The head of the Secret Service has finally revealed why they didn’t have an agent on the roof of the building the shooter used to try and assassinate President Trump during his rally on Saturday.
In short, they felt it was too risky to have an agent up there because of the slope of the roof.
Here’s more via the Daily Mail:
Embattled Secret Service head Kimberly Cheatle has revealed the fateful and bizarre reason why her agency failed to put an agent on the roof gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks used to carry out an assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
Cheatle, who is facing calls to resign over the massive security failure, said Secret Service officials planning security for Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania considered the warehouse 147 yards away from where Trump spoke to be a risky position for stationing an agent.
Chilling new details have revealed that a team of local police snipers were inside the building when the 20-year-old Crooks opened fire, shot Trump in the ear and killed a member of the rally crowd.
Crooks managed to evade cops and Secret Service three times, even though he had been deemed ‘suspicious’ and could have been on the roof for up to 30 minutes before he pulled the trigger.
Witnesses also begged law enforcement to act when they saw him clamber onto the roof with his AR-style rifle, but the lapse in security meant he was able to carry out his bid to take the 45th president’s life.
The mistakes that led to Trump being inches away from being killed sparked calls for Cheatle to step down, but she has refused and has now given a baffling explanation as to why there wasn’t a presence on the roof that had a clear line of sight to Trump
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point…”
‘That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point. And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof,’ she told ABC News in an interview Tuesday.
‘And so, you know, the decision was made to secure the building, from inside.
What transpired instead was a security nightmare: Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to scale the building and secure his own position, while law enforcement struggled to locate him even amid pressing warnings from members of the Trump crowd. But there wasn’t sufficient time to act on the tips, she explained.
‘The shooter was actually identified as a potential person of suspicion,’ Cheatle said. ‘Unfortunately, with the rapid succession of how things unfolded, by the time that individual was eventually located, they were on the rooftop and were able to fire off at the former president.’
She was referencing claims by witnesses that they alerted law enforcement about the threat, but agents weren’t able to eliminate the threat in time. Officials have pointed to the initial responding officer, who lifted himself up on the roof only to lower himself back when his own life was threatened.
A government sniper positioned behind Trump while he was speaking took out the would-be assassin, but only after he began firing.
The more we learn, the more unreal the details are that allowed Crooks to nearly kill President Trump. I know hindsight is 20/20, but whoever made the call that this roof was too risky for an agent to guard needs to be pulled from command. Because a freaking 20-year-old was able to do what they were too afraid to do and it nearly cost Trump his life. It did cost a hero dad and former fire fighter his life and that is supremely horrible.
It honestly sounds to me that the Secret Service got too lax because assassination attempts like this seem so rare and they thought they could get away with not manning that roof since they thought it was too ‘risky’.