Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Friday during a press conference that the agency’s inability to protect former President Donald Trump at a recent rally in Pennsylvania was a “failure.”
“This was a failure. We should have had better protection for the protectee,” Rowe said at the agency’s first press conference on the July 13 attempt.
Rowe also admitted that the roof from which the alleged shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump, killed one rally-goer, and injured two others should have been better covered.
“We should have had better coverage on that roofline. We should have had at least some other set of eyes from the Secret Service point of view covering that. That building was very close to that outer perimeter. And we should have had more of a presence,” he said.
He was asked about a recent video taken by one of the injured rally-goers where Crooks is visible running on the roof.
Rowe said, “As far as the timeline of him running back and forth, I know the FBI has provided a bit of a chronology as well. And so I’d have to go back and look at that.
“But the bottom line is…this was a Secret Service failure. That roofline should have been covered. We should have had better eyes on that.”
Rowe reiterated his claim at a Senate hearing from earlier this week that Secret Service counter-snipers never saw Crooks on the roof with a gun, but did not address whether the counter-snipers saw him on the roof without a gun.
However, when asked specifically by Sen. John Kennedy whether the counter-snipers saw Crooks on the rooftop at all, Rowe claimed they did not see him at all until he fired.
That claim was called into question after the video surfaced on Wednesday showing Crooks clearly visible from where one of the injured rally-goers was sitting on rafters behind Trump.
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