Inspector General: Secret Service Missed 102 Radio Calls About Trump's Would-Be Assassin at 2024 Butler Rally

Local law enforcement made a stunning 102 radio calls about then candidate Donald Trump’s would-be assassin lurking and taking his firing position at the 2024 Butler, Pennsylvania rally that almost took the president’s life — but the U.S. Secret Service didn’t hear a single one of them.

On top of that, when agents at a command center finally got word Thomas Crooks had taken a firing position on top of a roof on the grounds, a Secret Service staffer resorted to searching Google for its location only 155 yards away, instead of just asking local authorities where that was.

As the staffer searched, shots rang out and a bullet grazed Trump’s ear, traveling less than an inch from his skull which would have resulted in death or catastrophic injury.

These revelations and more are contained in a Department of Homeland Security Inspector’s General’s alarming report released Thursday about the botched security at the July 13, 2024 rally.

“The Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt Thomas Crooks’ attempted assassination of then-former President Donald J. Trump,” the report concluded in its opening sentence.

The report concluded that the Secret Service had failed to:

• detect Crooks’ drone flight that he used to view the campaign event stage due to an undertrained operator and equipment malfunction;
• warn President Trump’s protective detail that Crooks had a range finder, a long gun, and had climbed onto the American Glass Research International (AGR) complex’s roof, because Secret Service did not establish a joint communications room with local law enforcement thereby not receiving many communications regarding the suspicious person;
• share intelligence about a long-distance threat to President Trump with the Pittsburgh Field Office leadership or the lead and site agents, resulting in insufficient personnel for the event;
• secure the area outside the perimeter, despite the Pennsylvania State Police sharing its plan with the Secret Service that showed this area would be unsecure;
• and use available resources to block line of sight from the American Glass Research International complex to President Trump, despite identifying this line of sight as a concern.

The agency remained unaware of the radio transmissions as local law enforcement seemed to be doing its job in detecting a potential threat.

“Instead, ⁠we found that the Secret Service received only five phone calls and three text messages about Crooks,” the report notes. “As a result, Secret Service members did not alert President Trump’s protective detail about concerns of a suspicious person.”

Crooks, was fatally shot by a law enforcement sniper as he sprayed the stage with bullets while Trump was speaking. In the hail of gunfire a rallygoer was killed and two other attendees were injured.

Crooks was sprawled out in a firing position on a rooftop with nothing preventing him from targeting Trump in his gunsight — “line of sight vulnerabilities” which the inspector general identified needed to be addressed ahead of the event.

“Ultimately, although members of the local law enforcement communications room were increasingly concerned by the presence of a suspicious individual as early as 5:42 p.m.,” the report said, “Secret Service communications room personnel did not identify Crooks as an urgent threat before he fired shots.”

It continued, “Moreover, Secret Service decision-makers responsible for protecting President Trump while on stage at the Butler event were not made aware of Crooks’ presence at any time.”

At 6:09 p.m., local law enforcement called the Secret Service and Pennsylvania State Police communications room “warning them of a suspicious person on the AGR complex’s roof,” according to the DHS report.

The New York Post reports what happened next:

However, the Secret Service communications room supervisor and the agency’s counter drone operator “did not ask for the AGR complex’s location… did not immediately identify it as a risk” and the supervisor did not even “recall learning that the suspicious person was on the roof” because he had “delegated communications about the suspicious person to the counter drone operator because it was a ‘busy time’ on Secret Service radios and the counter drone operator was sitting near him and offered to help,” the 64-page report continued. Not knowing where the rooftop was situated relative to the rally site, the Secret Service counter drone operator apparently resorted to Google. “Instead of asking local law enforcement personnel for the AGR complex’s location, the counter drone operator searched online for it, and was still searching when Crooks fired his first shots,” the report determined.

Ironically, the 20-year-old Crooks appeared more adept at drone technology and deployment than the staffer charged with drone operation meant to secure the site.

Crooks flew a drone over the area hours before he attempted the assassination. That potentially deadly surveillance went undetected because the Secret Service drone had been out of service, the report said.

That system was manned by a single “undertrained” operator who did not test it before the ⁠event, according to the inspector general. It took hours to fix the issue while at the same time Crooks was conducting his nearly nine minute preparatory flight.

In a statement, the Secret Service said that it concurred with the inspector general’s recommendations.

“Many of these recommendations were already identified… and have since been implemented as part of our ongoing reform efforts,” a spokesperson said.

The Inspector General’s report is one of several investigations into the assassination attempt. As Breitbart News has reported, Crooks’  motive for trying to kill Trump largely remains a mystery.

Breitbart contributor Lowell Cauffiel is the best-selling author of the Los Angeles crime novel Below the Line and nine other crime novels and nonfiction titles. See lowellcauffiel.com for more.