(RepublicanNews.org) – A report issued by Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) suggests that the Secret Service had been warned about Thomas Crook’s presence several minutes before he began shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. The senator’s report questioned how the Secret Service failed to act before Crooks shot Trump and three members of the crowd, including 50-year-old Corey Comperatore who died of his injuries.
Since the shooting on July 13th, many have questioned how a sniper could manage to scale a building just 150 yards from where Trump was speaking and have time to open fire before being stopped. Both the Secret Service and local law enforcement officers were allocated to secure the event, and there has been some dispute over which team bears the ultimate responsibility. Anthony Guglielmi, a representative for the Secret Service, claimed that the building from which Crooks opened fire fell under the remit of Butler police. However, U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberley Cheatle later said her team had “failed.”
The day before Cheatle made her admission before Congress, Sen. Johnson published his report which set out a timeline for the day’s attack and specified several apparent failings in security. According to the report, the Secret Service did not conduct a security briefing for the local police in the morning, as originally planned. Local officials are said to have provided a map of the local area that did not show the building used by Crooks for his attack. Communication between the Secret Service and local police was allegedly made difficult by using “siloed” radio channels.
In addition, the report states that a local police counter-sniper became aware of Crooks in a nearby building at 5:10 pm and said that he was behaving suspiciously. The counter-sniper kept tabs on Crooks and spotted him using a rangefinder at 5:32 pm. Six minutes after seeing the rangefinder, the counter-sniper messaged the counter-sniper teams. The teams included local law enforcement snipers and Secret Service snipers.
He followed this up with messages to the command center and Beaver County Emergency Services just minutes later, and just before 6 pm, the command center said it had received those messages. The command center included members of the Secret Service. More messages were exchanged before Crooks opened fire at 6:11 pm and was then fatally shot by a counter-sniper.
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