WASHINGTON (TNS) — The shooter who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump planned to blow up his own car and escape the Butler Farm Show site in the ensuing chaos, a key lawmaker said Sunday.
House Foreign Affairs chair Michael McCaul, R-Texas, provided the first explanation of why the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, had explosives in his car and a detonator on his body. Crooks climbed a rooftop outside the security perimeter and shot Trump, killing a spectator and injuring three people, including the former president.
“He had a detonation device on him and two bombs in the car,” McCaul said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
“What his plan was, was to assassinate the president, create a diversion by blowing up his vehicle on the other side of the property, and then he could escape.”
McCaul, who toured the site, said Crooks should not have been able to get a clear shot at the former president.
“This individual should never have been that close to the president of the United States,” McCaul said. “It was very, very close. And the fact he even got there in the first place was a failure. It should have been stopped.”
He said Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle did the right thing by resigning last week.
“Any time you have an attempted assassination, that is a failure. And she said that herself,” he said. “I think the agents are good. I think the problem is, you know, the president is under a lot of threats, obviously. And one from Iran as well. They asked for additional agents. They were not given that. So, it was the leadership.”
McCaul said the new House task force investigating the attempted assassination should be able to submit a report by the end of the year.
Meanwhile, U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., a member of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said on “Fox News Sunday that Ronald Rowe Jr., the acting Secret Service director, told senators during a briefing last week that “he can’t defend what happened in Butler. I don’t think anybody could.”
Johnson said it has been confirmed that at 5:45 p.m. on July 13, the Secret Service sniper teams received pictures of Crooks and knew he was at the building from where he shot the president, and that the sniper teams did not use the radios they were given by local law enforcement.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday morning.
