Gnawing away at the official version of events as told by former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri said the rooftop used by Thomas Matthew Crooks to shoot former President Donald Trump was left unguarded despite plans to have officers stationed there.
“Whistleblowers tell me law enforcement personnel were in fact STATIONED to the roof the day of the Trump rally, but abandoned it, citing the heat,” Hawley posted on X.
In a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, Hawley said a whistleblower has come to him with a tale of neglect of duty concerning the roof of the American Glass Research building.
“Contrary to Director Cheatle’s public statements about the ‘safety’ of the sloped roof of American Glass Research Building 6, one whistleblower with direct knowledge of Secret Service planning for the event alleges that there was supposed to be a law enforcement presence on the roof that day,” Hawley wrote.
NEW – Whistleblowers tell me law enforcement personnel were in fact STATIONED to the roof the day of the Trump rally, but abandoned it, citing the heat. They also say law enforcement were supposed to be patrolling the building, but opted to stay inside instead pic.twitter.com/aIVNSPHUF6
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 22, 2024
On Monday, Cheatle told a House panel that despite her claims during an ABC interview the Secret Service does not have a written policy for sloped roofs. Her previous claim that the slope of the roof led to a decision not to post anyone on it despite its proximity and line of sight to the stage where Trump would speak was proved false.
“In fact, the whistleblower alleges that at least one individual was specifically assigned to the roof for the duration of the rally, but this person abandoned his or her post due to the hot weather,” Hawley wrote.
“The whistleblower further alleges that concerns over the heat prompted law enforcement to forego patrolling Building 6 and instead to station security personnel inside the building,” Hawley wrote.
“This comes from a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Secret Service plan and setup that day,” Hawley said, according to Fox News.
Should these officers be punished?
“And what this whistleblower tells my office is that there was at least one law enforcement person assigned to the roof itself. In other words, the plan called for a law enforcement individual to be on the roof at all times during the rally,” he said.
“And that did not happen. And what the whistleblower tells me is the law enforcement individual who was assigned to that roof abandoned it,” he said.
Hawley said, he was told by a whistleblower that police were supposed to patrol the exterior of the building “to make sure that somebody couldn’t just jump up” to the roof using window air conditioning units.
“All of these whistleblowers who’ve now come forward to my office, saying things like: law enforcement was assigned to be on the roof, and they weren’t. They were assigned to be patrolling the perimeter of that building, and they weren’t. They were supposed to be communicating over a common radio frequency, and they weren’t,” Hawley said.
“I have to say, none of that surprises me because it is just astounding with those kind of failures and errors that this 20-year-old was able to get up on in plain view of everybody onto that low-slung roof and take multiple shots at the president,” he said.
“There’s a lot of effort on the part of both Secret Service, on the one hand, and DHS, on the other hand, and then also state and local law enforcement to push the responsibility off onto each other. So this is just why we need to get these facts into the open,” Hawley said.
“We need to have real and substantive hearings, not like the one [on Monday] where the former Secret Service director wouldn’t even respond to questions. What a farce that was,” Hawley said.
On Tuesday, Col. Christopher Paris, commissioner of the Pennsylvania State Police, told a House panel that two officers of the Butler township police Emergency Services Unit were on the second floor of the building.
During his testimony, he said the two officers stationed there left their assigned observation post once an alert for a suspicious person was declared.
