A year after Butler: How a near assassination led to an uneven search for accountability in the Secret Service

CNN

a day ago

One year after the near assassination of Donald Trump, a deep frustration has set in at the Secret Service over the agency's response to the security failures of that day.
In interviews with CNN, a dozen current and former federal law enforcement officials and lawmakers describe an overall lack of accountability, especially for top Secret Service officials and those agents in Trump's detail during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July.
That includes Sean Curran, the top-ranking agent on Trump's detail that day, who has since been promoted to director of the Secret Service.
Several Congressional investigations and federal reports, including the Secret Service's own analysis, found multiple failures, including communication breakdowns with local police who spotted the shooter and confronted him on a nearby roof before he took aim at Trump.
Ten days after the rally, Kimberly Cheatle, the then-director of the Secret Service, resigned amid scrutiny over the security lapses. Since then, only six Secret Service personnel have been disciplined — issued short suspensions without pay — a decision that has felt inconsistent to many at the agency.
'None of those operational people have been held accountable, some were even promoted,' said one former senior agency official, who like others spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve relationships with former Secret Service colleagues.
The majority of those who have faced any kind of discipline are from the agency's Pittsburgh field office, sources said, fueling a sense among some that the office was scapegoated for the failures of higher-ups.
Outside the Pittsburgh field office, just one low-ranking person from Trump's security detail and one counter-sniper deployed that day have been issued suspensions. At least two of the six are appealing the suspensions, and so far, not one Secret Service employee has completed any proposed discipline, according to a source familiar.
Amid the fallout over the Butler rally, the agency has also seen a significant loss of institutional knowledge and expertise as a number of high-ranking officials have left, fueling concerns over a potential brain-drain at the Secret Service, sources said.
Secret Service leadership last week received a subpoena from Sen. Rand Paul, the Republican chairman of the Senate's homeland security committee, asking for records regarding who in the service has been disciplined over Butler, three sources familiar with the subpoena told CNN. One of the sources told CNN that the subpoena was dropped after the Secret Service quickly turned over records Paul was seeking.
Paul's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. A Secret Service spokesperson did not comment on the subpoena or reply to multiple requests for comment for this story.
In a press release put out by the Secret Service on Thursday, Curran said that his experience from Butler has been top of mind as director and 'the agency has taken many steps to ensure such an event can never be repeated in the future.'
Feelings are still raw among current and former Secret Service agents about what went wrong on July 13, 2024.
Given the failures in communication and coordination that led to the near assassination of Trump and left one person dead and two in critical condition, some sources said any agent involved in security that day should have been immediately placed on leave.
However, the crush of a busy campaign calendar, coupled with the concern Trump would be more comfortable with a detail he knew, pushed the agency to keep those agents working.
Congressional reports as well as internal reports from the Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security all highlighted a breakdown in communication that left Trump's detail in Butler unaware that local officers had spotted the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks, and initially confronted him on a roof less than a minute before he got off a clean shot at Trump.
There was also confusion over who was in charge of securing the area where Crooks took aim, and why no visual barriers were installed around the rally to prevent long-distance shooters. The service's anti-drone technology also failed the morning of the rally, and one officer never retrieved a radio that would connect him to locals on the ground.
Communication failures extended to a lack of intelligence sharing — a topic the Government Accountability Office is currently investigating. Just weeks before the Butler rally, the FBI obtained intelligence about a new alleged plot by the Iranian government to kill Trump. The intelligence specified that the Iranians posed a 'long-range' threat to Trump, meaning a potential sniper.
But some senior leaders at Secret Service, including the lead agent in Pittsburgh, were unaware of that intelligence until after Butler, another former senior agency official told CNN.
A Senate report faulted Secret Service for not requesting a countersurveillance unit — a group whose specific job is to find suspicious actors like Crooks. That responsibility fell on the agents assigned to Trump's detail, according to a source, given their knowledge of the Iranian threat.
Another federal source told CNN that the some in the Pittsburgh office were made aware of concerns over 'long-range' threats against Trump, but not the Iranian threat. The source added that because Crooks was a lone-wolf and has no connections to Iran, that information is somewhat irrelevant when it comes to who should take blame for failures that day.
Following his committee's report on Butler in September, then-Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Michigan Democratic Sen. Gary Peters, told CNN that his panel heard 'a lot of finger-pointing' when they pressed Secret Service agents about who was in charge the day of the rally.
'That should be a very clear answer, and the problem is, there is no answer,' said Peters. 'That was astonishing to us. We could not find one point of contact who said, 'This was the person in charge,'' he added.
In April, the agency issued a memo clarifying that the safety of a site is ultimately the responsibility of the agent leading the detail of the protectee, according to sources who read the memo and described the contents.
Under the new policy, Curran — who led Trump's detail at the time — would, in theory, have been responsible for the failure at Butler, according to sources who read the memo.
Another source familiar with the memo questioned whether the policy would truly solve the problem of who was ultimately in charge — since it still allows for significant responsibility to fall on a field office prior to an event, the source noted.
'The Secret Service established a new policy … to clarify the lines of accountability and responsibility for protective operations,' a spokeswoman for the Secret Service told CNN in April. 'The Secret Service continues to evaluate and implement changes based on these reviews' shared findings in order to ensure safe and secure environments for our protectees.'
One former senior agency official told CNN that the failures from Butler 'to appropriately design a security plan for an outdoor event had nothing to do with resources or intelligence.'
Instead, the former official said, 'the team on the ground didn't apply the most basic principles of line of sight, communication, and frankly the subsequent evacuation wasn't executed properly.'
For some, there is not the same level of coordination and communication among senior agency leaders as there had been. 'I would say the Secret Service is in a worse position now than they were before Butler,' the second former senior Secret Service official said, referring to the agency's preparedness for another assassination attempt.
Following the shooting, Secret Service leadership fought with members of Congress over the need for swift discipline, telling lawmakers repeatedly that they wouldn't rush to assign blame and would go by the book.
'The finger pointing piece got in the way of figuring out who did what and what the actual breakdowns were,' Rep. Glenn Ivey, a Maryland Democrat who was on the House panel investigating Butler, told CNN this week.
In the end, just one low-ranking agent on the Trump detail who worked the Butler rally was recommended for a period of suspension. Two Trump detail supervisors have been promoted, most notably Curran, who now runs the agency. Another agent on Trump's detail now oversees internal investigations and compliance.
One supervisor later received a role running Eric Trump's detail, according to one source.
'[Donald Trump Detail Supervisors] reviewed and approved the plans,' for the Butler rally, a current federal law enforcement official told CNN. 'If they felt something was wrong during the walk-through, they fix it then. That is literally their whole job and the point of a final walk through.'
A year later, the Secret Service doesn't face nearly the same level of intense scrutiny as it did in the weeks after the shooting.
'I haven't seen anybody on the Hill actually take a look at where things stand, which is a little ironic because … when you have a switchover from one administration to the next, this would have been an easy time to do it,' Ivey said.
Since Curran became director, the Secret Service has rejected multiple requests from CNN to interview him. It is not clear that Curran has ever testified under oath before members of Congress. He is not listed among the more than 50 transcripts generated during the Congressional reviews.
Neither Ivey nor Rep. David Joyce, an Ohio Republican who also served on the House panel that investigated Butler, could recall if the panel interviewed Curran.
Curran's promised overhaul of the Secret Service got off to a rocky start according to some sources. One of his first visible moves as the agency's leader included a $2 million recruiting ad produced by movie director Michael Bay.
The ad included a photo from moments after Trump was shot, appalling many current and former law enforcement officials who were stunned the agency would try to rebrand their biggest failure in four decades into a celebration of heroism.
Under Curran's leadership, the Secret Service has made a priority of pushing for more recruits. In just the first few months of 2025, the agency saw a 200% increase in applications to join, bringing in 15,000 more applications than the previous year during the same period, according to numbers released by DHS.
Though some agents also quickly soured on two top aides in the beginning months of Curran's directorship, sources familiar told CNN. The aides were brought in as advisors with the intention of taking on other roles later.
According to some sources, both were viewed with skepticism within the Secret Service over their qualifications and whether they'd been tasked with jobs beyond the scope of their experience. One resigned this spring, while another remains in a top job in the agency.
Others CNN spoke to were more optimistic about the service's future and the changes put in place after the Butler rally. That includes a dedicated branch for drone support and establishing more streamlined communication protocols with local officers, initiatives that were set up under Acting Director Ronald Rowe, who stepped aside when Curran was appointed by Trump and has since left the agency.
'We formed a new division called Mission Assurance Division to come in and have oversight and give recommendations to see how we can fix the things that did happen,' said Derek Mayer, the former deputy special agent in charge for the Secret Service's Chicago Field Office.
'There's a new policy that states who has command authority and it specifically states who is in charge up to what point — whether it's going to be the [Special Agent in Charge] of the district, or the [Special Agent in Charge] of the detail,' said Mayer, who now works for a private security company.
Mayer also highlighted 'policies put in place to ensure clear lines of accountability, also, sharing that with local law enforcement and ensuring that there is one joint command post for us and locals.'
Asked if he thought there had been accountability at the Secret Service for the failures at Butler, Rep. Joyce, the Ohio Republican, said Cheatle's resignation was one means of accountability.
'You have to rely on a change in the culture. And hopefully Director Curran is bringing those type of things,' Joyce told CNN.