(NewsNation) — Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. is set to hold a news briefing Friday to provide an update on the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Trump was the target of a shooting at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13. The FBI said that the attempted assassin was Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old Pennsylvania man. The Secret Service shot and killed him seconds after Trump was shot. The attack was the most public attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
During a joint Senate committee earlier this week, Rowe criticized local Butler authorities for a communications breakdown between agencies protecting Trump. But Pat Young, the chief of detectives for Beaver County who was tasked with securing the area around Trump’s rally, said they had no communication with the federal authorities that day.
Young insists that it was his team that spotted Crooks roughly an hour before the actual shooting took place. He said they raised it up the chain of command and said what happens beyond that is up to the Secret Service.
Meanwhile, Rowe’s testimony was the most detailed catalog to date by the Secret Service of law enforcement failings and miscommunications. While he pointedly criticized the local law enforcement during the proceedings, he also accepted blame for his own agency’s mistakes.
“What I saw made me ashamed. As a career law enforcement officer and a 25-year Secret Service veteran, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured,” he said.
Rowe now says he has implemented multiple reforms since taking over as acting director last week, including mandating that every event security plan is vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before being implemented, expanding the use of aerial drones to improve visibility of roofs and dedicating more resources to improve communications at events where the Secret Service is operating. He said he’s also directed that federal and local countersnipers work together on roofs.
NewsNation digital producer Urja Sinha contributed to this report.
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