WASHINGTON – Senate lawmakers are expected to grill the acting director of the Secret Service on Tuesday about lapses in law enforcement in the hours before the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump in the latest in a series of congressional hearings devoted to the shooting.
Ronald Rowe became acting director of the agency last week after his predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned after a hearing in the Chamber in which she was rebuked by lawmakers from both parties and did not answer specific questions about miscommunications prior to the July 13 shooting.
Rowe will be joined by FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees.
The hearing takes place one day after the FBI released new details about its investigation into the shootingrevealing that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, aged 20, He searched online for information about mass shootings, power plants, improvised explosive devices and the attempted assassination of the Slovak prime minister in May.
The FBI also said Trump agreed to be interviewed by agents as a victim of crime; the agency said last week that the former president had been hit in the ear by a bullet or fragment of one. Trump said Monday night that he expected the interview to take place on Thursday.
But most of Tuesday’s questions are expected to be directed at Rowe, as lawmakers demand answers about how Crooks managed to get so close to Trump. Investigators believe Crooks fired eight shots toward Trump with an AR rifle after climbing onto the roof of a building about 135 meters (147 yards) from where Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.
One rally participant was killed and two others were injured. Crooks was shot to death by a Secret Service counter-sniper.
At his hearing last week, Cheatle said the Secret Service “failed” in its mission to protect Trump. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to find out what went wrong and ensure there is no repeat of it.
Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was tipped off about a suspicious person two to five times before the rally shooting. She also revealed that the roof from which Crooks opened fire was identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally.
Cheatle said he apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.
In a Monday night interview with Fox News, Trump defended the Secret Service agents who protected him from the shooting, but said someone should have been on the roof with Crooks and there should have been better communication with local police.
“They didn’t speak to each other,” he said.
He praised the shooter who killed Crooks with what he said was an incredible shot, but noted, “It would have been nice if it had been nine seconds earlier.”
This story originally appeared on ABCNews.go.com read the full story
