Secret Service chief comments on Trump rally response probe; local law enforcements officials accuse agency of ‘misleading’ comments

(Gray News) - Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Friday he is taking accountability for the shortcomings in the security for Donald Trump’s July 13 rally at which a gunman shot at the Republican presidential nominee.

He said the Secret Service is taking “immediate steps to insure our protectees are indeed safe.”

And he assured local law enforcement that they won’t be held accountable for Secret Service shortcomings.

Rowe said the Secret Service is undergoing a mission assurance review to make sure policies were followed at the rally, and if there were violations, agents will be held accountable.

Local law enforcement officials in Pennsylvania said they’re upset over accusations from the U.S. Secret Service that they were responsible for security failures that allowed a gunman to try to assassinate former Trump.

“It’s extremely misleading to the American people. I mean, it makes our guys look incompetent,” said Nathan Bible, district attorney of Beaver County.

Local law enforcement in Beaver County were part of a multijurisdictional team assisting security for the Butler County Trump rally.

Officials there are pushing back hard against the U.S. Secret Service officials who seemed to blame local law enforcement during testimony to Congress.

“We assume that the state and locals had it. We made an assumption that there was going to be uniform presence out there, that there would be sufficient eyes to cover that, that there was gonna be counter sniper teams in the AGR building, and I can assure you that we’re not going to make that mistake again,” said Ronald L. Rowe Jr., U.S. Secret Service acting director.

A gunman got within 150 yards of Trump and fired several bullets from an AR-style rifle, which injured Trump in one ear and killed a rally attendee.

The suspect, Thomas Crooks, 20, was killed by Secret Service snipers.

The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, resigned from her position a day after several lawmakers demanded she do so.

Detective Pat Young leads the Beaver County Emergency Services unit that had a sniper in the AGR building, the building where Crooks was when he started shooting.

Based on Rowe’s statements, “I hear that the acting Secret Service director has no faith in local law enforcement. And we have always considered ourselves partners in the mission of the Secret Service. However, that statement really hurts those relationships,” Young said.

Young and Bible are emphatic that their men followed Secret Service orders.

“So to me, you’re talking about a building that was 150 yards away with a clear line of sight to the stage, and for you to just say, ‘well, the local guys have it,’” Bible said. “Everything that was done there by any of the local guys was done at the direction of the Secret Service.”

The two local law enforcement leaders specifically took offense when Rowe suggested all the local snipers had to do was look out the window.

“I’m not saying that they should have neutralized him, but if they’d just held their post and looked left, maybe there’s a lot of maybes there, senator,” Rowe said.

Young criticized the statements from Rowe.

“It was absolutely not that simple, and the first thing that comes to mind is that we have not had any contact with Secret Service since, I actually, since the last election cycle,” Young said. “The acting director to say that this is where our guys were and this is what they seen is a misrepresentation to the American people. We were never asked what we seen or where we were from Secret Service.”

Young and Bible said this image presented by the Secret Service to Congress is misleading.

They said it reflects an angle their snipers did not have and that their sniper was here at the far end of the AGR building looking straight out towards the crowd.

“Their views in no way could have seen Crooks without pushing their heads outside the window and looking back,” Young said. “The videos and the exhibits presented to Congress are purely wrong.”

As questions continue, Trump has announced he’s planning another rally in Butler County.

“At this point, me along with the I’m sure the majority of the American people have many questions as to what and how the Secret Service does their job,” Young said. “For everything that they say that they did wrong, there’s a ‘but.’ And that but ... is usually assigning blame to the local law enforcement or state police.”