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Bombshell IG Report: Secret Service Was Clueless and Searching the Internet for the Shooter’s Rooftop Location During the Butler Assassination Attempt
by Jim Hᴏft Jul. 3, 2026 7:45 am177 Comments
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The level of incompetence is beyond belief.
A newly released Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General (OIG) final report has dropped yet another devastating indictment of the U.S. Secret Service’s catastrophic security failures at the July 13, 2024, campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Thomas Crooks nearly assassinated President Trump.
The most jaw-dropping detail: While local law enforcement was in full panic mode searching for a suspicious person with a rangefinder who had climbed onto the roof of the American Glass Research (AGR) complex, preparing to fire on President Trump, the Secret Service counter-drone operator was literally searching the internet trying to figure out where the building was after his equipment failed.
According to the Inspector General, the Secret Service completely failed to detect Crooks’ nearly nine-minute drone flight over the Butler rally grounds because the agency’s only counter-drone operator was inexperienced and his equipment malfunctioned.
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Crooks flew his drone from approximately 3:51 p.m. until 4:00 p.m., using it to capture aerial views of both President Trump’s stage and the rooftop from which he would later launch his attack. The drone operated entirely undetected because the Secret Service counter-drone system was offline.
The report reveals the operator did not even discover the equipment failure until the morning of the rally because he had failed to test the system the previous day, despite agency policy requiring exactly that.
Even more astonishing, the operator had received only about 20 minutes of informal instruction before being assigned to one of the highest-profile security operations in the country and had never shadowed an experienced counter-drone operator.
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After discovering the malfunction, the lone operator spent hours attempting to troubleshoot the system.
The report details a remarkable sequence of events:
- The operator first called the equipment vendor shortly after noon but could not reach technical support.
- He finally connected with support around 1:11 p.m.
- By 3:04 p.m., the vendor informed him the issue would need to be escalated because weekend staffing was limited.
- While technical support dragged on, Crooks launched and completed his surveillance drone flight.
- The system was not restored until approximately 4:29 p.m., nearly half an hour after Crooks had finished scouting the attack route.
The OIG used a 3D model of the site to confirm the drone’s path and what Crooks could see.
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The report further notes that the operator ultimately learned that a broken Ethernet cable had disabled the system. He replaced it with one borrowed from President Trump’s audiovisual crew.
According to the Inspector General, had experienced Technical Security Division personnel been assigned as originally requested, the malfunction likely would have been resolved before Crooks ever launched his drone.
According to the OIG report, the Secret Service did not establish a joint communications room with local law enforcement. Instead, they set up their own room with Pennsylvania State Police (PSP), while local agencies operated from a separate mobile command center 257 yards away.
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The result?
- Local law enforcement’s communications room received 102 radio transmissions about an increasingly urgent search for a suspicious person (later identified as Crooks).
- The Secret Service communications room received only five phone calls and three text messages.
- They never received the critical transmissions stating the suspect was on the roof with a long gun.
At 6:09 p.m., when local law enforcement called the Secret Service room warning of a suspicious person on the AGR roof, the communications room supervisor and counter drone operator did not even ask for the building’s location. The operator started Googling it instead of treating it as an immediate threat.
Multiple protective detail members told investigators that if they had been warned about the suspicious person search, they would have delayed President Trump’s speech or removed him from the stage.
They were never given that chance.
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The OIG identified five major missed opportunities:
- Drone detection failure — under-trained operator + malfunction + denied backup.
- Communication failure — no joint comms room, missed 102 radio calls, no urgency conveyed to protective detail.
- Insufficient personnel — limited intelligence sharing inside the Secret Service about a long-range threat. Only counter snipers were added; no counter surveillance unit that could have “zeroed in on the AGR complex.”
- Failure to secure the area outside the perimeter — PSP’s operations plan (reviewed by Secret Service) did not include securing the AGR complex. The Secret Service gave no feedback or clarification. Local assets were never positioned to block access. A PSP supervisor said if asked, he would have assigned officers there.
- Failure to block line of sight — Secret Service identified the AGR roof as a concern but did not confirm or push for mitigation. A site agent counterpart proposed using trucks already on site; protectee staff rejected it as “too close to the press shot.” She proposed an alternative but never informed her lead agent or supervisors that the LOS from the AGR remained exposed. DTD supervisors wrongly assumed local law enforcement was covering the AGR grounds.
The Secret Service concurred with all seven OIG recommendations. Some are already closed; others remain open. The agency has since created the Aviation and Airspace Security Division and updated some policies on communications rooms and coordination.
You can read the full report here or below:
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