Many are asking the question why Trump’s Secret Service allowed the shooting event on July 13 in Butler, PA to happen. While it’s not clear how much negligence or other incompetence was behind it, there are a number of obvious mistakes that occurred.
The most obvious was the question of why the roof from which the shooter was perched was left unattended. A look at the rally site shows that there was only one cluster of buildings in addition to those immediately behind the podium—an obvious location for an attacker. And yet there was no secret service monitoring of this highly vulnerable location with a direct line of sight to the podium.
CNN interviewed two former FBI agents who both were shocked at the oversight. Steve Moore, a retired FBI supervisory special agent who worked as a counter sniper for two years, “the fact that somebody allowed that roof to be unmonitored, unguarded” could have been a flaw in planning or execution.
Another retired FBI field agent, Bobby Chacon, said he was surprised no one was guarding the rooftop, which he called “the perfect perch.” “That building… is the closest building with a clear line of sight to where the stage was. I’m shocked that they didn’t have somebody on that roof,” Chacon said.
YouTube host Benny Johnson shared a message from a professional sniper supposedly with 20+ years of military service and who trained with the Secret Service: “I’m still trying to wrap my head around a building being 150 yards away that was outside the security perimeter and had rooftop access. I’ve trained with and competed against the Secret Service snipers and they are the fastest and most accurate shooters I’ve ever seen. The fact they let this happen makes less than ZERO SENSE!”
In addition to this, a number of witnesses reported seeing the shooter on the rooftop minutes before the shooting started but couldn’t get the authorities to get Trump to safety or stop the shooter. Ben Macer told KDKA-TV of Pittsburgh that he was up along the fence line and “saw the guy move from roof to roof. [I] told an officer [the alleged shooter] was on the roof.” Another attendee who was interviewed afterwards asked: “My main thought is why wasn’t the Secret Service on top of AGR [the building]?” “That’s a very big vantage point to shoot at the president. How did that get missed?”
Another attendee who was interviewed by BBC claimed that he had seen the shooter, who was visibly holding a rifle, and immediately told the police. But then 2-3 minutes went by, he said, and all he could think was: “Why is Trump still speaking? Why have they not pulled him off the stage?” Then he heard the shots.
The FBI identified the shooter as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, from Bethel Park, about an hour south of Butler. “We do not currently have an identified motive,” said Kevin Rojek, FBI Pittsburgh special agent in charge, at a briefing Saturday night, reported CBS News.