Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe Jr. said that state or local law enforcement should in “no way” be held responsible for the near assassination of former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania last month. Instead, he said the ultimate blame is on the U.S. Secret Service, pledging that the agency will “earn back” the public’s trust.
“In no way should any state or local agency supporting us in Butler on July 13 be held responsible for a Secret Service failure,” Rowe said during a press conference on Friday, nearly three weeks after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto a roof overlooking Trump’s outdoor campaign rally and opened fire.
He went on to say that the Secret Service should have had “better coverage” of the roof from which Crooks fired eight rounds, hitting the former president in the ear, killing one attendee and injuring two others before being shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.
Rowe told lawmakers earlier this week while testifying in front of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees that his agency “assumed” the state and local officials helping with security for the rally had it covered.
On Friday, however, he stressed the importance of his agency’s partnership with local law enforcement, saying they “cannot do our jobs without them.”
“The bottom line is this,” he said, “this was a Secret Service failure, that roofline should have been covered, we should have had better eyes on that.”
Rowe is currently leading the agency after the director at the time of the shooting, Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week following her own presence at a Capitol Hill hearing.
“We will earn back your trust,” Rowe said on Friday in a message intended for the American public.
He added that “every single person within the Secret Service feels the weight of what happened.”
Rowe ran through some of the details he shared during his Capitol Hill testimony this week, including that, to his knowledge, the Secret Service did not know there was a man on the roof with a firearm until the gunshots rang out. Before that, they were “operating with the knowledge that local law enforcement was working on an issue of a suspicious individual.”
He commended the Secret Service counter sniper that shot and killed the gunman, saying the move “undoubtedly saved countless lives.” Rowe shared that the July 13 rally was the first time Secret Service counter snipers were deployed to support the former president’s detail.
While there are several investigations into the events of the day currently underway, including a recently-formed bipartisan task force in Congress and an independent review ordered by President Joe Biden, Rowe said he is not waiting for those to be completed and is taking “immediate steps” to ensure those his agency is tasked with protecting are safe.
Earlier this week, he ran through some of those steps, which include expanding the use of drones and requiring federal and local snipers to coordinate on roofs.