Rep. Crow: Secret Service stretched thin and experienced a ‘cascading series of failures’

A congressional task force sharply criticized the Secret Service at a hearing focused on the July assassination attempt against former President Trump. Lawmakers looked at the failures that allowed a gunman to have a line of fire at Trump. Lisa Desjardins discussed the latest with Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado, the Democratic ranking member of the House bipartisan task force.
Amna Nawaz:
A congressional task force sharply criticized the Secret Service today at its first hearing on the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. Lawmakers zeroed in on the apparent failures that allowed the assailant to have a direct line of fire at Trump.
Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA):
In the days leading up to the rally, it was not a single mistake that allowed Crooks to outmaneuver one of our country’s most elite group of security professionals. There were security failures on multiple fronts.
Lisa Desjardins was tracking today’s hearing and has more.
Lisa Desjardins:
Amna, the hearing comes one day after the Senate Homeland Security Committee released its interim report on the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.
That bipartisan report found a host of failures, but was especially critical of the Secret Service. The report says the Secret Service’s “failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.”
Today was the first hearing for the House bipartisan task force on this. And its ranking member, Democrat Jason Crow of Colorado, joins me now.
Congressman, we saw a repeated theme in today’s hearing about the logistical problems that — and the proximity of the shooter. I want to remind viewers of the layout of that site in Butler, Pennsylvania. You can see Mr. Trump’s location where the stage was, and then the AGR company’s complex where the shooter got onto the roof unimpeded. It was close by, but outside the security perimeter.
What have you surmised about the biggest issues that led to him being able to get on that rooftop?
Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO):
Well, Lisa, there wasn’t just one failure, but it was a cascading series of failures of things that we would normally expect would go into planning security for a large event like this.
It was everything from a lack of unity, of command so command-and-control that was uncertain and disjointed, to lack of interoperable communications between units that were on site, to a security plan that had a perimeter that was too small and not overall secured, and then lack of guidance given to local law enforcement as well.
So, we heard that today during our hearing, where you had these local law enforcement officers, these SWAT team members, these snipers who were trying to do their job, but they weren’t actually told what they had to do. Nobody really gave them the guidance on that day.
So it was a series of things that went wrong that raises larger questions about culture, about organization of the Secret Service, but also resourcing as well.
Lisa Desjardins:
On that resource question, the Secret Service is now protecting more people, I think, than ever, at least not in recent memory. And by all accounts, they do have a resource issue.
Today, a former Secret Service agent, Patrick Sullivan, told this to the committee:
Patrick Sullivan, Former Secret Service Agent:
Agents are exhausted now. The campaign really, really takes a lot out of them.
And I think they don’t have enough resources. Secret Service does not have enough personal resources to give people the breaks that they need.
Lisa Desjardins:
Congress just appropriated more funds, but how profound is the resource disconnect here, and is it a problem for this campaign season?
Rep. Jason Crow:
Well, there’s no doubt it’s a problem.
And I just want to paint a picture for folks about what we’re dealing with here. First off, the nature of campaigning is different. So candidates do a lot more events. The events are much larger. Candidates are out on the stump for a longer period of time, so our campaign season is longer.
So what that means is, the Secret Service is stretched thin in a way that they haven’t ever been before. In addition to that, the Secret Service really hasn’t increased significantly its size, its training, its pipeline of agents. So what you have is a high threat environment, an environment with more threats.
Like, for example, members of Congress face four times as many threats than we faced just a couple of years ago. So you have a high threat environment. You have a campaign environment that’s more robust, long-term, and more transparent and out in the open than you have had before.
And then you have a Secret Service that really hasn’t changed. So Acting Director Rowe came into our task force two weeks ago and he painted a picture of what his service looks like. And he said his agents are redlined. They’re working 80-, 90-hour weeks. They’re deployed three weeks out of a month. They’re out in the field constantly.
They’re not doing their training, they’re not doing their recertifications because they’re out there all the time on a campaign trail. You just can’t ask people to do that in perpetuity without some type of break or relief.
So we have to provide that relief. The last point here, Lisa, is your question about near — the near-term issue. We are not going to create more Secret Service agents between now and November 5. It takes six to seven years to actually create a personal security detail-level agent.
But what we have to do is, we have to resource the ability of DOD and other federal agencies to cover down and to surge resources to assist the Secret Service.
Lisa Desjardins:
You have paid a lot of attention to political rhetoric. You were there on January 6 coaching your members around you to potentially defend themselves.
Where do you think we are? How worried are you about this next month before the election?
Rep. Jason Crow:
Well, tensions are very high. Political rhetoric and discourse, I think, is broken in so many ways. I mean, I don’t have to tell Americans that. They see that it’s broken.
That’s why it’s really important that we condemn political violence. What we have to do is get to make it very clear that we are in a campaign season, but we’re going to have tough, really sometimes fierce debates. But, in America, we solve our political issues with debate and with discourse and with voting.
It is never OK to resort to political violence. And that’s a message that we have in a bipartisan way have been unanimous on this task force that this is what this is about, condemning the violence. Whether you’re a Republican or a Democrat or an unaffiliated voter, you should know that your candidate and your elected officials are secure. And we take very seriously our obligation to restore that trust.
Lisa Desjardins:
In our last 30 seconds or so, is there one big question you really haven’t gotten any answers to yet about the assassination attempt?
Rep. Jason Crow:
Well, we’re looking at both attempts now. We’re looking at Butler, Pennsylvania, and we’re looking at Florida as well.
And one of the things I really want to know is, what is going to be the direct accountability by the Secret Service? You get change when you get accountability. So we’re going to be pushing to make sure that, if people did not do what they were supposed to do, those people are no longer in those positions. And that’s something that the Secret Service has to do.
Lisa Desjardins:
Congressman Jason Crow, thank you so much for your time and work on this.
Rep. Jason Crow:
Thank you.