The local SWAT team assigned to guard former President Donald Trump’s rally on July 13 said it had “no communication” with the Secret Service before a gunman tried to assassinate him.
“We were supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened,” Jason Woods, a lead sharpshooter on the Beaver County, Pennsylvania SWAT team, told ABC News.
“So I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” he said. “We had no communication.”
In an interview published by ABC on Sunday, Woods and his team members said the first time they communicated with Secret Service agents on the ground was only after the shooting.
“It was too late,” Woods said.
Their comments add to a growing chorus of questions about the communication among national and local agencies that allowed such a serious security lapse to transpire.
The Secret Service’s press team did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.
In a statement to ABC, a spokesperson declined to respond to Woods’ allegations and said that the agency “is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again.”
Woods’ team included countersnipers stationed at the American Glass Research building, which was used as a staging area for local law enforcement supporting the Secret Service’s security.
The New York Times on Sunday published several text messages among countersnipers there, which showed that they identified the gunman, Thomas Crooks, at least two hours before the shooting.
“Someone followed our lead and snuck in and parked by our cars, just so you know,” the message said. The countersniper then reported that Crooks had moved to a picnic table “about 50 yards from the exit.”
An hour later, a countersniper took photos of Crooks and said they believed the gunman brought a rangefinder. Those photos later went viral on social media.
“If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out,” countersniper wrote in a message, calling in the potential threat to the command center.
They added that they had lost sight of Crooks, per the texts published by The Times.
But The Washington Post reported on Sunday that Secret Service members on Trump’s detail complained they never received the warning from the countersnipers in the AGR building.
It cited three unnamed sources familiar with the matter.
Crooks would later climb onto the roof of the AGR building and open fire on Trump. The FBI confirmed on Friday that the former president’s ear was struck by a bullet, “whether whole or fragmented into smaller pieces.”
The aftermath of the assassination attempt, which put Trump within inches of losing his life, has been a reckoning for the Secret Service. The agency has been slammed for what former agents and advisers say was a complete security failure.
“The assassination attempt of former President Trump on July 13th is the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades,” Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle said on July 22.
Cheatle resigned the next day, after days of criticism leveled at her and her organization.
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