The gunman who opened fire at former President Donald Trump’s Pennsylvania rally was reported as a suspicious person — and photographed — one hour before he began shooting, according to three sources familiar with a briefing for senators Wednesday.
Secret Service and FBI officials shared a timeline of events that revealed troubling new details about the assassination attempt and raised questions about why Secret Service officials allowed Trump to take the stage.
Thomas Matthew Crooks — who had a range finder and a backpack with him — was reported as a suspicious person one hour before he began shooting, Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., said in a statement after the briefing.
“This was a 100% cover-your-ass briefing,” Barrasso said. “He had a range finder and a backpack. The Secret Service lost sight of him.”
Roughly 30 minutes after the initial suspicious person report, Pennsylvania State Police notified the Secret Service of a suspicious person at 5:51 p.m. The Secret Service notified its snipers at 5:53 p.m., the sources said.
At 6:02 p.m., Trump took the stage. At 6:09 p.m., members of the crowd notified police that Crooks, 20, was on a rooftop. Two minutes later, Crooks opened fire on Trump at 6:11 p.m.
Senators were also told that Crooks visited the site of the assassination attempt last week, the sources said.
Barrasso said Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle should be removed.
“No one has taken responsibility,” Barrasso said. “Someone has died. The [former] President was almost killed. The head of the Secret Service needs to go.”
In an interview Tuesday with ABC News, Cheatle said that she did not yet have all the details about the incident but that there was a “very short” period of time between when Crooks was identified as suspicious and when he began shooting.
A local police sniper team was inside the building from which Crooks fired at Trump, Cheatle said, and a decision was made not to deploy officers on the roof because it was sloped.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof at its highest point,” Cheatle said Tuesday. “And so, you know, there’s a safety factor that would be considered there that we would want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”
Local law enforcement officials denied that local snipers were in the same building as Crooks. On Wednesday, a Secret Service official told NBC News that the local sniper team was not actually in the building, as Cheatle said. Instead, it was in another building in the same complex.
In a separate statement to NBC News, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said, “To be clear, the individual was never identified as a threat. The individual was identified as a suspicious person. Meaning there was no indication at the time that he was a danger. It was an individual that required further investigation.”
He said that it was “not accurate to say we were aware of a threat prior to the time that we identified him as a threat which was when he was neutralized.”
“Snipers were notified that local police were working an issue at the 3 o’clock position. That was what was communicated over police radio,” he added.
During Wednesday’s briefing, FBI Director Christopher Wray said investigators had not established a motive in the shooting, according to the three sources.
Wray told lawmakers that the FBI has interviewed 200 people and reviewed 14,000 images, including photos and livestreamed video of the rally, according to the sources.
Crooks had little to no social media presence, Wray said, and he used encrypted communication.
Wray also said investigators had not found a foreign connection to the attack, the sources said. The Biden administration recently obtained intelligence about an Iranian assassination plot against Trump, but U.S. officials said the threat had no connection to last week’s shooting.
Crooks, who worked as a dietary aide at a nursing home, requested the day off Saturday but told his employer he planned to return to work Sunday, a senior U.S. law enforcement official told NBC News.
After the shooting, Trump said on his social media platform that the bullet pierced the upper part of his ear. During an appearance Monday at the Republican National Convention, he had a bandage covering most of his ear.
Corey Comperatore, a former chief of the Buffalo Township Volunteer Fire Company, was killed in the shooting. Two other people — David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 74 — were injured. Their conditions were changed from critical to serious Wednesday, according to the hospital where they are being treated.
The House Oversight Committee on Wednesday subpoenaed Cheatle to appear for a public hearing this month, calling the assassination attempt “a total failure of the agency’s core mission.”
An official with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, responded with a letter, which was obtained by NBC News, saying Cheatle is available to testify later this month or early next month.
“The Department and USSS share your concern over the appalling events that occurred in Butler, Pennsylvania, last weekend,” the official wrote, using the initialism for the Secret Service. “And are committed to doing all we can to get to the bottom of what happened.”
