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      Secret Service Pulls From Biden’s Protective Team to Guard Trump

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      In the aftermath of an assassination attempt last month, the agency has shifted members of President Biden’s protective team to the Trump campaign.The Secret Service has bolstered former President Donald J. Trump’s security in a variety of ways since the assassination attempt on him last month, several people familiar with the matter said on Thursday, including by temporarily shifting part of President Biden’s protective team to Mr. Trump.The Secret Service has also secured ballistic glass, which is designed to repel bullets, to provide enhanced protection for Mr. Trump at future outdoor campaign rallies, those people added, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential methods.The reassignment of members of a president’s team to a candidate is unusual, said a Secret Service official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential policy matters. But the increased threat of violence against Mr. Trump, combined with Mr. Biden’s recent reduced travel schedule, made the step both necessary and feasible, the official added.A White House spokesman had no immediate comment, and a Trump campaign spokeswoman declined to comment.The Secret Service has been under a cloud since July 13, when a gunman was able to fire, unimpeded, on Mr. Trump at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The attack grazed Mr. Trump’s ear, killed a spectator and seriously wounded two others. The F.B.I. is investigating, and congressional leaders have also opened inquiries.The Secret Service has taken responsibility for the security lapses that made the shooting possible. Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned as the agency’s director and has been replaced. But even as it reels from its worst presidential security breach in more than four decades, the agency has had to continue its mission of protecting three dozen current and former officials, and their families, through what is proving to be a challenging and intense presidential campaign year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Secret Service takes ‘full responsibility’ for Trump shooting security failures

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      The US Secret Service takes “full responsibility” for the events that led up to the attempted assassination of Donald Trump last month, the acting director of the agency said on Friday.In a press conference in Washington, Ronald Rowe, who replaced Kimberly Cheatle after she stood down from her position as director of the service after Trump was shot, said: “This was a failure.”He said agents should have had better cover of the vantage points, from where a 20-year-old gunman ended up firing shots at the former president while he spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last month.Trump is the Republican nominee for president, and a bullet grazed his ear as he was addressing the crowd, when shots rang out, killing one in the crowd and injuring others.The gunman, Thomas Crooks, fired several shots from a rifle after positioning himself on a warehouse roof that Rowe admitted “was not far” from the stage where Trump was speaking. Crooks was killed by government counter-snipers. Rowe said agents should have had “eyes” on that position beforehand.“We should have had better coverage on that roof line,” he said.The agency is conducting an internal investigation and Rowe said disciplinary action would be taken if necessary, and procedures will be changed.He said the Secret Services did not have “any idea” the shooter had a gun until shots were fired.There was a failure in communications and surveillance of the area in the run-up to the rally, Rowe said. No one was trying to push blame on to local law enforcement, he added.There had been speculation earlier that local police should have been able to stop the assailant and also warn the federal agents effectively before he opened fire from the roof of a warehouse with a sight line to the rally stage.Rowe said that local law enforcement communicated to the federal agency that there was a man on the roof, but the message did not reach the Secret Service.He added that federal agents were not present at the command post that was being run by local law enforcement.They were the first to see a man get up on to the roof of the warehouse, which turned out to be the shooter.The gunman had looked up online the 1963 assassination of President John F Kennedy, and had flown a drone over the rally site, before shooting Trump.“We want to deter people from even thinking about doing something like this again,” Rowe said. More

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      in US Politics

      Social media account possibly linked to Trump shooter under FBI scrutiny

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      Though they have not pinpointed a motive behind Donald Trump’s failed assassination attempt, investigators are examining a social media account with antisemitic and anti-immigrant posts that they suspect might be connected to the former US president’s would-be killer, according to the FBI deputy director, Paul Abbate.Abbate on Tuesday appeared alongside the acting US Secret Service director, Ronald Rowe Jr, before a US Senate panel and said: “In about the 2019, 2020 timeframe, there were over 700 comments posted from this account. Some of these comments, if ultimately attributable to the shooter, appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.”While Abbate made clear that the account in question is believed to be associated with 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, he did not specifying which social media platform it was on.“While the investigative team is still working to verify this account to determine if it did in fact belong to the shooter, we believe it important to share and note it today, particularly given the general absence of other information to date from social media and other sources of information that reflect on the shooter’s potential motive and mindset,” he continued.Trump, who has agreed to participate in a victim interview with the FBI regarding his assassination attempt, has routinely espoused antisemitic and anti-immigration rhetoric.The Anti-Defamation League chief, Jonathan Greenblatt, and the White House both condemned him in 2021 and this year for, respectively, suggesting that Jewish people control Congress and the media and claiming that pro-Democratic Jews “hate Israel” as well as “hate their religion”.Trump additionally has drawn criticism for his anti-immigration comments, including his accusation that migrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”.Meanwhile, Rowe testified on Tuesday that he had visited and “laid in a prone position” on the roof of the warehouse complex in Butler county, Pennsylvania, from where Crooks fired at Trump during a political rally.“What I saw made me ashamed,” Rowe Jr said. “As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured.“To prevent similar lapses from occurring in the future, I directed our personnel to ensure every event-site security plan is thoroughly vetted by multiple experienced supervisors before it is implemented.”He also said that he directed the expansion of drones at protective sites to help detect threats on roofs and other elevated areas.During his testimony, Rowe further revealed that the Secret Service had started providing protection to six additional high-profile figures, including Trump’s November presidential election running mate, JD Vance, and his family, as well as the independent White House candidate Robert F Kennedy Jr.“I have heard your calls for accountability, and I take them very seriously,” said Rowe, who stepped into his role after Kimberley Cheatle resigned as Secret Service director 10 days after the assassination attempt. “Given the magnitude of this failure, the Secret Service’s office of professional responsibility is reviewing the actions and decision making of Secret Service personnel in the lead-up to, and on the day of, the attack.“If this investigation reveals that Secret Service employees violated agency protocols, those employees will be held accountable to our disciplinary process.”Abbate and Rowe’s testimonies follow a recent New York Times report that found that a Pennsylvania officer had spotted Crooks 90 minutes before he opened fire – 30 minutes earlier than officials had previously said.Meanwhile, in an interview with ABC on Sunday, the lead sharpshooter on a local police department’s special tactical team assigned to protect the president said that he and his colleagues were supposed to get an in-person briefing with Secret Service agents before the rally. But sharpshooter Jason Woods said “that never happened”.The ensuing shooting not only injured one of Trump’s ears – it also killed one rally-goer while wounding two others. More

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      Swat team says it had no contact with Secret Service before Trump rally shooting

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      Local police officers on a special tactical team who were assigned to help protect Donald Trump on the day the former president was wounded during a 13 July assassination attempt in Butler county, Pennsylvania, have said they had no contact with Secret Service agents before the gunman opened fire.“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, lead sharpshooter on the Swat team in nearby Beaver county, Pennsylvania, told ABC News.Woods said that initial failure in planning and communications was likely the start of errors that would lead to the 20-year-old gunman killing one spectator, injuring two others and – according to the FBI – striking the tip of one of Trump’s ears.“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” Woods told the outlet. “We had no communication.”Separately, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police assigned to guard the outer perimeter of the fairgrounds on 13 July had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be the would-be assassin.According to the Washington Post, Trump’s top advisers were in a large white tent behind the stage where the former president was speaking at the time of the shooting. They thought the sounds of shots were fireworks and later could not understand why they had not been alerted of the suspicious person before Trump took the stage.“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump told Fox News recently. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said – I think that was a mistake.”According to Woods, the first communication between the Beaver Swat team and the Secret Service was “not until after the shooting”.By then, Woods added, “it was too late”.Local counter-snipers had seen Thomas Matthew Crooks loitering near the buildings that would later become his perch 20 to 25 minutes before he opened fire. They had sent a photograph to a command center staffed by state troopers and Secret Service agents, according to testimony by the head of the Pennsylvania state police.Apparent failures in communication between different law enforcement agencies are now the subject of three separate investigations. After Secret Service director Kimberley Cheatle resigned from her post on 23 July, the FBI confirmed that Trump had been struck by a bullet – whether whole or fragmented.The FBI director Christopher Wray has also said that would-be assassin Crooks, who does not appear to have any overriding ideological motive for the attempt on Trump’s life, had searched online for the distance that Lee Harvey Oswald was from John F Kennedy when shot the president to death in November 1963.As agencies continue passing blame on for the shooting, Trump has said he plans to return to Butler for “FOR A BIG AND BEAUTIFUL RALLY” despite advice from the presidential protection service that he avoid holding outdoor rallies.Trump has also dismissed criticism that hiring at the Secret Service, and the quality of the protection it provides, was negatively affected by diversity programs – something that had become a talking point among some Republicans.At a rally in Minnesota on Saturday, he defended a “brave” female Secret Service agent who “shielded” him during the attempted assassination. He praised the agent and said she “wanted to take a bullet”.“She was shielding me with everything she could and she got criticized by the fake news because she wasn’t tall enough,” he said. “She was so brave, she was shielding me with everything, she wanted to take a bullet.”The Secret Service had not commented directly on the comments by Woods. But agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi has said the Secret Service “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again”. More

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      in Elections

      Chicago Is Prepared to Safely Host Democrats’ Convention, Officials Say

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      The Secret Service, which has been under scrutiny since the assassination attempt against Donald J. Trump, says it has reviewed its security plan for the convention in August.Chicago is prepared to host a safe and vibrant Democratic National Convention next month, federal, state and local officials said on Thursday, even as the Secret Service is still reeling from security failures surrounding the assassination attempt against former President Donald J. Trump.At a news conference in downtown Chicago, elected officials and law enforcement leaders said that they had been in close coordination on security plans for the convention for more than a year. The event will take place for four days, starting on Aug. 19.“Let me state this unequivocally: Chicago is ready,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, a Democrat. He added: “Chicago is not just hosting another convention. We are welcoming another new breath of life into our nation with the historic nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris.”Still, officials warned that the convention would take place in a heightened security environment. The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned on Tuesday amid criticism over the shooting at a July 13 rally, which wounded Mr. Trump and resulted in the death of a rally attendee, Corey Comperatore.Since the attack, the Secret Service has reviewed the security plan for the Democratic convention, said Derek Mayer, the deputy special agent in charge in the Chicago field office of the Secret Service.“Our plan allows us to adjust for any possible scenario,” he said, adding that the agency successfully coordinated security for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this month. “We expect similar results in Chicago.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Secret Service urging Trump to stop outdoor rallies after shooting – report

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      Secret Service officials are reported to be encouraging Donald Trump’s campaign to stop holding outdoor rallies in the wake of the 13 July assassination attempt on the former president at a fairground in Butler, Pennsylvania.The move, reported by the Washington Post, comes as Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday following a combative grilling before a congressional committee by both Democrats and Republicans over apparent security failures before an attempt on Trump’s life by a 20-year-old gunman.In a resignation letter, Cheatle said she’d made the “difficult” decision to leave the agency “with a heavy heart” and acknowledged that the agency “fell short” of its mission “to protect our nation’s leaders”, referring to the Butler rally.The Trump campaign, which may have favored outdoor venues until the shooting because of their larger crowd capacity, is not currently planning further outdoor events and instead is looking to book indoor venues, including basketball arenas, according to the outlet.During a rally in an arena in Grand Rapids, Michigan, on Saturday, Trump appeared to lament that some supporters had been left outside. The Republican candidate is also known for exaggerating crowd estimates, dating back at least to his inauguration in 2017.Since launching his first presidential bid, Trump has held hundreds of outdoor rallies that have become like festivals for his most ardent supporters, featuring tailgate parties and vendors hawking Trump memorabilia and campaign merchandise.According to the Post, Trump advisers had told the Secret Service the 2024 re-election campaign was planning to hold large events, and would need increased protection and assets. But the agency is believed to have turned down the requests, citing a lack of resources.If Trump now holds rallies in more secure locations, such as sports arenas, they will prove more expensive to the campaign.The rally site in Butler where the attempted assassination took place had clear sightlines to the stage far beyond its security perimeter, including the roof from which suspected shooter Thomas Matthews Crooks fired off an estimated seven rounds before being fatally shot by Secret Service snipers.It has since been reported that Crooks was able to scout out the rally site with a drone and had been identified as “suspicious” an hour before the event. The presidential protection agency had assigned security of the roof to local law enforcement and had been notified of a suspicious person minutes before the shooting took place.Former White House physician Ronny Jackson, now a Texas representative, said at the weekend that the bullet that grazed Trump’s ear came “less than a quarter of an inch from entering his head”.Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, appointed Ronald Rowe, deputy director of the Secret Service, to serve as the acting director until a permanent replacement is chosen. More

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      in Elections

      Renuncia la directora del Servicio Secreto después del atentado contra Trump

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      Kimberly Cheatle renunció este martes a su cargo tras los fallos de seguridad que permitieron que un hombre armado disparara contra el expresidente Donald Trump en un mitin al aire libre.[Estamos en WhatsApp. Empieza a seguirnos ahora]La directora del Servicio Secreto, Kimberly Cheatle, renunció el martes, después de las fallas de seguridad relacionadas con el intento de asesinato contra el expresidente Donald Trump y los llamados por parte de legisladores de ambos partidos para que renunciara al cargo.En un correo electrónico enviado al personal del Servicio Secreto el martes, Cheatle dijo que uno de los principales deberes de la agencia es proteger a los líderes de la nación y que “no cumplió con esa misión” al no proteger de la manera adecuada un mitin de campaña de un hombre armado el 13 de julio.“No quiero que las solicitudes de mi renuncia sean una distracción del gran trabajo que todos y cada uno de ustedes hacen en favor de nuestra misión vital”, dijo Cheatle en el correo electrónico, que fue revisado por The New York Times.Cheatle decía que estaba profundamente comprometida con la agencia, pero añadía: “A la luz de los acontecimientos recientes, he tomado con gran pesar la difícil decisión de renunciar como directora de ustedes”.En un comunicado divulgado el martes, el presidente Joe Biden le agradeció a Cheatle que respondiera a su llamado para dirigir la agencia. “Como líder, se necesita honor, valentía y una integridad increíble para asumir la plena responsabilidad de una organización encargada de uno de los trabajos más difíciles en el servicio público”.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Secret Service Director Resigns After Trump Assassination Attempt

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      Kimberly A. Cheatle gave up her post Tuesday after security failures that allowed a gunman to shoot at former President Donald J. Trump at an open-air rally.The director of the Secret Service, Kimberly A. Cheatle, resigned on Tuesday, after security failures surrounding the attempted assassination of former President Donald J. Trump and calls for her to step down from prominent Republican lawmakers.In an email to Secret Service agents on Tuesday, Ms. Cheatle said that one of the Secret Service’s foremost duties is to protect the nation’s leaders and that the agency “fell short of that mission” in failing to secure a campaign rally from a gunman on July 13.“I do not want my calls for resignation to be a distraction from the great work each and every one of you do towards our vital mission,” Ms. Cheatle said in the email, which was reviewed by The New York Times.She said she was deeply committed to the agency but added that, “in light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”President Biden, in a statement Tuesday, thanked Ms. Cheatle for answering his call to lead the agency. “As a leader, it takes honor, courage and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service.”Mr. Biden said he would appoint a new director soon.The resignation is a rapid fall for the agency veteran who protected Dick Cheney and Mr. Biden in their vice-presidential tenures and was publicly supported by Biden administration officials after the gunman shot at Mr. Trump. The glaring security mistakes before the shooting, however, and the heated criticism that Ms. Cheatle faced in the days since had left her position increasingly in doubt.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More