Law enforcement personnel assigned to roof of AGR building apparently went inside because it was 'too hot,' Sen Josh Hawley says, citing whistleblower
Whistleblowers have told Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley that a law enforcement officer who was assigned to monitor the roof of a building that would-be former President Trump assassin Thomas Crooks fired from on July 13 left their post because it was "too hot."
Crooks, 20, fired multiple rounds from the roof of American Glass Research (AGR) Building 6, which was outside the rally perimeter but had a direct line of sight to where the former president was standing on stage at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"This comes from a whistleblower with direct knowledge of the Secret Service plan and setup that day," Hawley said. "And what this whistleblower tells my office is that there was at least one law enforcement person assigned to the roof itself. In other words, the plan called for a law enforcement individual to be on the roof at all times during the rally. And that did not happen. And what the whistleblower tells me is the law enforcement individual who was assigned to that roof abandoned it."
Butler's temperature reached a high of 92 degrees on July 13, and prior to the assassination attempt, emergency personnel at the rally were mostly focused on attending to people suffering from heat-related illnesses.
Hawley, who visited the rally site on Friday, noted that the AGR building in question was about 150 yards or fewer from the main stage of Trump's rally.
While Congress has confirmed that Crooks purchased a ladder at Home Depot prior to the rally shooting that left 50-year-old firefighter and father Corey Comperatore dead and two others — 57-year-old David Dutch and 74-year-old James Copenhaver — critically wounded, he could have accessed the roof of the AGR building without a ladder. Lawmakers who visited the site on Monday were able to reach the roof without a ladder.
"…He or she was too hot and just thought it was unnecessary to be out there."
— Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo.
The same whistleblower told Hawley that multiple law enforcement personnel were also assigned to patrol the perimeter of the building "to make sure that somebody couldn't just jump up" onto the roof, possibly from one of the air-conditioning units jutting out from the windows of the building, the senator said.
"All of these whistleblowers who've now come forward to my office, saying things like: law enforcement was assigned to be on the roof, and they weren't. They were assigned to be patrolling the perimeter of that building, and they weren't. They were supposed to be communicating over a common radio frequency, and they weren't," Hawley said. "I have to say, none of that surprises me because it is just astounding with those kind of failures and errors that this 20-year-old was able to get up on in plain view of everybody onto that low-slung roof and take multiple shots at the [former] president."
Approximately one hour passed between the time law enforcement officials first identified a suspicious person near the rally grounds and the time Crooks fired. Officials temporarily lost sight of the suspicious person, but then around 5:52 p.m., a sniper "had eyes on him," which was about 20 minutes before the gunfire rang out, Hawley said, citing a briefing he attended with former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle last week.
The whistleblower also told Hawley that the Secret Service had delegated the AGR building and the roof to local or state law enforcement but noted that both local and federal officials have been pushing blame onto one another.
"There's a lot of effort on the part of both Secret Service, on the one hand, and DHS on the other hand, and then also state and local law enforcement to push the responsibility off onto each other. So this is just why we need to get these facts into the open. We need to have real and substantive hearings, not like the one [on Monday] where the former Secret Service director wouldn't even respond to questions. What a farce that was," Hawley said.
