As the review of security procedures after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump continues, the blame may fall on local police.
According to a “federal law enforcement official familiar with the security plans,” Fox News reported that local law enforcement was responsible for security of the building from which Thomas Matthew Crooks tried to shoot Trump on Saturday in Butler, Pa.
“The building Crooks fired from was a ‘rally point’ for one of the local counter sniper teams,” Fox News reported. “The source also said that a team was actually stationed in, or near, the building. There were four counter sniper teams at the Trump rally … including two from the Secret Service and two from local law enforcement.”
The Butler County Sheriff’s Office has so far not commented on the information.
Former Secret Service Agent Dan Bongino called Saturday an “apocalyptic security failure” and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., has already called for a House investigation into what went wrong. U.S. Rep. Mark Green, R-Tenn., chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has sent a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking for details of the security plan that day.
“The seriousness of this security failure and chilling moment in our nation’s history cannot be understated,” Green wrote. “No assassination attempt has come so close to taking the life of a president or presidential candidate since President Reagan was shot in 1981.”
One officer from the Butler County Sheriff’s Office climbed onto the roof and saw the shooter with a rifle, then retreated before the shooter fired at Trump. The shooter was killed by security.
Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old former fire chief of Buffalo Township, was killed by the shooter’s gunfire on Saturday. Two others were wounded.
