Multiple Secret Service failures ahead of the July rally for former President Donald Trump where a gunman opened fire were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day,” according to a bipartisan Senate investigation released Wednesday. Similar to the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan House probe, the interim report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found multiple failures on almost every level ahead of the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, including in planning, communications, security and allocation of resources. “The consequences of those failures were dire,” said Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel. Investigators found that there was no clear chain of command among the Secret Service and other security agencies and no plan for coverage of the building where the shooter climbed up to fire the shots. Officials were operating on multiple, separate radio channels, leading to missed communications, and an inexperienced drone operator was stuck on a help line after his equipment wasn’t working correctly. Communications among security officials were a “multi-step game of telephone,” Peters said. The report found the Secret Service was notified about an individual on the roof of the building approximately two minutes before shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire, firing eight rounds in Trump’s direction less than 150 yards from where the former president was speaking. Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, was struck in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment in the assassination attempt, one rallygoer was killed and two others were injured before the gunman was killed by a Secret Service counter-sniper. Approximately 22 seconds before Crooks fired, the report found, a local officer sent a radio alert that there was an armed individual on the building. But that information was not relayed to key Secret Service personnel who were interviewed by Senate investigators. The panel also interviewed a Secret Service counter-sniper who reported seeing officers with their guns drawn running toward the building where the shooter was perched, but the person said they did not think to notify anyone to get Trump off the stage. The Senate report comes just days after the Secret Service released a five-page document summarizing the key conclusions of a yet-to-be finalized Secret Service report on what went wrong, and ahead of a Thursday hearing that will be held by a bipartisan House task force investigating the shooting. The House panel is also investigating a second assassination attempt on Trump earlier this month when Secret Service agents arrested a man with a rifle hiding on the golf course at Trump’s Florida club. In a statement Wednesday, U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency had already implemented some of the committee’s suggestions and vowed to work transparently with Congress and other oversight bodies investigating the July 13th shooting. He said the agency had already raised Trump’s security to the “highest level of protection that the U.S. Secret Service can provide.” “We are also diligently examining long-term solutions to challenges such as enhancing communications and interoperability with our federal, state and local partners to make sure our coordinated efforts during protective events are seamless,” he said. Each investigation has found new details that reflect a massive breakdown in the former president’s security, and lawmakers say there […]