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Secret Service Gives Update On Trump Assassination Attempt In July; Secret Service Gives Update On 2nd Apparent Trump Assassination Attempt. Aired 1:30-2p ET

Aired September 20, 2024 - 13:30   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[13:30:00]

RONALD ROWE, ACTING DIRECTOR, SECRET SERVICE: -- something that we have not seen in a little while.

I can tell you that applications right now are at an all-time high for applicants seeking employment with the United States Secret Service.

So I do believe that we are going to meet this. We have no choice. We have the 2028 Summer Olympics ahead of us in Los Angeles. The Secret Service will be responsible for the security planning of that.

That is going to require a tremendous amount of personnel, a tremendous amount of resources, and a tremendous amount of collaboration with state and local and other federal partners.

We are going to get there. We are getting there now. We have filled all of our training classes going into this next fiscal year. So we're getting there. We have turned the corner.

We're showing those metrics to Congress. And I think that's the question that they've had. And we are going to show them that we can deliver on this.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And just the second question is, former President Trump has said that he is going to the Alabama-Georgia football game this weekend. Are those kinds of events particularly concerning given he could be around tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people?

ROWE: So I'm not going to comment on protectees' schedules. What I'll tell you is that each of them is complex and each event is different. And that those advanced teams, they know what they have to do to make a secure environment for our protectees.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you for doing this.

You said we're now moving into the accountability phase of this Butler investigation. You did not want to discuss names of who might be punished, so to speak.

But can you give us more detail, at least maybe how many people would face punishment or repercussions for what happened in Butler? At what levels of the organization those people represent and what level of punishment that they may face?

ROWE: So again, I can't comment on this. This is a personnel matter that is still pending.

What I will tell you is that I have not asked for anybody to retire. That was not -- I know some of that was reported. That is false.

And with respect to the disciplinary process, it will be handled in accordance with our table of penalties. That will be led by the Office of Integrity in coordination with our Office of Professional Responsibility.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And then one follow up as well. All this let's talk about making things more robust, more agents in the field, this type of thing, this is not the first presidential election you guys have had to secure. So why weren't all those moves put in place prior to this year's election?

ROWE: So the former president has had robust security around him since he left office. More robust than prior former presidents.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

JACKSON RICHMAN, WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT, "THE EPOCH TIMES": Thank you, Acting Director Rowe. Jackson Richman of "The Epoch Times."

Has security been adjusted or increased following the Florida attempted assassination attempt. After all, according to Congressman Matt Gaetz, a DHS official has warned that there are five assassination teams targeting former President Trump.

The official warned that there isn't enough protection to deal with that level of threat. Are you aware of this assessment? And what is the Secret Service doing to respond?

ROWE: So I will tell you, as I -- as I mentioned earlier, we, of course, are evaluating coming out of West Palm Beach and we're having those conversations with state and locals.

I'm not going to talk about unnamed sourcing or the report you -- you mentioned. I'm not familiar with that.

RICHMAN: And local law enforcement doesn't have the same training that Secret Service agents do. Will the Secret Service be training local law enforcement ahead of events as to prevent another Butler?

ROWE: So right now, we are actually having some very good discussions with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center about developing a curriculum to assist our state and local partners.

And what I'll say is some of the things that we've been talking about, our state and local partners, while I know people have said they're not trained like the Secret Service. Men and women in law enforcement protect their communities every day.

They -- they understand how to handle a crisis situation. They understand how to respond to a violent felony in progress. They know what their jobs are.

We certainly -- when we ask them and enlist their assistance, we're relying on them. So I think it's important that we always try to give back to them, whether it's through training or forensic support or investigative support.

And so one of the things that we're contemplating now is partnering with the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center to develop not only law enforcement guide but also develop a training curriculum through Flexi (ph) with a cadre of Secret Service personnel to be able to train them in the principles of events.

And that will only help them when dignitaries come to their district, or perhaps if they're protecting a mayor or a locally elected official. So we're all about giving back to them.

Next month, we're going to unveil a guide on how to come up with a multidisciplinary threat assessment team. That's going to be led by our National Threat Assessment Center.

[13:35:59]

So we are very, very in tune with what our state and local partners, how they support us. And we're constantly evaluating what we can do to not only bolster those relationships but give back to them.

RICHMAN: Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: (INAUDIBLE)

I'm going to -- I'm going to -- I'm going to give just ask -- I don't know. You guys have really covered it. I'm sorry.

I'm going to --

(CROSSTALK)

(LAUGHTER)

ROWE: You only get one.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I'm going to go back to the line-of-sight issues and the roof issues. Can you just lay out very clearly who was responsible for security on those roofs? Was it the locals? What was the plan? And how did it fail?

And then also, secondly, you keep talking about a paradigm shift. But what does that mean? Can you kind of detail what you mean by that? ROWE: So with respect to the AGR building -- and that's where you're

going for, right? When we construct a site, not only were you worried about what -- who can get into a site, but also who can look into that site.

So there should have been clearer direction about what we needed done at the AGR building. That -- that was discussed during the advance, but I think there was a lack of follow-through on -- based on the information I have now and what I'm seeing.

There should have been better follow through on -- in some aspects of that about access control to that property, about access control to the collateral property of the AGR building. And so it was about not giving the state and locals clearer direction on what we needed done.

With respect to the paradigm shift, this is about looking at the organization holistically. For example, the communications issue. Communications we're problematic. And I think what we're -- I'm looking at is we need to have communications that are more closely aligned to the operations.

And so coming out of July 13th, what I've seen and the direction I gave is we have to be very -- we have to be very efficient with where we're putting our security rooms.

Recently, I was on a visit where, again, similar to Butler, where there was a unified command post. Just as there was in Butler, there was one at this location, where not only did you have emergency services in so far as fire life safety, but you had emergency management officials.

You had the highway patrol and the state police in that room. You had local law enforcement in that room. You had Secret Service agents in that room monitoring frequencies and listening to what was going on in those state and local networks.

In addition to that, the locals were flying a drone in proximity to the site. That drone feed was being beamed into that unified command post. And our agents had total domain awareness about what was going on.

Also, they had traffic cams. They're able to pipe in those traffic cams into that unified command post. That is the model by which our field -- they have taken this to heart.

And those special agents in the field are now having those conversations and they are directing exactly what we need and they're posting are people exactly where we need to be.

So that when our protectees or in a sight, we have total awareness of what's going on around us, and we have total aware fairness of what's being communicated on those local networks.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And if I could just follow up with one question. Down in West Palm Beach, the -- on the evening of the attempted assassination down there, the local chief, Ric Bradshaw, had said that during -- when Trump was president, there would have been a lot more security around the perimeter but, basically, now the Secret Service does the best that they can.

Can you -- but you said that he has got the highest levels of security now. I mean, can you compare and contrast, like, is it the same now as he would have been getting while he was the sitting president?

ROWE: So what I'll say is the former president has the highest levels of Secret Service protection. And I think the sheriff actually went back and clarified his statements, so I would point you to that. I believe he did that on Monday.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Thank you, Director.

I wanted to ask about Sunday's incident as well. Is it your view -- I know you've talked about the procedures working as intended. Is it your view that there wasn't any type of security lapse that allowed that armed individual to get within a few hundred yards of the former president?

ROWE: What I can tell you is we're looking at it from an after-action report, looking at reviewing that.

But what I think it just goes to show is that that's why we have tripwires, that's why we have systems out there, that's why we have redundancies built into our protective model. And that's what was demonstrated on Sunday.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And in terms of the report I mean, what specifically will be different on the ground now? For instance, are you mandating that command posts have both Secret Service and local law enforcement in them? Will well enforcement have to communicate on the same frequencies?

Are there any sort of practical changes that you've made that are in effect, you know, based on the report?

[13:40:01]

ROWE: Yes. So what security -- from location, right, being where local law enforcement is, right? The broad use of technical security assets, ballistic glass, leveraging partnerships with the Department of Defense, being able to move materials, move personnel across the country in support of a nominee.

So those are things that we've been doing post July 14th. And those are things that are going to probably be in existence in perpetuity moving forward.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: (INAUDIBLE)

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: I had a -- also had a question about Florida. Can you say whether there's any indication that the suspect might have surveilled golf courses any time before Sunday or what led him to choose that day to be there for maybe 12 hours?

ROWE: So it's an active investigation, so I would refer you to the FBI for that.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: And can you say anything more about -- golf courses are sprawling open places. Anything that would be publicly visible that you could say, here is how we are beefing up protection when a protectee is on a golf course?

ROWE: So again, our -- what I've said and I'll continue to do this -- and I have to be very mindful of our -- of our techniques or tactics and our procedures.

It is probably not good to continuously not only talk about Secret Service procedures because we're telegraphing to adversaries, we're telegraphing to people who probably would intend to do harm to our protectees.

But what I will tell you is that our model, our protective model, consists of multiple layers and redundancies, the outer, the middle, the inner. Those are the layers. And then we have redundancies built into that.

And so with respect to golf courses or any open venue, we apply those methodologies.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right. You're listening to the acting director of the Secret Service laying out the timeline of what happened there on July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania.

And what's very clear from what he said is that the failure or at least one of the big failures happened well before the event, with how it was planned by the advanced team, a failure to adequately command and coordinate with local law enforcement ahead of time and the day of.

And also then to communicate both the expectations ahead of time and the follow-up with them before the event. And then, during critical moments, as the situation became a threat.

And then it evolved into something that obviously became very much an emergency in that assassination attempt that we saw.

He said it wasn't a lack of resources. It was a failure to anticipate a possible threat. And he said that there were line-of-sight issues that were acknowledged, but they just weren't addressed.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: He also talked about overreliance on mobile devices. He outlined a series of problems as he detailed the timeline of when the shooter was spotted that day and how the response from law enforcement and the Secret Service came about.

More broadly, he talked about this being a pivotal moment in the history of the Secret Service, saying that we need to shift in paradigm because the threat level is evolving.

He said there will be organizational changes. He described some tension right now within the agency, talking about finite resources that are being stretched to the max right now. Despite talking about applications for work in the Secret Service being at an all-time high, talking about triple-digit hiring. It's clear that Secret Service is undergoing rapid change.

[13:43:31]

There's a lot to break down and discuss. So we're going to take a quick break. And when we come back, we'll continue following this breaking news from the Secret Service.

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[13:48:03]

SANCHEZ: Breaking news, moments ago, the acting director of the Secret Service acknowledged a shocking breach of protocol before former President Donald Trump we're shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13th.

Rowe saying -- Ronald Rowe saying there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach in protocol, and that those employees will be held accountable. Though he did not provide details as to exactly how many and what consequences they'd be facing.

KEILAR: Yes, that's right. That was very notable.

Let's bring in CNN's Zach Cohen, along with Juliette Kayyem. She is a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security and a CNN senior national security analyst. We're also joined by Bobbie Chacon. He is a retired FBI agent.

And, Zach, first to you.

This idea of complacency as a root cause of what transpired on July 13th, both ahead of the event and during the event.

ZACHARY COHEN, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER: I mean, it was really shocking to hear the man who is now the acting director of the Secret Service say that this force that is charged with protecting both the sitting president and Donald Trump, the former president, and potentially the future president, the reason for these security failures that almost got Donald Trump killed was complacency.

The fact that, lulled into a false security, that things we're missed, protocol was breached because of complacency.

And frankly, that does line up with what he detailed afterwards. He went through a series of failures that led up -- in the days leading up to July 13th, and then also on the day of July 13th that ultimately led to the Secret Service and local police not stopping this shooter, frankly, before he was able to get off shots.

And I want to look at this idea of the venue, the venue and concerns that we're raised by the Secret Service to the Trump campaign about the Butler farm venue that was ultimately chosen and this AGR building, the building where the shooter was ultimately perched on top of and did have a clear line of sight.

The acting director said that, yes, the Secret Service was concerned about the venue. This is always a challenge. And they were also concerned specifically, on the day of the rally, about the potential line of sight, clear line of sight to Donald Trump from that rooftop.

[13:50:03]

And ultimately, one of the things that really stuck out was this communication breakdown that happened. Once local police saw somebody on the roof, they radioed those concerns, the channel that the locals were using, but that concern never reached the U.S. Secret Service.

And in fact, the director said that they were on the phone trying to figure out what was going on when the shots actually rang out. So obviously, by that point, it was far too late.

SANCHEZ: Zach, Rowe was also asked about this bill that unanimously went through the House. And he didn't seem to think that it was going to create major lasting change right away.

COHEN: And it gets back to the complacency issue, requires a culture change at the Secret Service. And that's something that I think Rowe alluded to today as well, talking about a paradigm shift that has to happen at the Secret Service.

And that's not something that can be motivated simply by more resources or more money. Now he did say that the Secret Service is stretched incredibly thin from a personnel standpoint, that they don't have enough people to carry out the mission at the rate and at the level that they're doing now.

He mentioned that both the president, Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris, are all receiving that highest level of protection, that presidential level of security.

And obviously, the sitting president received some additional resources from other agencies that are unique to president. That's like classified communication systems, that air support when they're flying through restricted airspace.

But from a Secret Service level, Acting Director Rowe made very clear that Donald Trump receives exactly the same protection that President Biden does.

And look, he didn't have a good answer for what additional resources or what that additional money are funding could have, how that could help resolve the issues that we're raised both on July 13th and also some of the issues that contributed to Sundays incident at Trump's golf course in Florida.

KEILAR: Juliette, how do you see this? He's basically said that it stems from a very concerning issue of the Secret Service being satisfied with subpar performance.

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: Yes. I thought that was an incredible statement.

And so then just to sort of drill down on sort of the operational deficiencies that are clear here.

I mean, the first is, of course, the advanced team planning. Those of us who are on air or looking at -- in July, we're looking at those pictures and say, how the heck was that building not within the security perimeter.

And basically, everyone who had been at that site understood that that building needed to be within the security perimeter so that it would be clear that the state -- that the Secret Service would have to protect it.

So I thought -- and that that seemed to be the area where the director said people are now -- Secret Service agents are now under review. And that -- that would have happened, you know, days before.

The second is command and control. So people were, I think, surprised during the first assassination attempt, how much the Secret Service works with state and locals. It's quite common. Think about the roads near an area where you have a president, you need state and local assets.

The director said too much reliance on them, which seemed clear. You had a lot of state and locals there that -- that the Secret Service might have been the better law enforcement agency.

And secondly, it was not -- the Secret Service was not making it clear what the state and locals ought to do. And I think that confusion, who was in charge of that roof became clear as we learn more.

Finally, third is just what we call situational awareness, which is, in real time, did the Secret Service and state and locals and everyone else know what was going on.

It is clear people were picking up their phones and calling about a guy on a roof. I have to tell you, I've done a lot of mega-event planning. There are platforms that all of us use in which communication is direct, it is simple, it is, there's a guy on the roof and everyone knows.

Why people we're picking up their phones may be that complacency that the director was talking about. So that's the three sort of big operational takeaways from -- from the presser.

SANCHEZ: Bobby, what stood out to you, given what you heard from the acting director?

BOBBY CHACON, RETIRED FBI SPECIAL AGENT: Well, certainly, what Juliette just mentioned. I was in -- I was responsible for the FBI's assets. I ran a crisis response team in Los Angeles. So I drew up the plans for FBI assets at things like the Rose Bowl, the Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes, things like that.

We always had a mega R.B. (ph), a mega R.B. (ph) with every agency responsible. And that included LAPD, Secret Service, L.A. Fire Department sitting in our command post and we sitting in there, which were adjacent to each other.

I mean, this -- this lack of communication was hard to me. And then surprised me, quite frankly, because every time in my career I worked with the Secret Service with brushed doubles amid events, they we're always on it.

They we're almost to the point where we would say they we're heavy handed. And everybody did what Secret Service said. Whenever there was a president or a former president involved, they we're on it.

What they say goes. And we just hop to it. And we did whatever they needed us to do. So it really surprises me. So I think the complacency was a part of this.

Now, as far as being stretched thin, there were thousands of Secret Service agents not involved in the protection at all, doing electronic crimes, doing financial crimes, things like that.

[13:55:05]

That grew out of the history of being in the Treasury Department. That's where Secret Service started. When they were transferred to Homeland Security, those functions may have better stayed in Treasury Department.

The IRC CID, who hired a bunch more agents to be handling that stuff. They could rededicate a lot of their agents that are not doing protection to the protection function without even hiring anybody new.

There are overseas agents. They can pull them back. There's a lot of functions within the Secret Service that don't -- don't address protection.

And they need to, maybe, if he wants to shift that paradigm, maybe look at releasing some of those functions to others. And going -- getting back to protection being the primary responsibility.

KEILAR: Yes, we'll have to see how this paradigm shift takes place. It is going to take some time and a lot of effort.

Bobby, thank you so much.

Juliette and Zack, thank you.

Still ahead, Vice President Kamala Harris, she's on her way to battleground Georgia. And her focus is reproductive rights after a new report revealed two deaths there linked to the state's abortion restrictions that were imposed after Roe v. Wade was overturned.

We're live from Atlanta.

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