U.S. Senate Committee on Rules and Administration

07/30/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 07/30/2024 13:57

At Senate Hearing on the Security Failures at Former President Trump’s Rally, Klobuchar Demanded Answers from Secret Service and FBI Leaders

WATCH KLOBUCHAR'S FULL REMARKS HERE

WASHINGTON - At a joint Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing titled the "Examination of the Security Failures Leading to the Assassination Attempt on Former President Trump" U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asked Acting Director of the United States Secret Service Ronald L. Rowe, Jr., and Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation Paul Abbate about the security protocol failures at the Butler, Pennsylvania rally.

"At today's hearing, I asked Acting Secret Service Director Rowe about the security failures and communications breakdowns that led to the horrific attempt on former President Trump's life," said Klobuchar. "I'll continue pressing the Secret Service to redouble its efforts to ensure the security of presidential candidates, and in turn the security of our democracy."

A transcript of Klobuchar's questions is available below. Video is available HERE for download.

Senator Amy Klobuchar: Thank you very much. Thank you to all of you for holding this hearing. I appreciate it. Acting Director Rowe, we had the classified briefing, and also today, there was taking responsibility for the agency, and your own personal emotion and reaction to your visit and what had gone wrong. For the people in my state that keep asking me, "I just don't get how he got on the roof," I know we've gone through great details and a lot of examination - could you just give a minute on what went wrong and how you think it can be fixed? Because I think it's just going to help to dispel the conspiracy theories. There's some people that think it didn't really happen, which of course, is completely ridiculous. It did. There are some people that think all kinds of conspiracies went on within the government, which is also false, but could you just tell them what went wrong so they understand?

Ronald L. Rowe Jr.: Thank you, Senator.

I thought long and hard about this. I think this was a failure of imagination. A failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees. I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions. The assumptions that we know our partners are going to do everything they can and they do this every day. But we didn't challenge our own assumptions of, "we assume that someone's going to cover that. We assume that there's going to be uniform presence." We didn't challenge that internally during that advance.

So moving forward, I've directed that when we're talking to people and we're making requests, we are very specific about what we want. We are providing explicit instructions on exactly what our expectation is, and what we need them to do, and what we want them to do. That's the only way that we're going to be able to move forward beyond this.

And let me just tell you that our state and local law enforcement partners are the best. So this belief that somehow they are less than federal law enforcement, or they're less than the Secret Service. They're out there patrolling communities every day. They're the ones out there going into hazardous conditions every day. They know their communities. They have the ability to enforce state and local laws. Our advance agents do not.

Klobuchar: Right.

Rowe: We need them. And we need them to be partners with us. And I think we need to be very clear to them, and that may have contributed to this situation.

Klobuchar: Yeah. I appreciate that and I have the same respect. Next, one of the things you mentioned to me, and to all of us, in this other briefing was the texting protocol. And I think a lot of us think about this in non-security settings, about how people are just texting all the time instead of talking and how it takes our eyes off, in your case, the target. Could you talk about what might have gone wrong there and how you think things could change when the hope is that their eyes are constantly on the scene and on the potential targets and risks?

Rowe: Thank you, Senator. So, again, we need people focused on the problem or on their area of responsibility. It was great that there was a text chain, but that communication needs to go over the net, it needs to go over a radio channel so that everyone has situational awareness of it. The point I was making in the in the closed-door briefing is that we have to get to a point now where we are using our radio systems to have that collective awareness of this. One of the things that I've directed is that in addition to the interoperability, we're gonna roll out common operating picture, a common operating platform that we utilize for national special security events. We have the ability to roll that out to the field that has a blue force tracker in it that's able to… where you can put where all your state local assets are, where our federal assets are. But in addition to that, I want people using the radio. So it's great that the tactical elements are talking to each other. It's great that the shift is talking to each other but we have to be able to make sure that whenever we come across a situation, that everyone has situational awareness of this. You know, in my time when I was operational in the President's detail, you know, we were given the explicit instruction, "Hey, if it's if you're gonna pass it, if it's relevant enough that you feel like you need to pass that information, do it over the radio," and that was the protocol that we had. And I think over the years, perhaps with the advent of technology and smartphones, perhaps we've gotten away from that, but we need to get people back on the scope, back on mission, back focused on what they need to be responsible for.

Klobuchar: Okay, and the next question, I'll put in writing. Thank you very much, Mr. Abbate, but it's just pointing out that we've seen this rise in threats against Members of Congress, which of course is relevant to this. [There were] 8000 just last year, more than four times [the number] over the past seven years. I'll want to ask you in writing about the steps that the Justice Department is taking to prioritize these cases. I know there's been some changes made.

Paul Abbate: Yes, Senator, it's of our highest priority and we're urgently working on it 24/7 a day every day to protect each and everyone here.

Klobuchar: Appreciate it. Thank you both.

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