Col. Christopher Paris, commissioner of the PSP, testified for roughly four hours before the U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security regarding state police’s role at the July 13 Trump rally in Butler County, where a gunman firing from a nearby rooftop killed one audience member and wounded two others, in addition to injuring Trump.
Committee members received word shortly after the hearing started that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle had resigned over what was widely described as a massive security failure.
Cheatle had testified yesterday in front of the House Oversight Committee, with many members criticizing her opaque testimony and telling Paris that they appreciated his candor, even though he often simply did not have the answers they were looking for.
The PSP was operating in a support role at the discretion of the Secret Service, Paris said, and while state police are cooperating with a federal after-action probe, they have limited insight into the Secret Service’s rationale for its response.
State police are working jointly with the FBI on a criminal investigation relating to the homicide and apparent attempted homicides, Paris noted, as well as doing a use-of-force review of the Secret Service sniper who killed Thomas Matthew Crooks, who police have identified as the gunman.
State police have requested the Secret Service’s operational plan as part of their investigation — and while they have not been explicitly denied the materials, they yet to receive them, Paris testified.
The PSP provided 32 members to assist the Secret Service at the event, held at the Butler Farm Show fairgrounds, Paris said. Some troopers escorted Trump’s motorcade to the event; others manned security stations inside the event perimeter, and two marked patrol cars were roving outside the grounds, Paris told members of Congress.
Crooks fired several rounds from an AR-15-type rifle — eight cartridge cases were recovered, Paris said — from the rooftop of a business just outside the security perimeter, about 150 yards away from the podium where Trump spoke.
The building is one of several interconnected steel structures owned by AGR, a glass company. According to Paris, the PSP’s liaison had inquired about the building during a walkthrough before the Trump rally and was told that it would be handled by the Butler Emergency Services Unit (ESU), a joint local law enforcement agency akin to a county SWAT team.
“On that walk-through, our area commander asked specifically who was responsible for the AGR building and we were told Butler ESU was responsible for that area by several Secret Service agents on that walk-through,” Paris said.
According to information both Paris and Congress members said they had been briefed on, Crooks was flagged roughly an hour before the shooting as acting suspiciously by hanging around the building.
Approximately 20 to 25 minutes before the shooting, officers saw Crooks with a rangefinder — a device used to estimate distances to targets. One local officer texted a picture of Crooks to a PSP trooper who was in the Secret Service command center, and that trooper was told by agents to forward the picture to another phone number, but Paris said he could not speak to how the Secret Service handled the information beyond that.
Officers then went looking for Crooks to question him. According to Paris, this involved two county ESU officers leaving their position in one of the AGR buildings — where they would have had a clear view onto the rooftop from which Crooks eventually fired, according to photos and videos shown by committee members during the hearing.
Here again, however, Paris said he did not have any information as to whether the officers informed others that they were leaving their posts, nor — without having seen the Secret Service’s operational plan — what specific roles and responsibilities the Secret Service had given them.
Paris also testified that, based on the information he had reviewed thus far, one local officer hoisted up another so that they could peer onto the roof; several committee members said it appeared officers had been alerted by rally attendees who spotted Crooks on top of the building.
The officer saw Crooks and his rifle, Paris said, but was hanging from the edge of the roof with his feet dangling and was unable to get up the rest of the way. The officer dropped back down, and Crooks opened fire seconds later, Paris said.
The recurring question from committee members — which Paris understandably did not have the answer to — was why the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage given what had transpired.
“It boggles the mind,” said Rep. Dan Bishop, R-North Carolina, that the Secret Service permitted Trump to go on stage after being informed by state and local police that they had spotted a suspicious man with a rangefinder and had not yet apprehended him.
Several members of the committee who visited the site of the shooting said they had been made aware of other apparent oversights. One woman said she and other local residents were allowed to come in and decorate the rally site with no vetting, said Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Maryland.
Members were also told that the Secret Service believed the roof was too steep to post a counter-sniper on, according to Rep. Michael Guest, R-Mississippi, but congressmen were able to walk across themselves with no problem.
Rep. Lou Correa, D-California, also suggested that there were conflicting instructions between the Secret Service and Trump’s campaign team. One local officer said “Lou, we don’t know if it’s the campaign or the Secret Service in charge here,” Correa recalled.
Cheatle’s Monday testimony, according to committee Chairman Rep. Mark Green, R-Tennessee, “only raises more questions about how this roof was unsecured.”
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