A Secret Service counter-sniper is demanding that five “high-level supervisors” be fired in the wake of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, warning that another attempt could come before November’s election, a leaked email says.
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“This agency NEEDS to change, if not now, WHEN?” the counter-sniper wrote to the agency’s Uniformed Division, according to the email obtained by Susan Crabtree, RealClearPolitics’ White House and national political correspondent. “The NEXT assassination attempt in 30 days? Because we all SHOULD expect another attempt to happen before November.”
The email continues: “Failure is not an option, and on 7/13/24, WE failed. Not because of commitment or sense of dedication. But because our SUPERVISORS (aka leadership) knew better and thought our concerns were less than important.”
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Newsweek was not able to independently verify the email.
According to the email, the counter-sniper has refused to stop speaking out until those individuals are removed from their positions, noting that one has already left. The sniper does not specify who this individual is. However, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned last week after facing bipartisan criticism over the security lapses that allowed a sniper to fire at Trump just 147 yards from where he was standing onstage at a Butler, Pennsylvania, rally on July 13.
Ronald Rowe has since become the acting Secret Service director. He appeared before senators on Tuesday, calling the assassination attempt “a failure” of the agency.
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Things erupted after Republican Senator Josh Hawley pressed Rowe on why certain individuals had not been relieved of duty. The acting director responded, “I will tell you, senator, that I will not rush to judgment, that people will be held accountable, and I will do so with integrity and not rush to judgment and put people unfairly prosecuted.”
The Secret Service referred Newsweek to Rowe’s testimony when reached for comment.
The unnamed counter-sniper said in the email that his team was viewed by many as “‘guys who sit on the roof’ and don’t do much,” but stressed that the Secret Service’s responsibility was not to protect “an EMPTY White House located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue” but to prevent and stop “another JFK style assassination, in whatever city that may be.”
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“Sadly, we have fallen short for YEARS. We just got lucky and looked good doing it,” the email said. It added that the individuals had “conveyed these thoughts” to both supervisors and training teams, who “brushed off” his concerns “as if those with less experience somehow knew more than me.”
“The team I was once proud to be a part of, is something I have to now somehow hide as I move into my next career,” the email read. “Who wants to hire a USSS CS guy who failed? That’s the public perception I’m now faced with. The USSS CS team is a stain I will never be able to cleanse.”
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Multiple investigations into the assassination attempt are ongoing. On Tuesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee and Senate Homeland Security Committee are holding a joint hearing on the incident.
Early in his testimony, Rowe said that the Secret Service’s sniper team and Trump’s security detail did not know that Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was on the roof until he fired at Trump, undercutting claims from local law enforcement members that they alerted the Secret Service of their suspicions about Crooks over 90 minutes before the shooting.
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“The only thing we had was that locals were working an issue at the three o’clock — which would have been the former president’s right-hand side — which is where the shot came,” Rowe told senators on Tuesday. “Nothing about man on the roof, nothing about man with a gun. None of that information ever made it over our net.”
He continued: “If we’d had that information, they would have been able to address it more quickly. It appears that that information was stuck or siloed in that local channel.”
