going on. You know, we're like, hey, right here on the roof. We can see him from right here.

We see him. You know, he's crawling. One of these witnesses was interviewed by the BBC. He says they were pointing him out. They were getting very frustrated by the lack of a response. And before they knew it, shots ring out. I spoke recently with the county sheriff out there.

He said that he had heard about an officer with the township, Butler Township, who had an encounter with the gunman. This officer had been trying to get onto the roof. The gunman turned to face him and the officer then dropped down from the roof. So we're still hearing mixed things and different details about this incident and what could have or what might have been some opportunities to stop the gunman.

So what is going to happen next to the Secret Service, which I imagine is going to come under a great deal of scrutiny? So the Secret Service, of course, is going to do its own evaluation of what went wrong here. I mean, this is an agency that refers to itself as having a zero-fail mission. And this was just an utter failure for the Secret Service to have a former president, anyone they're protecting, get shot. In addition to that, you know, we immediately heard from Republican Representative James Comer, who's the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, that he wants a briefing from the Secret Service and he's demanding that the director, Kimberly Cheadle, appear for a hearing later this month.

So it's just the early signs of intense scrutiny that it's going to last for the foreseeable future here, as I think figures from both sides of the political aisle search for answers and certainly want for this to be a learning moment for the Secret Service and not to be repeated. The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheadle, released a statement on Monday morning saying that the agency has already made changes

to Trump's security detail and that the agency will work with Congress on any, quote, oversight action. President Biden also said he's directed Cheadle to review all security measures for the Republican National Convention. And he called for an independent review of the security measures at the rally

to establish what happened. One of the things that surprised me about, I mean, many things obviously surprised me about what happened, but that after the shots were fired, you know, Trump hit the deck, but then he was able to stand back up again and have this moment with the crowd when he was walked off. Is that unusual for his head to be, you know, exposed again? So what we heard in that video was he went down, and then you see one of the counter-sniper teams fire back, and you hear it communicated that they feel like they've neutralized the threat, that they feel that the shooter has been downed,

and you can hear the detail communicate, all right, on your go, let's go. So I think in addition to just the adrenaline that had to have been pumping in that moment, there were initial communications that, you know, they felt comfortable that the threat had been neutralized in Secret Service parlance and that they could move. And then from there, I think it was, again, probably a combination of adrenaline and just political instincts that the former president said, stop, wait, wait, wait. And held out his fist and said, fight, and was captured in what's now an iconic image.

What do you think that this assassination attempt might mean for the future of security at political events? Do you think it might change anything about how the Secret Service prepares? I think undoubtedly it will. I mean, I think this is really going to serve as a wake-up call for the Secret Service. We're hearing that already from a lot of former agents, and I think there's going to be a lot of introspection done, a lot of thinking about how they partner with local law enforcement and agencies, how heavily they rely on them versus maybe handling more things on their own. I mean, this is an agency, like a lot of agencies, that has talked about being strained for resources recently

and with its agents overworked. And I think there's going to be a difficult moment here of, okay, does this mean that perhaps the Secret Service maybe needs to do more on its own as opposed to leaning on local law enforcement as it likes to do in these situations? And with that, we'll come to talk of resources and whether they have enough manpower and whatnot. So these are all things that await us

in the next weeks and months of really just intense scrutiny on this vaunted law enforcement agency. That's all for today. Monday, July 15th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. Additional reporting in this episode by Christina Peterson, Claire Ansberry, Anthony DeBarros, Jack Gillum, Jan Wolf, and James Finnelli. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.