Secret Service acting Director Ronald Rowe admitted a shocking breach of protocol before former President Donald Trump was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
“There was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach in protocol,” Rowe said at a news conference Friday. Those employees “will be held accountable.”
“This agency has among the most robust table of penalties in the entirety of the federal government and these penalties will be administered according to our disciplinary process,” Rowe said, declining to say what those penalties may look like.
The acting director also said that the Secret Service is continuing to evaluate its security posture around Trump following the apparent attempted assassination this weekend at a Florida golf course.
The agency reviews “every incident,” Rowe said in response to a question from CNN. “We look at everything, and it doesn’t matter whether there’s a critical incident that occurs. So we are looking and we’re reevaluating.”
Ready for January 6, 2025
Rowe also said the Secret Service and other law enforcement have all of the resources they need to protect the 2024 election certification process on January 6, 2025.
Heightened security around the upcoming election certification process has been widely reported, as the proceeding was disrupted during the last election cycle by a violent mob attempting to stop the certification from going forward.
Rowe said that the Secret Service has “great partnerships with all the law enforcement agencies in Washington, DC,” such as the US Capitol Police, and that the various agencies are used to cooperating for other high profile national security events like the president’s annual State of the Union address or a state funeral.
“We will have what we need,” Rowe said.
‘Serious’ failures on July 13
In a report released Friday, the agency described “serious communications failures between the US Secret Service and local law enforcement that made it harder for officers to respond to the attempted assassin.”
Law enforcement’s failed communications that day have been at the front of criticism targeting the Secret Service in the aftermath of the attempted assassination. The report said that those failures were “especially acute” when warnings about the would-be assassin never made it to Trump’s security detail, despite local officers learning of his presence on a nearby roof before any shots were fired.