Secret Service member Googled rooftop Trump failed assassin fired from as report reveals disturbing details

A damning report has detailed numerous slip-ups by officials surrounding a failed assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, which ultimately resulted in a bullet grazing his ear.

The new report released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday (July 2) explained there had been a number of ‘missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt’ the attempted assassination at the July 13, 2024, Butler, Pennsylvania, rally.

It revealed that there had been 102 missed local radio transmissions from authorities, which allegedly contained information that a man (later revealed to be would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks) was being searched for as a potential danger to the POTUS prior to the shots ringing out.

The report details how a perfect storm of missed emails and a short-staffed Secret Service meant opportunities to stop Crooks before he fired a shot may have been missed.

According to a new report, 102 radio communications were missed (Photo by SAUL LOEB / AFP via Getty Images)

Crooks' nine-minute drone flight scoping out the area less than three hours before he shot at Trump went undetected by the Secret Service due to a technical malfunction. The counter drone operator was described as 'under-trained', as emails to assign a counter drone operator to the event were ignored.

The report also found that the Secret Service 'never received three transmissions from local law enforcement that the suspect on the roof had a long gun', which the report says meant they did not have the proper 'sense of urgency' to report the threat to Trump's protective detail.

A suspicious person later revealed to be Crooks was first spotted by local law enforcement at 5.38pm, around 30 minutes before the attack, though they didn't realise he had a gun.

There was later confusion after a mistaken report by local police that the suspicious person had left the roof, and multiple communication issues.

At 6.09pm local time, law enforcement called the Secret Service and Pennsylvania State Police communications room with information about Crooks.

They were apparently ‘warning them of a suspicious person on the AGR complex’s roof’.

But instead of asking for the location, the supervisor allegedly also ‘did not immediately identify it as a risk’, nor did he ‘recall learning that the suspicious person was on the roof’.

It said he had ‘delegated communications about the suspicious person to the counter drone operator because it was a “busy time” on Secret Service radios and the counter drone operator was sitting near him and offered to help’.

Thomas Crooks was able to get onto the roof and fire at Trump before Secret Servicemen were alerted (Photo by Yasin Demirci/Anadolu via Getty Images)

Because the Secret Service counter drone operator did not know where the rooftop was in relation to where Trump was standing, he apparently resorted to Google instead of asking local police.

“Instead of asking local law enforcement personnel for the AGR complex’s location, the counter drone operator searched online for it, and was still searching when Crooks fired his first shots,” the report said, and two minutes after the warning came to the room, Crooks fired eight shots at Trump.

“Moreover, Secret Service decision-makers responsible for protecting President Trump while on stage at the Butler event were not made aware of Crooks’ presence at any time,” the report continued.

In the end, Trump’s ear was grazed, and one attendee was shot and killed, with others wounded.

Crooks was then shot and killed by law enforcement at the rally.

A US Secret Service spokesperson told UNILAD: "The U.S. Secret Service today is a stronger and more capable agency than it was in 2024, thanks in part to significant institutional reforms and investments in technology, personnel, and protective operations.

"We concur with the Office of Inspector General's recommendations. Many of these recommendations were already identified through the agency's Mission Assurance Review, as well as Congressional, Government Accountability Office, and OIG assessments, and have since been implemented as part of our ongoing reform efforts.

"We appreciate the continued support and investment from Congress and the Administration as we modernize and right-size the agency to meet an increasingly dynamic threat environment; one that has only intensified since the summer of 2024."