(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The Senate Homeland Security Committee has released transcripts of its interviews of the Secret Service agents involved in the deadly July 13 Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania—including one agent who had an encounter with an unidentified ATF agent who was there for reasons that are still unclear.
Questions about who the mystery ATF agent is and why he was at Butler have persisted ever since Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisc., released information about the unidentified man days after the shooting.
According to Johnson, a mysterious man in a gray suit was one of the first officials on top of the AGR building to examine the body of the alleged shooter, Thomas Crooks. Johnson said that gray-suite man directed law enforcement to send photos of Crooks to an ATF agent in Philadelphia, ostensibly to run a facial recognition search on the deceased shooter.
Johnson’s disclosure had many observers, including this writer, suspecting that the gray-suit man was with the ATF.
However, a Secret Service site agent told the Senate committee that the ATF agent she encountered was dressed in plain clothes.
The Secret Service site agent said the ATF agent approached her before the shooting with concerns about a bike rack that was used as a crowd barrier.
“He was concerned that people, it might fall over, that people might, you know, be able to, to get, you know, get over it. And so then he kind of brought it to my attention. I was like, ‘Well, who are you?’ … He said, ‘ATF,’” the agent told lawmakers, according to the interview transcript.
The Secret Service site agent admitted that she didn’t ask for the man’s credentials.
“He just was acting like part of the plan … And then I just, I didn’t ask any further questions. I mean, at that point I was just like, okay. I don’t know,” she said.
“I still don’t know why ATF was there or who asked them to be there or what their role was,” she added.
The Secret Service agent’s name was redacted in the interview transcript, but is identified as the assistant site agent—meaning she’s likely either Myosoty Perez and Dana DuBrey, the two site agents identified by the New York Times.
Other Secret Service agents interviewed by the Senate committee also expressed ignorance about the ATF. The lead sniper, for instance, said he didn’t know ATF was at Butler, while the boss of the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh office, Timothy Burke, said the site agent never told him about the mystery plain clothes ATF agent.
The ATF didn’t immediately respond to a Headline USA email query about the site agent’s interview transcript.
According to the Senate’s report on the Trump shooting, the ATF said the agent was there in a “personal capacity.”
“ATF told the Committee that there was an ATF agent present in his personal capacity at the Butler rally on July 13 but that ATF as an agency had no official presence at the rally and did not provide any security assistance before shots were fired. The committee has yet to speak with the ATF agent who was at the rally,” the report said.
The committee added that it “continues to seek a transcribed interview” with the agent, and that it is still seeking info “related to any ATF facial recognition searches of Crooks’ body.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
