ACT For America – August 1, 2024
“What I Saw Made Me Ashamed”
Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testified before a joint Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees hearing on July 30, 2024, on the attempted assassination of Trump. Senators questioned Rowe and Deputy FBI Director Paul Abbate about the security lapses that led to the July 13 attack.
During his visit to the Butler, Pennsylvania, campaign rally site where the attack occurred, Rowe evaluated the shooter’s line of sight from the roof. “What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe said. “As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.”
He added, “They should have been on that roof, and the fact that they were in the building is something that I am still trying to understand.”
Like his predecessor Cheatle, Rowe is attempting to shift the blame onto the local Butler, PA Police Department and the sniper team, claiming the Secret Service was unable to see the shooter.
The Senate hearing was the first since the shooting, where a gunman killed one rallygoer, injured two others, and shot Trump in the face.
“Let me be clear: This was an attack on our democracy,” said Sen. Gary Peters, the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee Chairman.
“Americans should be able to attend a political rally and express their political beliefs without fear of violence, and political candidates for our nation’s highest office should be confident that their safety will never be compromised for their service,” the Michigan Democrat added.
Rowe described the assassination attempt as “a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees.”
Neither the Secret Service counter-sniper teams nor members of Trump’s security detail “had any knowledge that there was a man on the roof of the … building with a firearm,” Rowe stated.
Rowe said local law enforcement was handling a suspicious individual before the shots were fired.
The FBI’s investigation claims a social media account believed to belong to the shooter, with over 700 comments from 2019-2020, reflected antisemitic and anti-immigration themes but did not share these posts with the committee. The FBI did not confirm a definitive motive, co-conspirators, or advanced knowledge of the attack.
One red flag was the FBI’s depiction of the shooter as a radical “right-winger.” This claim has raised concerns about the FBI’s ongoing partisan bias, considering earlier reports of the shooter’s recent donation to Vote Blue.
Sen. Chuck Grassley and Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto introduced bipartisan legislation requiring Senate confirmation of Secret Service directors, limiting them to one term of 10 years.
Sen. Marsha Blackburn highlighted that no Secret Service agents have been fired or suspended, and it’s unclear if those responsible for the security failures are still serving. She inquired about the internal email from a Secret Service sniper addressed to leadership that was possibly deleted and buried that stated, “This agency NEEDS to change, if not now, WHEN? We all SHOULD expect another attempt to happen before November. We’ve exposed our inability to protect our leaders due to our leadership.”
We are not seeing any promising indicators that the change in Secret Service Directors will result in getting the answers we are all demanding or immediately improving security protocols. Acting Director Rowe’s testimony suggests a continuation of the same evasive tactics employed by his predecessor, Cheatle, which involves deflecting responsibility onto local law enforcement and sniper teams. This lack of accountability is deeply concerning.
It may be time to heed the insider’s advice and overhaul the Secret Service by removing the five high-level supervisors responsible for these failures before a real tragedy occurs. Only then can we hope to restore the integrity and effectiveness of this critical agency.
One thing remains clear: TRUMP IS NOT SAFE!
Brigitte Gabriel is founder of ACT for America.
EDITOR’S NOTE: On Don Bongino’s site was a posting on “X” (formerly Twitter) that read: “I warned you about Ron Rowe repeatedly.” Then this: Nick Sortor:
#BREAKING: Whistleblowers just revealed to Sen.@HawleyMO
that Acting Secret Service Director Rowe PERSONALLY directed cuts to the USSS agents responsible for threat assessments while Deputy Director AND NOW HE’S BEEN PROMOTED? This whistleblower also told Hawley that NONE of these threat assessment agents were present in Butler when Trump was shot, and many of them had been sounding the alarm about problems for months. YET ANOTHER COINCIDENCE?
