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Thomas Mathew Crooks update—damning Secret Service details in Senate report

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Thomas Mathew Crooks update—damning Secret Service details in Senate report

The recently released bipartisan report into the assassination attempt on Donald Trump details several damning failures of the United States’ Secret Service (USSS), from organizational miscommunications to technological difficulties experienced on-site.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) report discusses the July 30 testimony of Ronald L. Rowe, Jr., Acting Director of the USSS, who informed the committee that the assassination attempt was a result of “a failure on multiple levels.”

The USSS testimony was regarding the assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally on July 13 which left two people, including the 20 year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, dead, and the former President injured.

The HSGAC report details the multiple missteps taken by the USSS, as noted by Acting Director Rowe. It also details other testimonies given to the HSGAC and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Donald Trump following the attempted assassination at his July 13 rally, and, Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testifying, inset. Rowe noted multiple missteps taken by the USSS at Butler, where the former…


Main image: Gene J. Puskar, Inset: Chip Somodevilla/Main image: Associated Press, Inset: Getty Images

Per the report, the committee found: “USSS failures in planning, communications, security, and allocation of resources for the July 13, 2024 Butler rally were foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.”

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The committee identified five key failures. They said the USSS:

  1. Failed to clearly define responsibilities for planning and security at the July 13 rally.
  2. Failed to ensure the AGR Building from which Crooks shot was effectively covered.
  3. Failed to effectively coordinate with state and local law enforcement.
  4. Failed to provide resources for the July 13 rally that could have enhanced security.
  5. Failed to communicate information about the suspicious person to key personnel and to take action to ensure the safety of former President Trump.

The report then goes into its twelve detailed findings about what went wrong on the day of the attempted assassination. These range from interdepartmental miscommunications, a failure to communicate with other law enforcement agencies, and technological difficulties.

The report shows several communication failures within the USSS and between the USSS, local law enforcement, and the FBI.

Per the report the: “USSS personnel were notified of a suspicious person with a range finder around the AGR building approximately 27 minutes before the shooting.” However, USSS Lead Advance Agent, Site Agent, and Site Counterpart told the committee that this information was not relayed to them, and they did not know of the suspicious person on the roof.

They also claimed that local officers lost track of the individual before the shots were fired. They were then only informed of a shooter on the AGR Building roof that Crooks was on two minutes before shots were fired.

On top of that, despite seeing local law enforcement running toward the AGR Building, a USSS countersniper did not alert Donald Trump’s protective detail to remove him from the stage.

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The USSS and the FBI were also not on the same page regarding the threat posed by Crooks. Countersnipers from the USSS were at the rally due to “credible intelligence” of a threat at the event. However, the FBI said Crooks was not known to them.

Additionally, despite the Butler Emergency Services Unit telling the USSS that they did not have enough manpower to lock down the AGR Building, the USSS failed to take responsibility for the building as it was on the “outer perimeter,” and failed to send agents to cover the building.

To make communications matters worse, there were two communication centers at the event, one center run by the USSS and a separate center run by local law enforcement. They communicated with each other via cellphone, and were at least 120 yards apart.

The report states that the two camps also operated on separate radio channels, and where the local channels were recorded on July 13, USSS radio transmissions were not recorded.

There were also several technological failures at the event including the Counter-Unmanned Aerial System (C-UAS) which experienced technical problems to the point that the agent responsible for the C-UAS—who only had three months of experience working with the equipment—had to call a toll-free 888 tech support hotline “to start troubleshooting with the company.”

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And, as well as working on separate radio frequencies, at one point USSS agents reported technical difficulties with their radios. These agents were a USSS Hercules 1 counter sniper who was unable to pick up a local radio because he was too busy fixing his own radio, and the USSS Special Agent In Charge (SAIC) who had no radio after giving his to the Lead Advance Agent whose radio was not working.

The report also notes that within these failures was a lack of accountability across the USSS, and blame deflection across the chain of command.

U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr.
Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. testifying before a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security and Government Affairs committees on July 30, 2024 in Washington, D.C.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

When asked for comment, Anthony Guglielmi, U.S. Secret Service Chief of Communications told Newsweek: “We have reviewed the interim report on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump. The weight of our mission is not lost on us and in this hyperdynamic threat environment, the U.S. Secret Service cannot fail.

“Many of the insights gained from the Senate report align with the findings from our mission assurance review and are essential to ensuring that what happened on July 13 never happens again.”

Guglielmi added: “Former President Donald Trump is receiving the highest level of protection that the U.S. Secret Service can provide, and we will continue to evaluate and adjust our specific protective measures and methodology based on each location and situation.”

Guglielmi also said that the USSS is cooperating with Congress, the FBI, the DHS Independent Review, DHS Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office.

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Additionally Guglielmi said the USSS is working transparently and in good faith with Congress, and has given them more than 3,300 pages of documents since July 13, and more than 50 hours of transcribed interviews.

He said: “The U.S. Secret Service has implemented changes to our protective operations including elevating the protective posture for our protectees and bolstering our protective details as appropriate in order to ensure the highest levels of safety and security for those we protect.”

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EU and UK in talks about Europe-wide defence funding amid fear of US pullback

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EU and UK in talks about Europe-wide defence funding amid fear of US pullback

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Britain will this week join EU leaders in groundbreaking talks about setting up Europe-wide defence funding arrangements, as the continent struggles to beef up its military amid fears of a disappearing US security blanket.

UK chancellor Rachel Reeves will hold talks with other European finance ministers at a G20 meeting in Cape Town this week, as the war in Ukraine enters its fourth year.

“It could be a fund or a bank. For example, there is the concept of the Rearmament Bank, which we are also considering,” Polish finance minister Andrzej Domanski said.

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Domanski told the Financial Times that discussions had been taking place with the UK for months, adding: “Without Great Britain, the defence of Europe is difficult to imagine.”

The UK Treasury confirmed that Reeves would “raise defence financing proposals with her European counterparts” at the G20, but said talks were at an early stage.

Donald Trump has demanded European Nato allies increase defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP, from an existing 2 per cent target that some still do not reach, or risk losing US protection. 

The US president’s rapid re-engagement with Russia, a country that most European countries see as an existential threat, has sparked frantic discussions on how to collectively bolster Europe’s defensive capabilities and reduce reliance on American troops and weapons.

Friedrich Merz speaking on Sunday © Ina Fassbender/AFP via Getty Images

On Sunday Germany’s incoming chancellor Friedrich Merz declared that Germany had to fundamentally remake its security arrangements and end a decades-long reliance on Washington, saying Trump was “largely indifferent” to Europe’s fate and the continent needed to “achieve independence”.

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Collective European defence spending was broadly discussed during a call this weekend between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and a separate call between von der Leyen and Norway’s Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, according to a person briefed on the discussions. 

European countries are looking for ways to increase defence capabilities at a time of tightly constrained national budgets. By leveraging national guarantees, a bank would allow countries to boost spending without increasing their balance sheets upfront.

The UK is seeking ways of increasing defence spending from 2.3 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent, costing at least £5bn extra a year, when its ability to boost outlays is heavily constrained by its self-imposed fiscal rules. 

General Sir Nick Carter
General Sir Nick Carter served as Chief of the UK Defence Staff from June 2018 to November 2021 © Andrew Matthews/PA

Among the proposals is one from General Sir Nick Carter, former head of the British military, who has suggested a “rearmament bank” to tap into Europe’s savings pool, modelled on the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development — the lender set up after the fall of the Iron Curtain to support central and eastern Europe. 

“The Treasury is interested in it,” said one person involved in discussions with Reeves’ team. However, Treasury officials said there were many models of multilateral financing on the table and that Reeves had an open mind on the next steps.

Experts said a benefit for Reeves of Carter’s “rearmament bank” was that it would mitigate the impact of extra defence spending on the fiscal rules.

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Andy King, a former UK official who is now at Flint Global, a consultancy, said such a bank had the potential to raise “significant resources for defence without materially impacting the fiscal rules”. He added: “That’s not a certain outcome: the detail would matter in terms of how the entity was structured and how it used its lending capacity.”

The EU leaders meeting in late March will discuss common defence needs, and Poland’s goal would be to make progress on the funding needs at an EU finance ministers gathering in April, ahead of a decision by leaders in June. 

The European Commission said this month it would partially lift EU fiscal rules to allow countries to invest in defence, a move that would allow countries to borrow without incurring sanctions.

Von der Leyen has also opened the door to “common European financing” on common defence projects, and is expected to detail funding options in March.

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DHS memo lays out plans to detain migrants at Fort Bliss and other U.S. bases

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DHS memo lays out plans to detain migrants at Fort Bliss and other U.S. bases

An immigrant prepares to board a military removal flight last month at Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas.

U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena/U.S. Department of Defense via Getty Images


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U.S. Army Sgt. 1st Class Nicholas J. De La Pena/U.S. Department of Defense via Getty Images

WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Trump administration is developing plans to build immigration detention facilities on U.S. military bases around the country, according to an internal memo obtained by NPR.

The Department of Homeland Security is asking the Department of Defense for help detaining immigrants without legal status, according to the DHS memo, a step that could significantly expand the military’s role in immigration enforcement.

The memo sent earlier this month from Juliana Blackwell, the acting executive secretary at DHS, lays out a plan to use Fort Bliss, near El Paso, Texas, to “stage detainees for removal from the United States.”

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The request is still in the planning stages, according to a Defense Department official who was not authorized to speak publicly. But if activated, the plan could dramatically expand detention capacity to support President Trump’s push for mass deportations.

Fort Bliss would initially detain up to 1,000 immigrants during a 60-day evaluation period, the memo states, and could eventually hold as many as 10,000 immigrants while serving as a “central hub for deportation operations.”

Fort Bliss could then serve as the model for as many as 10 other holding facilities on military bases nationwide, including Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey; Niagara Falls Air Reserve Station near Buffalo, N.Y.; Hill Air Force Base in Utah; and Homestead Air Reserve Base near Miami.

There is some precedent for using U.S. military bases to house immigrants. The Biden administration stood up a temporary shelter for unaccompanied migrant children at Fort Bliss, and also housed tens of thousands of Afghans at military bases in Wisconsin, New Jersey and elsewhere after the fall of Kabul.

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On Friday, the Trump administration removed the acting head of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement amid dissatisfaction with the pace of arrests and deportations.

A lack of detention space may be one obstacle. ICE’s existing detention facilities are at full capacity, with more than 41,000 immigrants in custody, according to the most recent data from DHS.

At a White House press briefing last week, deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller pledged to use “every element and instrument of national power” to accelerate deportations of immigrants with criminal convictions and final orders of removal.

“We are shortly on the verge of achieving a pace and speed of deportations this country has never before seen,” Miller said.

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Some Agencies Urge Staff Not to Comply With Elon Musk’s Performance Email

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Some Agencies Urge Staff Not to Comply With Elon Musk’s Performance Email

Several Trump-appointed agency leaders urged federal workers not to comply with Elon Musk’s order to summarize their accomplishments for the past week or be removed from their positions, even as Mr. Musk doubled down on his demand over the weekend.

Their instructions in effect countermanded the order of Mr. Musk across much of the government, challenging the broad authority President Trump has given the world’s richest man to make drastic changes to the federal bureaucracy. The standoff serves as one of the first significant tests of how far Mr. Musk’s power will extend.

As the directive ricocheted across the federal government, officials at some agencies, including the F.B.I., the office coordinating America’s intelligence agencies and the Departments of Defense, State, Energy, Health and Human Services and Homeland Security, told their employees not to respond.

Mr. Musk’s email had even reached the inboxes of sitting federal judges — who are in the judicial branch, not the executive. The administrative office for the federal courts advised judges and staff that “this email did not originate from the judiciary or the administrative office and we suggest that no action be taken.”

The public pushback reflects a growing unease — and, in some cases, alarm — behind the scenes across the Trump administration about the perception of Mr. Musk’s unchecked power.

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The unease runs from lower staff to some cabinet secretaries, who have tired of having to justify specific intricacies of agency policy and having to scramble to address unforeseen controversies that Mr. Musk has ignited.

Those officials are aware that he has influence over the president privately, and they fear him using X, the social media website he owns, to single out people he views as obstructing him, according to one senior administration official.

Hours after a senior Defense Department official publicly and firmly pushed back on Mr. Musk’s directive on Sunday afternoon, Mr. Musk singled him out for retribution, saying on X that “anyone with the attitude of that Pentagon official needs to look for a new job.”

One person who was quiet about the controversy throughout much of the weekend was Mr. Trump; after posting on social media on Saturday morning that he wanted Mr. Musk to be more “aggressive,” and then bragging about the purge of federal workers in a speech hours later, the president had remained mute on the subject for much of Sunday.

That afternoon, however, Mr. Trump posted a meme, which he said came from Mr. Musk, mocking federal workers who had to explain their duties and accomplishments, but he did not weigh in on the internal government conflict between his appointees.

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Mr. Musk’s public statements about his cost-cutting effort, known as the Department of Government Efficiency, have often expressed an open contempt for the federal work force, which includes some of Mr. Trump’s supporters.

By Sunday afternoon, some of the pushback against Mr. Musk from administration officials — coming in large part from the national security apparatus and law enforcement agencies — had become public and explicit.

“The Department of Defense is responsible for reviewing the performance of its personnel and it will conduct any review in accordance with its own procedures,” Darin S. Selnick, the acting Pentagon official in charge of personnel, said in a statement, instructing Pentagon employees to “for now, please pause any response.”

Tulsi Gabbard, the director of the office of national intelligence, ordered all intelligence community officers not to respond, in a message to intelligence officials reviewed by The New York Times.

“Given the inherently sensitive and classified nature of our work, I.C. employees should not respond to the OPM email,” Ms. Gabbard wrote.

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Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, wrote in an email to employees that “the F.B.I., through the office of the director, is in charge of all our review processes,” telling workers that they should “for now, please pause any responses.”

Senior personnel officials at the State and Homeland Security Departments also instructed their employees to not respond to the email.

At the Justice Department and F.B.I., the threatening signals from Mr. Musk were met with a mix of anger and amazement that anyone would issue such a blanket demand without consideration for sensitive areas such as criminal investigations, legal confidentiality or grand jury material.

Some law enforcement supervisors quickly told employees to wait for more guidance from managers on Monday before responding to the demand, according to current and former officials.

Other departments gave conflicting guidance. The Department of Health and Human Services told its employees on Sunday morning to follow the directive. An hour later, an email from the Trump-appointed acting director of the National Institutes of Health, a subordinate agency, told employees to hold off on responding. Hours later, the health department told all employees to “pause” responses to the ultimatum.

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On Saturday, Mr. Musk posted a demand for government employees to summarize their accomplishments for the week, warning that failure to do so would be taken as a resignation. Soon after, the Office of Personnel Management, which manages the federal work force, sent an email asking civil servants for a list of accomplishments, but it did not include the threat of removal for not complying.

Unions representing federal workers suggested that Mr. Musk’s order was not valid. They advised their members to follow guidance from their supervisors on how, and whether, to respond to the email.

In a scathing letter on Sunday, Everett B. Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees — the largest federal employee union — told the acting director of the Office of Personnel Management that the email sent to federal employees was “plainly unlawful” and “thoughtless.”

Mr. Kelley demanded that the order be retracted, and noted, “By allowing the unelected and unhinged Elon Musk to dictate O.P.M.’s actions, you have demonstrated a lack of regard for the integrity of federal employees and their critical work.”

Multiple intelligence agencies, including the National Security Agency, had warned employees that responding could risk inadvertently disclosing classified work.

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Although Mr. Musk’s original email told employees not to include classified material, current and former intelligence officials said that if an adversary gained access to thousands of unclassified accounts of intelligence officers’ work that it would be able to piece together sensitive details or learn about projects that were supposed to remain secret.

Representative Mike Lawler, a New York Republican whose seat may be among the most fiercely contested in 2026, raised doubt about the order even as he gave broader support to Mr. Musk’s cost-cutting effort.

“I don’t know how that’s necessarily feasible,” Mr. Lawler said of the ultimatum. “Obviously, a lot of federal employees are under union contract.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, also criticized Mr. Musk’s order.

“Our public workforce deserves to be treated with dignity and respect for the unheralded jobs they perform,” she wrote in a statement on social media. “The absurd weekend email to justify their existence wasn’t it.”

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It is unclear what legal basis Mr. Musk would have to justify mass firings based on responses to the email, and the White House and the Office of Personnel Management did not immediately answer questions about the threat of removal.

But Mr. Musk — who made similar unconventional demands during his takeover of Twitter, now known as X — insisted on Sunday morning that the order amounted to “a very basic pulse check.”

In a series of posts, Mr. Musk also promoted baseless claims of wage fraud — that a significant number of “non-existent” or dead people were employed in the federal work force, and that criminals were using the fake employees to collect government paychecks.

“They are covering immense fraud,” Mr. Musk said in response to a post by a supporter that said that “the left is flipping out about a simple email.”

His claims echo a similar one that tens of millions of dead people may be receiving fraudulent Social Security payments. A recent report by the Social Security Administration’s inspector general — a watchdog that investigates the program for waste, fraud and abuse — found that “almost none” of the people in the agency’s database who had likely died were receiving payments.

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Reporting was contributed by Julian E. Barnes, Hamed Aleaziz, Apoorva Mandavilli, Devlin Barrett, Rebecca Davis O’Brien, Ken Bensinger, Kate Conger, Sheryl Gay Stolberg, Adam Goldman, Minho Kim, Kate Zernike, Lisa Friedman and Margot Sanger-Katz.

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