Abysmal failure by Secret Service in protecting Trump now emerging

For each partial account that emerges about the attempt to assassinate ex-President Donald Trump, another query rises. The overarching question is relatively simple: What should federal, state and local authorities — acting as an ad hoc security team under Secret Service direction — have done to prevent Saturday’s horror?

Answers are anxiously anticipated at a moment when the nation waits for Trump’s convention address Thursday.

More specifically, how was 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks — who had been spotted acting furtively, walking around an industrial building nearby Trump’s outdoor rally — able to reach the roof with an AR-15-style rifle and fire as many as eight shots? Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old volunteer fire chief, heroically dived onto family members to protect them and was killed. Trump was injured when a round hit his upper right ear. He came unthinkably and outrageously close to being killed.

A Secret Service official has said local police were inside the Butler County, Pennsylvania building and radioed a command post when Crooks was first spotted walking around the structure with some gear. There were reports of bystanders warning officers that a man was clambering onto the roof.

The person now on the hot seat in Washington is Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle, a veteran agent who assumed the office in 2022. Her answers to news media have been wanting in clarity and consistency, to say the least. At first, she said local law enforcement on which such operations depend had responsibility for the building, outside the security perimeter for the open-air rally. Later, she clarified that to say her agency "is totally responsible for the design and implementation and the execution of the site."

So what did they do wrong?

Why was the perimeter set so close to the stage where Trump was appearing? If witnesses shouted and pointed and warned well before the firing began and snipers spotted Crooks 20 minutes before he started shooting, as the FBI reportedly told the Senate Wednesday, couldn't he have been stopped? Why did a police officer climbing to the roof to confront Crooks have to back down, in the face of the young man’s weapon, allowing the carnage to begin before a SWAT sniper took Crooks out?

Security resources were purportedly beefed up after a credible threat out of Iran. This appears so far to have no connection to Crooks. Planning and coordination, not resources, seem to be the issue in this horrid fiasco.

A cluster of official probes are underway. GOP House Speaker Mike Johnson and others are calling for Cheatle’s resignation. But there is far more oversight for both houses of Congress and federal agencies to do first. Both parties should immediately agree to establish a single impartial, bipartisan panel to investigate. A broad probe must be devoted to determining facts rather than scoring political points.

The goal of national unity demands it.