The Secret Service acknowledged Friday communication “failures” and a lack of diligence by its agents when former President Donald Trump was shot during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“It is important that we hold ourselves to account for the failures of July 13 and we take the lessons learned to make sure that we do not have another mission failure like this again,” Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. told reporters at the agency’s headquarters.
“We cannot afford to fail,” Rowe said. “This was a failure on the part of the United States Secret Service.”
The lapses included multiple communications and operational failures, according to an internal interim report on how the agency performed leading up to and including the incident. Theese included deficient command and control, in addition to communications and diligence, the report said.
The Secret Service is responsible for designing the security for a former president’s events, Rowe said. But the agency relied on local law enforcement to secure the building where the gunman was lying on the roof with a clear line of sight to the former president.
“We cannot abdicate or defer our responsibilities to others,” Rowe said.