Officials shared new details regarding the timeline of the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and additional background on the shooter during a Senate hearing Tuesday.
U.S. Secret Service acting director Robert Rowe, who took over as head of the agency following the resignation of Kimberly Cheatle last week, called the shooting a “failure on multiple levels.”
“I will not wait for the results of those findings to assess where we failed that day, and will continue to take immediate steps to ensure we do not repeat those failures,” Rowe testified before the Senate Judiciary and Homeland Security committees, in reference to the multiple investigations into the assassination attempt.
The shooting at a Trump rally on July 13 in Butler, Pa. sent a shock through the nation, inciting calls for accountability in the Secret Service tasked with protecting the 45th President. While officials ultimately neutralized Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old assailant, Rowe said he could not understand “why there was not better coverage or at least somebody looking at that roofline when that’s where they were posted.”
Officials have not yet identified a motive, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Deputy Director Paul Abbate said. There is currently no evidence that the shooter acted with any co-conspirators.
Here’s the information we learned during the Senate hearing on July 30.
Crooks’ timeline leading up to the shooting
Abbate said that investigations remain ongoing and details could be refined, but shared a current working timeline of events on the day of the Trump assassination attempt.
Crooks registered to attend the Butler, Pa. Trump rally on July 6. That day, he Googled, “How far was Oswald from Kennedy,” referencing the man who shot President John F. Kennedy in 1963 in Dallas. The following day, Crooks visited the Butler farm area where the rally was set to take place, which Abbate says shows Crooks was planning in…
