An independent task force commissioned by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to investigate the first Trump assassination attempt is calling for an overhaul of Secret Service leadership. The agency should, instead, replace its higher-ups with people from the private sector, the investigators recommend, declaring: "The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved."
According to the panel's findings, published Thursday in a 52-page report, the investigative body tasked with reviewing the security failures surrounding the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13 found that there was "a troubling lack of critical thinking" among agents and supervisors that fateful day.
In particular, the panel was "struck" by the "lack of ownership by senior-level, experienced personnel."
Higher-ups involved in the security planning did not take responsibility in the lead-up to the attempt on Trump's life nor did they own failures in the aftermath, the scathing review says, adding that they have "done little in the way of self-reflection in terms of identifying areas of missteps, omissions or opportunities for improvement."
"For personnel involved, given the multi-factor nature of the security failure, even a superficial level of reflection should yield insights regarding lapses and potential remediations," the panel wrote. "But many personnel struggled to identify meaningful examples of either type of observation—what went wrong and what could be done better in the future to prevent a similar tragedy from reoccurring."
A member of the four-person panel, Janet Napolitano, who previously served as secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security from 2009 to 2013, told The New York Times that the Secret Service has "become insular and stale."
"It is time for the service to kind of break out and to reach out beyond its own agency to bring in talent that can really take a fresh look at what it is they do, and how they do it," she said. In the past century, the agency has had only one director not promoted from within, according to The Times.
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Other panelists include Frances Fragos Townsend, a former Homeland Security advisor for President George W. Bush; David Mitchell, a 50-year law enforcement veteran; and Mark Filip, who was Deputy U.S. Attorney General under President George W. Bush. Together, they conducted 58 interviews and reviewed more than 7,000 documents.
However, much of the panel's recommendations outline deficiencies that have already been identified by other investigations in the aftermath of the Butler rally. These include the Secret Service failing to secure a nearby building that the would-be assassin scaled and took his shots from as well as other security lapses like the split structure of law enforcement communications.
The panel did specifically note that the site agent in charge of organizing security at the Butler fairgrounds was inexperienced since she had only graduated from the agency's academy in 2020 and just joined Trump's detail in 2023. "This inexperience may have been exacerbated by the timing of the agent's arrival in the Service, which coincided with the peak years of COVID with attendant restrictions and reduced operational tempo in the Service."
It appears she was assigned this position based, in part, on availability, the panel found. She has since been placed on restrictive duty, one of six agents handed that fate. The other five are from the agency's Pittsburgh field office.
Highlighting another example, the panel also cites the lack of experience of another agent who was assigned to operate a drone detection system on the day of the rally despite only formally deploying such technology at two previous events. That agent has only been an operator since March 2024 and received this training through "an informal, hands-on approach."
At the rally site, he faced technical difficulties and spent hours trying to fix the issues. As a result, the equipment was inoperable at the time the gunman flew his own drone over the rally site that afternoon, which went undetected. The agent's "lack of sufficient training and technical competence" contributed to this delayed response, the investigators found.
"Both examples demonstrate the potential role that inexperience by Trump detail personnel may have played in certain aspects of the planning for and execution of the July 13 rally," the panel concluded.
Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe reacted to the report's release Thursday, saying: "We respect the work of the Independent Review Panel and will carefully examine the report and recommendations released today."
Statement from Sec. Mayorkas on independent review panel findings re: Secret Service in Butler, PA
— Sam Lisker (@slisker) October 17, 2024
"We will fully consider the Panel’s recommendations and are taking the actions needed to advance the Secret Service’s protection mission."
Full report: https://t.co/73CZTg8sbu pic.twitter.com/0ex0JjQJOP
In the wake of the July 13 Trump shooting, President Joe Biden directed Mayorkas to form an independent, bipartisan panel "to facilitate an effective review of the security provided by the U.S. Secret Service to Former President Donald J. Trump on July 13, 2024," according to the directive. The panel's purpose was to "examine what happened and provide actionable recommendations" to ensure that the Secret Service carries out its no-fail mission "most effectively" and "to prevent something like this from ever happening again."
Following the second Trump assassination attempt, the presidential protection agency announced changes that it plans on implementing, such as significantly expanding the security perimeter around protectees and assigning additional manpower.
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