The Secret Service has reassigned five agents who were working the Butler, Pennsylvania rally where the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump took place amid on ongoing investigation into the incident and agency, according to two sources familiar with the situation.
These agents have been transferred to administrative duties, relieving them of their operational responsibilities, including planning protective details for candidate rallies, sources who were not authorized to speak about the matter said. Instead, they spoke on the condition of anonymity. Four of the agents are from the Pittsburgh office, and one is from Trump’s personal detail.
The Secret Service’s reassignment comes as dozens of lawmakers have been calling for the agency to fire agents involved with the rally detail, or place them on leave at a minimum. Kimberly A. Cheatle, the agency’s former director, resigned a day after she testified before Congress nine days after the incident.
The assassination attempt occurred on July 13, when Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed onto a roof on the Butler Farm Show grounds in Butler, Pa., about 450 feet from where Mr. Trump was addressing some 15,000 supporters, fired eight shots, killing one man, injuring Trump, and critically wounding two others. A Secret Service sniper posted on another roof in the area killed Crooks with a single shot.
While dozens of Secret Service agents and officers were part of the security detail for the event, a handful had been assigned direct oversight of the plans.
The five agents that were reassigned were placed on administrative duties rather than being placed on administrative leave, which typically requires agents to turn in their badges and guns until an investigation is completed.
“I want to be neutral and make sure that we get to the bottom of it and interview everybody in order to determine if there was more than one person who perhaps exercised bad judgment,” the Secret Service’s acting director, Ronald L. Rowe Jr., said during a congressional hearing last month when pressed by Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, as to why nobody in the agency has been fired.
“You’re asking me, senator, to completely make a rush to judgment about somebody failing. I acknowledge this was a failure of the Secret Service,” he added.
Currently, there are several ongoing investigations into the assassination attempt, including an internal “mission assurance” review the agency is conducting.
