A former FBI official says a communications breakdown between the Secret Service and the local police may be to blame for why President Donald Trump got shot at on Saturday at his Butler, Pennsylvania rally.
Frank Figliuzzi, a former FBI official, said that the Secret Service may have mistaken the shooter for a Butler policeman.
In an opinion piece published in Daily Mail, he said it was “highly likely” that the Secret Service was “responsible for security within an enclosed perimeter, while the local police took charge of the wider zone outside.”
Figluizzi theorized that Secret Service agents could have mistaken Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old shooter from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, for a police sniper.
Investigators said that Crooks fired multiple rounds from a rooftop around 150 meters away from Trump using an AR-15 rifle.
“We know that a Secret Service sniper must have had a clear view of the rooftop because the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead within a few seconds of opening fire on Trump,” wrote Figliuzzi.
“But why did that sniper ignore Crooks till then? One plausible explanation is that the Secret Service (which is entirely separate from the FBI) assumed the assassin was a police sniper, part of their security team,” Figliuzzi added.
He wrote that such a case “implies serious failures in communication.”
“I would expect police and Secret Service teams to not only meet and introduce themselves but map out their specific roles in detail,” Figliuzzi said in his opinion piece. “They ought to have been able to recognize each other by sight.”
Figliuzzi also wrote that he disagreed with what the Secret Service agents did during the rally, like letting Trump pause to pose for a photo with his face bloodied or complying with his request to retrieve his shoes.
“In that moment, the Secret Service had no way of knowing if the gunman was acting alone. Other shooters might have been present,” he wrote.
Figliuzzi served in the FBI for 25 years, working in its Atlanta and Washington, DC headquarters.
In 2011, he landed the role of assistant director of the FBI’s counterintelligence division. He now works as a news analyst and commentator on MSNBC.
Other details have since emerged about Crooks. He was a dietary aide at the Bethel Park Skilled Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, the center said in a statement obtained by The Hill on Sunday.
Crooks’ ex-classmate also told media outlets that the gunman was such a bad shot that he got rejected from his high school rifle team. But outside school, Crooks was a member of the Clairton Sportsmen’s Club, a club with multiple pistol and rifle ranges in Clairton, Pennsylvania, CBS News reported.
Crooks’ motives for the attack are, at press time, unclear.
For his part, Trump has emerged emboldened from the botched assassination attempt.
On Monday evening, he received a hero’s welcome at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee when he walked in with a giant bandage on his ear.
At the RNC, he declared his running mate pick — Sen. JD Vance of Ohio.
Representatives for the Secret Service and the Butler police did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider sent outside regular business hours.
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