Here’s my reporting on why the Secret Service did not shoot until AFTER the shooter engaged and some context about the House Republicans’ investigation already underway (months before Trump’s assassination attempt) into whether the agency’s DEI policies are affecting its readiness.
Here's Susan Crabtree:
The blowback against the Secret Service started within the hour of the assassination attempt and continued even after Trump and other credited the agency with saving Trump’s life by quickly killing a shooter crawling across a nearby rooftop.
But a source within the Secret Service community tells RealClearPolitics that the agency rules of engagement in this situation are to wait until the president is fired upon to return fire.
“You want to take a shot then find out the guy was holding a telescope?” the source suggested. “The Secret Service is by nature reactive…and you better be right when you do react or you’re f-----d.”
The Secret Service protocol requires that a counter sniper aware of a potential shooter to radio directly to intelligence division team to respond and investigate. In this case, the investigation may have been cut short by the shooter firing his weapon, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in return.
The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible.”
“The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate,” he said.
Others with law enforcement and military backgrounds want to know whether the Secret Service utilized drones, i.e. small unmanned aircraft systems, to provide detailed situational awareness. If the agency did not use drones, why not, these experts ask. The use of drones has been a controversial issue within the agency since at least 2016. Implementing drones would have provided detailed line-of-site analysis and aerial surveillance that would have easily identified the rooftop as a potential threat area.
“The USSS has access to all the best imagery and elevation data,” the military expert told RCP. “I’m not saying they didn’t [use drones], but it’s an open question.”
The once vaunted Secret Service lost some of its former respect after a string of fence-jumping incidents and other security lapses came to light during the Obama administration. At the beginning of the Trump administration, a senior special agent in the Secret Service came under fire for suggesting in a Facebook post that she wouldn’t “take a bullet” for Trump. Kerry O’Grady, the former agent in question, was placed on administrative leave but was allowed to retire with full benefits, which outraged many in the Secret Service community.
The agency, more recently, has come under scrutiny for its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, after a female agency attached to Vice President Kamala Harris’s protective detail and identified as Michelle Herczeg, had an apparent mental breakdown and physically attacked her senior officers at Joint Base Andrews before a trip. An agency spokesman called the issue a “medical incident,” but other members of the Secret Service launched a petition over the agency’s diversity, equity and inclusion hiring and vetting policies during the Biden administration, asfirst reported by RCP.
In addition, after the attempted assassination of Trump Saturday night, conservatives blasted Rep. Bennie Thompson, the ranking Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, for earlier this year introducing a bill co-sponsored by several other Democrats that would have denied Service Service protection to Trump if he were convicted of a felony. The measure never gained traction in the GOP-controlled House.