The US Secret Service repeatedly rejected requests from Donald Trump’s security team for more resources and staffing in the past two years, according to multiple US reports, amid further scrutiny of the agency in the wake of the assassination attempt at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Some agents’ requests for more security equipment and agents to screen attendees at public events were denied owing to a lack of resources, reports in the New York Times and Washington Post said. In a statement to the Times on Saturday, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said security was instead sometimes supplemented with state and local law enforcement staff, or plans were changed to reduce risk.
The denied requests for additional resources were not specifically for the rally at which the attempt on Trump’s life was made, the Times reported.
A day after the shooting, Gugliemi put out a statement saying: “The assertion that a member of the former president’s security team requested additional security resources that the US Secret Service or the Department of Homeland Security rebuffed is absolutely false. In fact, recently the US Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president’s security detail.”
The reports add to pressure on the agency over security arrangements at the rally site in Butler, Pennsylvania. In the course of the briefings with Congress, law enforcement officers disclosed that the gunman had been sighted and noted as suspicious about an hour before the shooting, but he had then disappeared.
About 19 minutes before shots rang out, the man was spotted again, according to the Republican senator from Utah, Mike Lee. According to the local police chief, Tom Knights, an officer from Butler Township had climbed up the side of the building from which the shooter struck, located about 150 metres from the stage where Trump was speaking.
A CNN report said that in a statement Knight disclosed that the officer had seen the shooter, who pointed his rifle at him. “The officer was in a defenceless position and there was no way he could engage the actor while holding on to the roof edge. The officer let go and fell to the ground,” Knight said.
On Saturday night, Trump said nobody had forewarned him of a problem in the lead-up to the rally, telling Fox News: “Nobody mentioned it, nobody said there was a problem. I would’ve waited for 15, they could’ve said let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes, something.”
“I think that was a mistake,” he added. “How did somebody get on that roof? And why wasn’t he reported?”
The Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, is set to testify before the US House of Representatives oversight committee on Monday for a hearing related to the Trump rally shooting.
With Reuters
