The Secret Service knew there was a threat to former President Donald Trump last weekend but still let him take the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, lawmakers revealed Wednesday.
Sen. John Barrasso (R-WY) said that a suspect, later revealed to be Thomas Matthew Crooks, was identified as suspicious more than an hour before he ultimately fired on Trump from a nearby rooftop.
“He was identified as a character of suspicion because [he had] a rangefinder as well as a backpack. And this was over an hour before the shooting actually occurred,” Barrasso told Fox News. “So, you would think over the course of that hour, you shouldn’t lose sight of the individual. Somebody ought to be following up on those sorts of things. No evidence of that happening at all.”
The Secret Service was aware of the threat about 10 minutes before Trump walked onstage, and an agent who was in charge was on the phone with police about the threat as the shooting took place, a source told the Washington Examiner. It is unclear how much time elapsed between when the threat was first identified and when the information was relayed to the Secret Service. Trump was shot approximately six minutes into his speech.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) posted on X, “They had identified the shooter as ‘suspicious’ a full 19 minutes before the shooting.”
In the aftermath of the call, Lee called on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to “step down immediately” and said the briefing was “(mostly) information free.”
“What little information she gave us was at once deeply troubling and glaringly incomplete,” he said.
He added that the Secret Service ended the call abruptly, having only answered a few questions.
“So much smoke and mirrors,” he said. “So little accountability.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) echoed Lee’s calls for Cheatle to step down, saying, “I have no confidence in the leadership.”
Barrasso also called on Cheatle to resign.
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The shooting at the rally killed one attendee, Corey Comperatore, 50, and injured Trump and two other attendees.
Multiple questions have been raised as to how Crooks was able to take up his position on a roof 150 yards away from Trump and open fire. He fired about eight shots before being killed by a Secret Service sniper team. The Secret Service and FBI are undergoing six investigations and follow-up investigations into security failures.