WASHINGTON — The House task force that investigated the assassination attempts against Donald Trump published its final report on Tuesday, making dozens of recommendations including that the Secret Service should record all radio transmissions and scale back protection of foreign leaders to focus on protecting the president and other top U.S. officials.
The 180-page report includes 25 recommendations specifically related to the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman’s bullet grazed Trump’s ear during a campaign rally. It also includes 11 general recommendations for the Secret Service.
“The Task Force found that the tragic and shocking events in Butler, Pennsylvania were preventable and should not have happened. There was not, however, a singular moment or decision that allowed Thomas Matthew Crooks to nearly assassinate the former President,” the 13-member committee wrote in the report. “The various failures in planning, execution, and leadership on and before July 13, 2024, and the preexisting conditions that undermined the effectiveness of the human and material assets deployed that day, coalesced to create an environment in which the former President — and everyone at the campaign event — were exposed to grave danger.”
The task force, led by Chairman Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., praised how the Secret Service prevented a second attack on Trump later in the year in Florida: “Conversely, the events that transpired on September 15, 2024, in West Palm Beach, Florida, demonstrated how properly executed protective measures can foil an attempted assassination.”
Among the recommendations, the bipartisan panel said the Secret Service should record all radio transmissions, which did not happen on July 13 in Butler. “The absence of radio logs or recordings significantly limits the ability to reconstruct events for either investigative or evaluative purposes,” the report stated.
And the panel recommended that Congress, the Homeland Security Department and the U.S. Secret Service should “consider the protective role the USSS plays for foreign leaders and consider whether such duties can be transferred or abrogated in order to focus on the USSS’s primary duty: to protect the President and other critical U.S. leaders.”
The assassination task force also said the Secret Service should consider additional staffing or flexible posts “for high pressure moments” to allow the agency to adapt to evolving situations; provide more “robust” training for non-Secret Service personnel who are on site assisting the USSS; and develop and formalize a process to deal with USSS conflicts with the staff of protectees.
“Over the course of our investigation, several members of the Secret Service expressed frustrations in negotiating with staff, regardless of political party or protectee,” the report stated.
The task force said it was provided access to 18,000 documents and interviewed dozens of witnesses but added that the FBI provided the group with access to only 81 out of more than 1,000 witness interview summaries.
The task force said it identified multiple “decision points” that, if handled differently, could have prevented gunman Thomas Crooks from firing eight shots at the Butler rally.
Failing to secure a high-risk area next to the Butler rally venue — the American Glass Research (AGR) grounds and building complex — allowed Crooks to evade law enforcement, climb on the roof of the complex and open fire, the task force said.
The Secret Service also did not give clear guidance to state and local partners about which entity was responsible for securing the area, the task force said. Concerns about a lack of manpower were raised but not properly addressed, the group said, and local sniper teams stationed on the AGR property believed they were responsible for watching the rally venue and crowd and not the area outside the secured perimeter.
“The failures that led to the tragic events of July 13 were not entirely isolated to the campaign event itself, or the days preceding it. Preexisting issues in leadership and training created an environment in which the specific failures identified above could occur,” the task force wrote.
“Secret Service personnel with little to no experience in advance planning roles were given significant responsibility, despite the July 13 event being held at a higher-risk outdoor venue with many line of sight issues, in addition to specific intelligence about a long-range threat,” the task force said.
“Further, some of the Secret Service agents in significant advance planning roles did not clearly understand the delineation of their responsibilities.”
