According to two sources familiar with the Secret Service's operations, the rooftop from which a gunman fired at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., had been flagged as a potential security risk by the agency days before the incident, NBC News reported.
The sources indicate that the Secret Service was aware of the risks associated with the building adjacent to the Butler Farm Show, an outdoor venue.
“Someone should have been on the roof or securing the building so no one could get on the roof,” one of the sources, a former senior Secret Service agent, explained.
Understanding how the gunman got onto the roof — despite those concerns — is a central question for investigators scrutinizing how a lone attacker managed to shoot at Trump during Saturday’s campaign event.
The Secret Service worked with local law enforcement to maintain event security, including sniper teams poised on rooftops to identify and eliminate threats, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said. But no officers were posted on the building used by the would-be assassin, outside the event’s security perimeter but only about 148 yards from the stage — within range of a semiautomatic rifle like the one the gunman was carrying.
The Secret Service had designated that rooftop as being under the jurisdiction of local law enforcement, a common practice in securing outdoor rallies, Guglielmi said. Butler County District Attorney Richard Goldinger said his office maintains an Emergency Services Unit team, which deployed four sniper teams and four “quick response teams” at the rally. But he said the Secret Service agents were in charge of security outside the venue.
“They had meetings in the week prior. The Secret Service ran the show. They were the ones who designated who did what,” Goldinger said. “In the command hierarchy, they were top, they were No. 1.”
According to Goldinger, the commander of the Emergency Services Unit informed him that their responsibility did not extend to securing areas outside the venue. "In my view, the entire operation falls under the jurisdiction of the Secret Service, and they will outline specific duties from there," he said.
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Another former senior Secret Service agent agreed and said that even if local law enforcement "dropped the ball," adding that it remains the agency's duty "to ensure compliance either beforehand or in real-time."
“Just because it is outside of the perimeter, it doesn’t take it out of play for a vulnerability, and you’ve got to mitigate it in some fashion,” the source explained.
The rooftop where a gunman shot at former President Donald Trump during a campaign rally was identified by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential vulnerability in the days before the event, sources familiar with the agency’s operations told NBC News. NBC News' Tom Winter reports. pic.twitter.com/OzTemxqORg
— MSNBC (@MSNBC) July 15, 2024
Donald Trump is lucky to be alive, as the slight turn of his head is likely what made the difference between his ear being grazed and it being a fatal shot.
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