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A scathing federal intelligence report released by the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Office of Inspector General has exposed even more catastrophic communication failures within the U.S. Secret Service.
According to the report, the agency had definitive knowledge of an unknown man perched on a nearby roof at least two minutes before would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on President Donald Trump during the July 13, 2024, rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The findings further document a “cascading and wide-ranging” breakdown in security protocol, confirming that despite urgent, real-time alerts from local law enforcement and panicked rally-goers, the information “failed to reach the innermost security ring” protecting the now-president on stage.
At the time, Trump was still the Republican presidential nominee.
Additionally, according to the newly declassified investigative timeline, local counter-snipers and tactical units had flagged Crooks as highly suspicious nearly 90 minutes before the shooting, even photographing him with a rangefinder. However, the crisis escalated to a critical moment exactly two minutes prior to the first shots being fired, when multiple local law enforcement transmissions confirmed that the suspect had successfully scaled the roof of the AGR International complex with a gun.
Since the Secret Service failed to establish a unified, joint communications command center with state and local police, these critical radio transmissions were entirely missed by federal agents, the report goes on. Instead of receiving more than 100 urgent local radio updates detailing the direct threat, the Secret Service command post received only a handful of fragmented phone calls and text messages — delaying life-saving intelligence.
The federal report details how this total breakdown in command structure prevented federal snipers and Trump’s immediate protective detail from enacting emergency evacuation procedures before Crooks began his assault.
While local officers desperately attempted to confront the gunman — including one Butler police officer who was forced to drop from the roof’s edge after Crooks turned his rifle on him — Trump continued his address to the crowd completely unaware of the active threat.
Seconds later, Crooks fired eight rounds from his AR-15-style rifle, miraculously just grazing Trump’s ear.
However, the gunfire fatally struck rally attendee Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief who died shielding his family, while also critically wounding two others before a Secret Service counter-sniper neutralized the gunman. The two other attendees who were critically wounded in the attack were David Dutch, 57, of New Kensington, Pennsylvania, and James Copenhaver, 74, of Moon Township, Pennsylvania.
The two men underwent emergency surgeries at Allegheny General Hospital in Pittsburgh following the attack and survived.
Despite definitive findings, left-leaning political corners of the internet erupted with unsubstantiated conspiracy theories in the weeks following the attack, with some viral posts falsely claiming the assassination attempt was staged while labeling the victims as “crisis actors.” The Comperatore family has publicly condemned the online rumors, stating that the online falsehoods have deeply compounded their grief.
Meanwhile, congressional investigators and independent watchdogs have labeled the event entirely preventable, pointing out that the Secret Service had previously identified the AGR rooftop as a high-risk line-of-sight vulnerability but chose to leave it unmonitored and unsecured.
The revelation that federal leadership possessed a multi-minute window where the threat transitioned from a “suspicious person” to an active gunman on a roof has intensified demands for systemic reform within the agency. Lawmakers from the House task force investigating the assassination attempt state that these findings solidify a pattern of systemic negligence.
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