The director of the Secret Service said the local forces were in the very same building, an account suggesting that the gunman was literally on top of them. A local law enforcement official told The New York Times on Tuesday that was not the case, and that the local forces were in an adjacent building. The discrepancy in their accounts is just one unsettled element in the effort to determine how security broke down and allowed a 20-year-old with an automatic rifle to open fire in a rapid barrage that left Mr. Trump hurt, one man dead and two other people at the rally gravely wounded.
Per Fox News, Cheatle stated that responsibility for the security breakdown leading to the attempted assassination of former President Trump ultimately rests with herself.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said Monday that the shape of the roof former President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin sat on played a role in her agency not securing the building. Cheatle has come under fire for her agency’s failure to prevent Thomas Matthew Crooks’s assassination attempt against Trump during a Pennsylvania rally last Saturday. During the event, Crooks gained access to a building approximately 400 feet from Trump’s podium.
