(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A DHS-appointed panel investigating the attempted assassination of Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania campaign rally released its findings on Thursday, recommending that the Secret Service clean house and refocus its agents on the main mission: protecting dignitaries.
The DHS panel’s review is one of several investigations into the Butler Trump shooting. Others are being conducted by the House, Senate and the DHS Inspector General.
The 52-page report issued Thursday took the Secret Service to task for specific problems leading up to the July 13 rally in Butler as a well as deeper one within the agency’s culture. It recommended bringing in new, outside leadership and refocusing on its protective mission.
“Although experience within the Service is laudable and important, and some members of a future leadership team will likely be Secret Service veterans, the events of Butler suggest that there is an urgent need for fresh thinking informed by external experience and perspective,” the panel wrote.
Today's report is almost a total nothingburger.
HOWEVER, for all the deep researchers, there is an incredibly juicy detail at the very end.
The cop who radioed "shooter is down" at 6:12 pm was Greg Nicol, the same sniper who left his post, ostensibly to look for Crooks.
Nicol… https://t.co/Qxij0AchwP pic.twitter.com/nRHWNWEJPZ— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) October 17, 2024
“The new, external leadership will still undoubtedly draw on subordinates with deep experience within the Service to aid them in their acclimation, but ultimately, the non-Service perspective will benefit the protective mission during this critical juncture.”
The panel’s recommendations suggest that Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe and other senior officials could be ousted from the agency soon. So far, no agents have been fired over the events of Butler.
The panel also recommended that the Secret Service focus on its main mission, as opposed to conducting investigations. The Secret Service initially focused on stopping counterfeiters before it started protecting U.S. Presidents in the wake of the assassination of William McKinley in 1901.
“The Service shall specifically consider what current responsibilities the Service needs to shed or discharge so that it can provide its protective mission with all resources required to fulfill that responsibility,” the panel recommended.
“The Panel does not make these recommendations or related observations lightly, but rather offers them in view of the crucial nature of the Secret Service’s protective mission for the ongoing continuity of American government and democratic functioning and the extent to which the events of July 13 at Butler have revealed critical deficits in the Service’s ability to operate that mission,” the panel added.
“In that context, in the Panel’s opinion, it is simply unacceptable for the Service to have anything less than a paramount focus on its protective mission, particularly while that protective mission function is presently suboptimal.”
The report follows investigations by members of Congress, the agency’s own investigators and by Homeland Security’s oversight body.
The panel members were Mark Filip, deputy attorney general under President George W. Bush; David Mitchell, who served in numerous state and local law enforcement roles in Maryland and Delaware; Janet Napolitano, homeland security secretary under President Barack Obama; and Frances Fragos Townsend, Bush’s assistant for homeland security and counterterrorism.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
