Local police alerted the Secret Service before former president Donald Trump’s rally Saturday that they lacked the resources to station a patrol car outside a key building where a gunman later positioned himself and shot at Trump, according to local and federal law enforcement.
Goldinger’s account was confirmed by Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. Guglielmi said the proposal to station a patrol car and officer outside the Agr International building complex had been part of the Secret Service’s advance planning for securing the prominent structure, which had an expansive roof with an unobstructed view of the rally stage less than 150 yards away, where Trump would later stand.
At all public events, the Secret Service works to guard against the risk that a shooter on high ground could have a clear line of sight on the president or other senior officials under the agency’s protection. Five former agents with experience securing similar events told The Washington Post that a police officer stationed outside the building might have helped detect the gunman sooner.
Guglielmi said that about 20 to 30 minutes before the shooting, local police assigned to the inside of the building warned the Secret Service security team by radio of a suspicious person with a golf range finder and backpack. Those officers also forwarded a photograph of the person, Guglielmi said.
Authorities from a number of jurisdictions were on the scene Saturday, and officials are still determining how the building was guarded — and how the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, reached the roof. But the twin warnings from local law enforcement — first of insufficient manpower, then of a man behaving strangely — add to questions about whether the Secret Service adequately planned for and provided adequate security for the high-stakes presidential campaign visit.
The warnings also underscore a tension that has emerged in recent days between federal and local authorities over who bears responsibility for security lapses preceding the attempted assassination. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who had previously stressed that local police were responsible for the outer security perimeter, issued a statement to The Post on Wednesday stressing the importance of collaboration with local authorities.
“The Secret Service cannot do our job without state and local police partners,” she said. “They live and work in the communities and have the expertise to navigate those settings.”
The security lapses are now the subject of multiple federal inquiries, and prompted a call Wednesday by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) for Cheatle to resign. The shooting left Trump wounded, one rallygoer dead and two others critically injured. It is considered the most serious security failure by the Secret Service since the attempted assassination of then-President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
