Acting Secret Service head suggests that better tech could have thwarted would-be Trump assassin

The acting head of the Secret Service told Congress on Tuesday that additional tech will be deployed to campaign events in the wake of the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13 in Butler, Pa.

Ronald Rowe Jr., who was tapped to lead the Secret Service after the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle, told a joint hearing of the the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee that a lack of communications capacity, radio interoperability challenges and the absence of a counter-drone system were all key elements that allowed Thomas Crooks to evade Secret Service detection and fire eight shots, nicking Trump in the ear, killing one rally attendee and wounding two others.

Rowe told lawmakers that he visited the Butler Farm Show site and lay in the same position as the shooter to "to evaluate his line of sight," as one of his first acts as agency head.

"What I saw made me ashamed," Rowe said. "As a career law enforcement officer and a 25 year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured. To prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, I directed our personnel to ensure every event site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented."

Improvements include directing the Secret Service CIO to shore up bandwidth at campaign events with "redundancies as far as cellular on the ground or additional repeaters," Rowe said. He added that counter-drone technology was not deployed and that the Secret Service declined an offer from a state or local agency to operate a surveillance drone at the site. Crooks himself flew a drone on the periphery of the site hours ahead of the shooting, and, had this shown up on a DHS counter-drone system, he would have been singled out for special attention by Secret Service agents. 

Rowe noted that the use of counter-drone tech is "a little complex" and requires layers of approval.

"State and locals don't necessarily have this ability to do that. It does require coordination with the [Federal Aviation Administration] because it…could impact commercial travel," Rowe said.

Radio interoperability with state and local authorities continues to pose challenges for the Secret Service, Rowe said.

"It's not just about being able to find whatever frequency our local counterparts are on and then just piping it in," Rowe said.

Crooks reportedly used a laser-powered golf rangefinder from his sniper position. Rowe told lawmakers that such gear is going to be banned at campaign events in the future.

Rowe also said that the Secret Service would begin recording agency radio traffic at campaign events. There's no record of conversations among Secret Service agents from the Butler event. Recordings of communications among state and local law enforcement are currently being used as part of ongoing investigations by the FBI and other agencies.

Social profiles

At the same hearing, FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate revealed that the agency had unearthed a social media account "believed to be associated with the shooter" with posts dating back to 2019 and 2020.

"There were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect anti-Semitic and anti-immigration themes, espouse political violence, and are extreme in nature," Abbate said in his opening statement. He declined to specify the platform in question because the FBI hadn't confirmed the account belonged to Crooks.

Separately, Crooks may have had an account on the far-right social network Gab, according to an exchange between Abbate and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., at the hearing.  

Abbate said they were still "awaiting returns from  a number of the companies, to include other social media companies as well" in response to possible social network activity by Crooks.