The attempted assassination of President-elect Trump in Butler, Pa., July 13 was "preventable and should not have happened," a bipartisan task force concluded on Tuesday. The House panel blamed institutional breakdowns within the Secret Service as well as failures in security planning and execution, most notably missteps in securing the building complex where the shooter fired eight shots, Axios reports. The shooting by a lone gunman killed one person and wounded the Republican presidential nominee and two others. "The various failures in planning, execution, and leadership on and before July 13, 2024, and the preexisting conditions that undermined the effectiveness of the human and material assets deployed that day, coalesced to create an environment in which the former President — and everyone at the campaign event — were exposed to grave danger," the report says. "The Secret Service did not provide clear guidance to its state and local partners about which entity was responsible for the area," the House panel wrote. "An expressed lack of manpower and assets was not sufficiently addressed, resulting in coverage gaps on the ground."
The response to the second assassination attempt against Trump two months later in West Palm Beach, Fla., "demonstrated how properly executed protective measures can foil an attempted assassination," the panel said. The report includes recommendations that the Secret Service strengthen its capabilities by evaluating its budget, staffing and personnel retention challenges. The agency may benefit, the panel wrote, from reducing the number of people under its protection. The task force also recommended that Congress consider moving some of the Secret Service's "investigative functions" to a different agency within or outside of the Department of Homeland Security. Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said the agency "appreciates the diligence" of the task force and that the findings match its internal investigation
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