Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe vowed on Friday to provide “high-level” information on any disciplinary action he takes against agency employees over the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.
Rowe said, however, that he would not give “real-time updates” because of the internal nature of employee matters.
Rowe’s remarks came as part of the first press conference the Secret Service has held on the shooting on July 13 that left one dead, two seriously injured, and Trump with a minor injury.
The press conference marked an effort by Rowe to be transparent with the public after former Director Kimberly Cheatle faced widespread criticism over her refusal to answer certain questions on the security failures that led to the assassination attempt. Cheatle resigned less than two weeks after the incident.
Rowe said his agency was conducting an internal investigation called a “mission assurance review” and that he “will not rush to judgment nor ignore due process” when it comes to reprimanding employees over the shooting.
“If in fact there were policy violations, at that point now, it will go into a parallel path of a disciplinary type of investigation,” Rowe said. “Those are internal investigations that deal with employee matters so we’re not going to be able to provide real-time updates.”
Rowe added that he would “at a high level provide at least some type of statement that people are being held accountable.”
Rowe said that typically the Secret Service does not comment at all on open investigations but that the historic assassination attempt, the first on a president or former president in four decades, was an “extraordinary” circumstance. He indicated that he would provide more information in the coming weeks.
Authorities say Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, climbed onto a nearby rooftop and fired eight rounds with an AR-15 rifle into a crowd at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Rowe shed new light on the communication gaps that occurred at the rally, saying the Secret Service countersniper who responded to the gunshots by killing Crooks had no awareness of an armed person on a roof until the shots were fired, in part because of technological failings.
Rowe explained that interoperability is a regular challenge and that the Secret Service and local law enforcement were communicating on various networks, including cellular and radio networks.
Radio warnings from local law enforcement about a gunman on the roof “did not make it over” to the Secret Service in time, Rowe said.
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Rowe was adamant that the shooting was a Secret Service failure and not a local law enforcement failure. He also praised Secret Service agents for their everyday work.
“The Secret Service’s successes are largely unknown. You will only know of our failures,” Rowe said.
