Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe was directly involved in denying additional security resources and personnel, including countersnipers, to former President Donald Trump’s rallies and events—despite repeated requests by the agents assigned to Trump’s detail in the two years leading up to his July 13 attempted assassination, according to several sources familiar with the decision-making.
Rowe succeeded former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned last week after bipartisan calls following her widely panned testimony before the House Oversight Committee. But both Rowe and Cheatle were directly involved in decisions denying requests for more magnetometers, additional agents, and other resources to help screen rallygoers at large, outdoor Trump campaign gatherings.
It was Rowe’s decision alone to deny countersniper teams to any Trump event outside of driving distance from Washington, these sources asserted.
Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate appeared Tuesday before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs committees.
Senators on both sides of the aisle have vowed to press for answers on the assassination attempt on Trump that took the life of rallygoer Corey Comperatore and wounded two others. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., who chairs the Homeland Security panel, said he planned to grill Rowe and Abbate on the “litany of gaps and failures.”
“There are monumental, critical questions that so far the leadership in these two agencies have failed to answer [for, and] even to begin to respond to,” Blumenthal said.
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a senior member of the Homeland Security committee, told Real Clear Politics he was initially impressed by Rowe’s willingness to answer senators’ questions late last week, but pledged to question him closely about the denying of resources to protect Trump.
“I will also hold him fully accountable for being 100% transparent and honest in cooperating with our investigation and oversight,” Johnson said Thursday.
Johnson and other members of the committee were expected to focus on Rowe’s role in the Secret Service’s repeated denials of extra security requested by agents assigned to Trump’s protective detail and about decisions regarding the number of placement of snipers assigned to some of Trump’s events.
Assigning countersnipers based on the ability to drive to an event may sound far-fetched, but knowledgeable sources explained that there’s a limited number of these highly trained Uniform Division officers. It’s easier for countersniper teams to carry their guns and gear in a van they can all use to transport the teams to the site for advance work for the event and then use the same vehicles, referred to by the Secret Service as “push vehicles,” to return to Washington.
The alternative is for countersniper teams to board commercial flights or Amtrak (if the event is in the Northeast corridor) with all their gear, find a rental vehicle once on the ground, and then do it all in reverse on the way home. It’s all possible under the “needs of the Service,” one source contends, but in reality, it’s much easier and far more cost-effective for countersnipers to drive to and from a site.
“They can carry their guns and gear on airplanes—there’s an efficient process for that—but it’s going to be much easier, because they have all their gear with them, to drive, rather than fly, because then they have a push vehicle to take the whole team to........