The lead sharpshooter for a local SWAT team has revealed a shocking detail about events before the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump earlier this month at a rally in Butler, Pa.
In an interview with ABC News reporter Aaron Katersky, the local Beaver County, Pa., team said it had “no communication” whatsoever with the U.S. Secret Service before the shooting attempt and did not make contact until afterward.
On the day of the rally, the SWAT team was positioned on the second floor of the building that the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, later used to shoot that day. The lead sharpshooter noted that the SWAT team was supposed to receive a “face-to-face briefing” with the Secret Service agents when they arrived on site; however, it never happened.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service snipers whenever they arrived, and that never happened. So I think that that was probably a pivotal point where I started thinking things were wrong because that never happened, and we had no communication with the Secret Service,” the lead SWAT sharpshooter said.
Katersky again pressed the team’s top sharpshooter, asking if he had received any communication from the Secret Service “at all on that Saturday.” The SWAT leader clarified that there was no communication from the agency “until after the shooting.”
“And by then —” Katersky interjected before the SWAT sharpshooter responded, “It was too late.”
Katersky continued to explain that the local SWAT team had deemed Crooks “suspicious” before the shooting, and had sent texts with a description and pictures of the 20-year-old. However, none of this information was passed on to Secret Service leaders because of a lack of communication between the two groups.
The SWAT team was assigned to the second floor of Building 6 at the American Glass Research facility by the Secret Service. From there, they could only see into the crowd at the Trump rally. Katersky pointed out that the team reported their inability to see Crooks was not due to a sloped roof or hot weather, but was actually due to the placement chosen by the Secret Service.
There’s more. Local law enforcement provided radios to the U.S. Secret Service for cross-agency coordination during the July 13 rally. However, Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said on July 28 that the Secret Service never used the radios, as reported by The Blaze.
“We also have it confirmed that the radios that local law enforcement gave the Secret Service sniper teams were never used by the Secret Service,” Johnson said on “Fox News Sunday.”
“So again, all of the communication was channeled,” Johnson said. “The sniper and the SWAT teams were on different communications channels than the patrol officers, different communications channels from Secret Service, all funneled in through a central communications system, which delayed things and allowed this tragedy to happen.”
Johnson, the ranking member of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, stated that counter-snipers did not identify Crooks as a target until after he began shooting at Trump and the rally crowd just after 6:11 p.m.
“They acquired him after the shots were fired,” Johnson said. “But again, we need detailed interviews with those individuals to find out exactly what happened. It’s unbelievable how little information has been coming from federal law enforcement.”
Johnson disclosed that the Secret Service had received images of Crooks taken by a counter-sniper in the area of American Glass Research Building 6 at 5:14 p.m. before the shooting.
The counter-sniper first noticed Crooks at 5:10 p.m., according to a preliminary timeline that Johnson’s office released, The Blaze reported.
