Senate panel says that the Secret Service’s mistakes before to the Trump rally shooting were “preventable.”

A bipartisan Senate investigation, released on Wednesday, found that several Secret Service blunders prior to the July rally for former President Donald Trump, where a gunman opened fire, were “foreseeable, preventable, and directly related to the events resulting in the assassination attempt that day.”

The interim report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found numerous failures on almost every level prior to the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, including in planning, communications, security, and resource allocation. These findings are consistent with the agency’s own internal investigation and an ongoing bipartisan House probe.

Democratic chairman of the Homeland Security Committee and senator from Michigan, Gary Peters, stated, “The consequences of those failures were dire.”

The Secret Service and other security services lacked a clear line of command, and there was no strategy in place for covering the building where the shooter ascended to fire his shots, according to investigators. A novice drone operator was stranded on a help line due to malfunctioning equipment, and officials were using several distinct radio channels, which resulted in missed contacts.

According to Peters, security officials spoke with each other through a “multi-step game of telephone.”

According to the investigation, the Secret Service was alerted about a person on the building’s roof about two minutes before gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks started shooting, firing eight shots toward Trump from a location less than 150 yards away. In the assassination attempt, Trump, the Republican contender for president in 2024, was hit in the ear by a bullet or a bullet fragment; two rallygoers were also hurt, and the gunman was eventually taken out by a Secret Service counter-sniper.