Trump’s Secret Service claims it wasn’t warned of suspicious person at rally

Members of ex-President Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail have lodged complaints that they were not informed that local cops were tracking a suspicious person at the Pennsylvania rally where a gunman shot him in the ear, according to a report.

The detail complained to agency brass that it was not included in multiple alerts sent in the 25 minutes before Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire on the Republican presidential nominee, three insiders told The Washington Post.

The detail members were also disastrously kept out of the loop when local counter snipers lost track of Crooks and when another local officer saw the 20-year-old perched on the roof of a nearby building with a gun, they claimed.

One audience member — a firefighter who shielded his family from the bullets — was killed and another two were seriously injured. Trump, the gunman’s target, suffered a graze wound to the ear.

Investigators are still working to determine whether anyone relayed the information about the suspicious person to Trump’s security detail or other Secret Service operational teams, as Col. Christopher L. Paris, head of Pennsylvania State Police said was the case during testimony before the House Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday.

According to Paris, a trooper stationed in a command center with Secret Service agents verbally relayed the suspicious person’s report to the agents, who then requested the warning to be forwarded to a phone number.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi declined Saturday to comment on The Washington Post’s questions about radio communications Trump’s security detail received at the Butler rally.

“As it relates to communications at the rally, the Secret Service is committed to better understanding what happened before, during, and after the assassination attempt of former President Trump to ensure that never happens again,” Guglielmi said in a statement. “That includes complete cooperation with Congress, the FBI and other relevant investigations.”

One official with knowledge of the matter told The Washington Post the breakdown may have simply been caused by law enforcement dismissing the threat Crooks posed.

Reports of suspicious people are commonplace at some public events and sometimes do not rise to the level of changing plans or alerting the senior official’s security detail, a team of about five to 10 agents who serve as the innermost ring of security for that person, they told the newspaper.

Typically these persons are located within the Secret Service perimeter of the rally, which requires magnetometer screenings and potential full-body pat-downs, they said.

This was not the case with Crooks, however, who was lying just outside the secure area.

Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks first raised suspicions when he passed through the security screening area with a rangefinder, a device similar to binoculars used by hunters and target shooters to measure distances for long-range shots — three hours before he opened fire.

An officer spotted Crooks using the rangefinder and looking at his phone nearly an hour before Trump took the stage.

He was reported a third and final time minutes before the shooting. Two officers saw him on the roof and took pictures of the suspicious person for their alerts, which either weren’t acted on or received in time to avert the tragedy.

The Secret Service has been strongly criticized for failing to stop Crooks before he fired on the ex-president, leading to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation Tuesday.