Six Secret Service agents have been suspended over their alleged failures during President Donald Trump’s assassination attempt in Pennsylvania last year.
The then-presidential candidate was holding a rally in Butler on July 13, 2024, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire.
One shot narrowly missed Trump and grazed his ear, while a firefighter who attended the rally, Corey Comperatore, was shot dead.
Countersnipers in the Secret Service were then quick to kill the shooter at the scene.
But in the aftermath, the Secret Service was hounded with questions about how it let Crooks get that close to the candidate – as he was previously seen walking around the area – and Director Kimberly Cheatle was forced to resign.
The discipline within the agency did not end there, with the six agents notified in recent months that they would be suspended for their actions that day, ABC News reports.
Those who were suspended ranged from supervisors to line agents, and they all ad the right to appeal their suspensions, which ranged from 10 to 42 days without pay or benefits, according to CBS News.
‘We are laser focused on fixing the root cause of the problem,’ Matt Quinn, the Secret Service deputy director told CBS.
Six Secret Service agents have reportedly been suspended due to their failures at then presidential candidate Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania last year
In the aftermath, the Secret Service was hounded with questions about how it let the shooter get that close to the candidate
‘We aren’t going to fire our way out of this,’ he added. ‘We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation.’
‘Secret Service is totally accountable for Butler,’ Quinn acknowledged. ‘Butler was an operational failure and we are focused today on ensuring that it never happens again.’
All of the agents have now been suspended according to federally-mandated procedures, Quinn said.
He also noted that the Secret Service has introduced a new fleet of military-grade drones and set up new mobile command posts that allow agents to communicate over radio directly with local law enforcement – which was widely seen as one of the major issues with the Secret Service’s response to the shooting.
Witnesses have explained that having multiple command stations during the July event led to confusion and a scattered response.
A damning 180-page report released by a House of Representatives task force in December even concluded that the shooting was ‘preventable and should not have happened.’
A separate Senate inquiry also found that nobody was put in charge of planning and security decisions for the campaign rally, and a Secret Service internal investigation found that complacency had set in amongst some of the agents in charge of securing the presidential candidate.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated.
