The Washington Examiner’s Salena Zito argued a new report on the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump indicated this was a complete “institutional failure.”
The report, released by the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee on Wednesday, stated that the Secret Service’s failures to protect Trump at the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were both “foreseeable” and “preventable,” including the lack of defining responsibilities for the rally’s security nor securing the building the shooter was on. Zito, who was at the rally herself, assessed that the report indicates that the lack of preparedness by the Secret Service raises even more questions on how this was allowed to happen.
“It appears as though this was an institutional failure,” Zito said on Fox News’s America’s Newsroom, “all the way down.”
“And when you have people guarding the president, you want seasoned people who have intuition, who have instincts, who understand risk and assess it, because that’s what they constantly do,” she continued. “And to put someone there who doesn’t have those instincts, who hasn’t been in the trenches for awhile, they don’t always know exactly what to look for. And that seems to be the case of what happened in Butler.”
Zito recounted how she, her daughter, and her son-in-law were attending the rally and saw local and federal law enforcement “standing around” for hours. She said these police officers were waiting around to receive orders on securing the event, but “that never happened.”
Paul Mauro, a retired New York Police Department inspector, stated there were “significant failures” in securing Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, due to a lack of manpower. Mauro explained that “apparently,” some police agencies would not allow officers to receive overtime to secure the event, so those who wanted to work the event had to do so in a voluntary manner.
Since the assassination attempt at Butler, the former president survived a second assassination attempt while golfing at the Trump International Golf Club in Florida, with the shooter hiding in bushes with an “AK-47-style rifle with a scope” at the course Trump was golfing at. The Secret Service has since admitted it did not sweep the perimeter of the club prior to the former president’s visit.
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Trump has alleged that the FBI and Department of Justice’s actions to go after him “nonstop with weaponized law affairs” will prevent them from conducting an unbiased investigation into his most recent assassination attempt. He called for the state of Florida to take over the investigation in a statement Thursday, which Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) announced shortly after the second attempt on Trump’s life.
DeSantis explained that it is not in “the best interest” to have federal agencies that are “seeking to prosecute” the former president lead the investigation on the assassination attempt.
