Security questions raised after Trump survives assassination attempt

Butler — Donald Trump survived a weekend assassination attempt days before he is due to accept the formal Republican presidential nomination, in an attack that will further inflame the US political divide and has raised questions about the security lapses.

Trump, 78, had just begun a campaign speech in Butler, Pennsylvania, about 50km north of Pittsburgh, on Saturday when shots rang out, hitting the former president’s right ear and streaking his face with blood.

One person who attended the rally was killed and two other spectators were critically wounded, authorities said.

Fifty-year-old former fire chief Corey Comperatore was identified as the man killed in the incident, the Guardian reported. 

Pennsylvania’s governor Josh Shapiro was quoted saying: “Corey dove on his family to protect them last night at this rally. Corey was the very best of us. May his memory be a blessing.”

“Fight! Fight! Fight!” Trump mouthed to supporters, pumping his fist, as Secret Service agents rushed him away. His campaign said he was doing well and appeared to have suffered no major injury besides a wound on his upper right ear.

The FBI identified 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, as the suspect in what it called an attempted assassination.

He was a registered Republican, according to state voter records and had made a $15 donation to a Democratic political action committee at the age of 17.

Law enforcement officials told reporters they had not yet identified a motive for the attack.

The shooting occurred less than four months before the November 5 election, when Trump faces an election rematch with Democratic President Joe Biden. Most opinion polls including those by Reuters/Ipsos show the two locked in a close contest.

The suspect was shot dead by Secret Service agents, the agency said, after he opened fire from the roof of a building about 140m from the stage where Trump was speaking. An AR-15-style semi-automatic rifle was recovered near his body.

“In this moment, it is more important than ever that we stand united, and show our true character as Americans, remaining strong and determined, and not allowing evil to win,” Trump said on his Truth Social service on Sunday. “I truly love our country, and love you all, and look forward to speaking to our great nation this week from Wisconsin.”

Trump left the Butler area under Secret Service protection and later arrived at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

The Secret Service in a statement denied accusations by some Trump supporters that it had rejected campaign requests for additional security.

“The assertion that a member of the former president’s security team requested additional security resources that the US Secret Service or the department of homeland security rebuffed is absolutely false,” said Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi. “In fact, recently the US Secret Service added protective resources and capabilities to the former president’s security detail.”

Past shootings

While mass shootings are a regular feature of American life, the attack was the first shooting of a US president or major party candidate since the 1981 attempted assassination of Republican president Ronald Reagan.

In 2011, Democratic then-congresswoman Gabby Giffords was seriously wounded in an attack on a gathering of constituents in Arizona. Republican US Representative Steve Scalise was also badly wounded in a politically motivated 2017 attack on a group of Republican representatives practising for a charity baseball game.

Giffords later founded a leading gun control organisation, Scalise has remained a stalwart defender of gun rights.

The attack heightened long-standing worries that political violence could erupt during the presidential campaign and after the election. The concerns in part reflect the electorate’s polarisation, with the country appearing bitterly divided into two camps with divergent political and social visions.

Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on January 6 2021 in an attempt to overturn his election defeat, fuelled by his false claims that his loss was the result of widespread fraud. More than 100 police officers were injured, five people died and the Capitol suffered millions of dollars of damage in the violence.

Trump is due to receive his party's formal nomination at the Republican National Convention, which kicks off in Milwaukee on Monday.

Rally attendees described scenes of panic and chaos after the shooting.

Ron Moose, a Trump supporter at the rally, said he heard about four shots. “I saw the crowd go down and then Trump ducked, also real quick,” he said. “Then the Secret Service all jumped and protected him as soon as they could. We are talking within a second they were all protecting him.”

The BBC interviewed a man who said he saw a man armed with a rifle crawling up a roof near the event. The self-described eyewitness, who the BBC did not identify, said he and the people he was with started pointing at the man, trying to alert security.

The shots appeared to come from outside the area secured by the Secret Service, the agency said.

Hours after the attack, the Oversight Committee in the Republican-led US House of Representatives summoned Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle to testify at a hearing scheduled for July 22.

“Americans demand answers about the assassination attempt of President Trump,” the panel said in a statement on social media.

Republicans, democrats decry violence

Leading Republicans and Democrats quickly condemned the violence, as did foreign leaders.

“There’s no place for this kind of violence in America. We must unite as one nation to condemn it,” Biden said in a statement.

Biden’s campaign was pausing its television ads and halting all other outbound communication, a campaign official said.

Biden spoke to Trump, 78, by phone the White House said, but it did not elaborate on the call.

Some of Trump’s Republican allies said they believed the attack was politically motivated.

“For weeks Democrat leaders have been fuelling ludicrous hysteria that Donald Trump winning re-election would be the end of democracy in America,” said Scalise, the No 2 House Republican.

“Clearly we’ve seen far-left lunatics act on violent rhetoric in the past. This incendiary rhetoric must stop.”

Trump, who served as president in 2017-21, easily bested his rivals for the Republican nomination early in the campaign. He unified his party around him after its support wavered briefly when his supporters attacked the US Capitol , attempting to overturn his 2020 election defeat.

The businessperson and former reality television star entered the year facing a raft of legal worries, including four separate criminal prosecutions.

He was found guilty in late May of trying to cover up hush money payments to a porn star. But the other three prosecutions he faces — including two for his attempts to overturn his defeat — have been ground to a halt by various factors, including a Supreme Court decision early this month that found him to be partly immune to prosecution.

Trump contends, without giving evidence, that all four prosecutions have been orchestrated by Biden to try to prevent him from returning to power. 

Reuters