Former US President Donald Trump, who will be the Republican candidate for the 2024 presidential election, was shot at during an election rally in Butler Country, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. A 20-year-old man fired multiple shots towards Trump, who suffered an injury to his ear, but said he was “fine”. The shooter was shot and killed by the Secret Service, the government agency tasked with protecting Trump.
Following the failed assassination attempt, calls have been made for the Secret Service and other security agencies to explain the major security breach, and why the shooter went undetected during the rally. The FBI has opened an investigation.
One eyewitness claimed to have seen the shooter climbing up the roof of a building located around 150 metres from Trump, carrying a rifle. He told the BBC in an interview that he attempted to alert police and the Secret Service, but they did not respond. The shots rang out a few minutes later, he said.
An analysis of videos and satellite imagery by the Associated Press showed the shooter was able to get “astonishingly close to the stage where the former president was speaking”.
Mike Johnson, Speaker of the Republican-controlled US House of Representatives, said panels in the chamber “will call officials from the Secret Service, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI for hearings soon,” according to Reuters.
The House oversight panel has called Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify on July 22.
The United States Secret Service was founded in 1865, and is one of the oldest federal investigative law enforcement agencies in the world. Its initial mandate was to combat the counterfeiting of US currency, but this changed after the assassination of then US President William McKinley in 1901.
Before McKinley, Presidents Abraham Lincoln and James A Garfield had been assassinated in 1865 and 1881 respectively. The US Government Archives note, “This third assassination of a President in a little more than a generation — it was only 36 years since Lincoln had been killed — shook the nation and aroused it to a greater awareness of the uniqueness of the Presidency and the grim hazards that surrounded an incumbent of that Office.”
In 1902, the Secret Service assumed full-time responsibility for the safety of the US President.
The Secret Service works under the Department of Homeland Security and “employs approximately 3,200 special agents, 1,300 Uniformed Division officers and more than 2,000 other technical, professional and administrative support personnel”, according to its website.
The Secret Service is mandated to protect the Vice President, the President-elect, their immediate families, former Presidents and their spouses (except when the spouse remarries) and children of former Presidents until age 16.
Former Presidents, such as Trump, are entitled to lifelong protection unless they refuse it.
The service also protects “major presidential and vice presidential candidates and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election”. Presidential elections are to be held on November 5 this year. Eligible candidates are identified by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee.
Candidates came under the agency’s ambit after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, who was running to become the Democratic Party’s official candidate for the 1968 presidential election. Kennedy was shot and killed in Los Angeles early on June 5, 1968, less than five years after his brother, President John F Kennedy, was assassinated while riding through Dallas in a motorcade.
Many had expected Robert Kennedy to win the nomination amid a tight race. The mandate of the Secret Service was then expanded to “maintain the integrity of the democratic process and continuity of Government,” the agency’s website says.
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