One year ago, Americans looked on in horror as a bullet tore through the air at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and left then-candidate Donald Trump spattered with his own blood. While the image of the man — who would, just a few months later, win the presidential election in a landslide standing on stage — defiantly raising his fist and shouting, “Fight!” has become iconic, Americans still have very few answers about what happened in Butler and how it happened at all. The U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee released a report Sunday, on the one-year anniversary of the assassination attempt, seeking to provide at least some answers. “This was not a single error. It was a cascade of preventable failures that nearly cost President Trump his life,” the committee wrote. Here are the final report’s three key findings.

1. Secret Service Did Not Provide Trump with Adequate Resources

According to the final report, Trump’s security detail had made at least 10 requests for additional personnel, assets, and other resources, which the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) subsequently denied or rejected. In some cases, those requests were “blatantly” denied, and in others, USSS told Trump’s security detail to find what it needed either from other federal agencies or from local law enforcement teams. Notably, Trump’s security detail made multiple requests for counter-sniper personnel and was denied.

Richard Giuditta, the Trump-appointed chief counsel at USSS, testified that “there was no discernable evidence of political animus related to the reason for these denials.” Instead, the denial of requests for counter-sniper personnel was often based on the scarcity of such personnel in USSS. Following the Butler assassination attempt, however, USSS has brokered an agreement with U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), so that CBP counter-sniper experts will assist in protecting the president and others.

2. Nobody Got Fired

Following the assassination attempt and the ensuing investigations, USSS “did not fire a single person involved in the planning and execution of the Butler rally.” USSS personnel “have continued to shift blame and point fingers, not only within the agency, but also with” Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) and Butler law enforcement divisions. Only six USSS personnel have been disciplined, according to the report, with disciplinary actions ranging from 10-day to 42-day suspensions without pay. Two of those disciplined were punished as recently as this month, after the Committee issued a subpoena requesting information on formal disciplinary actions. In two instances, disciplinary actions taken were more lenient than what was officially recommended.

Of note, the USSS Security Room Agent, who the report says “failed to relay critical information he obtained from the PSP Security Room Officer regarding a suspicious individual with a range finder to” agents by Trump “who could

have removed or prevented President Trump from taking the stage,” was not disciplined. The USSS told the committee that the security room agent “was found not to be in violation of Secret Service policy,” despite having failed to communicate the would-be assassin’s position to other security personnel.

3. Lack of Communication

According to the final report, USSS divisions did not communicate clearly with one another or with state and local law enforcement personnel. “The lack of structured communication was likely the greatest contributor to the failures of

the USSS on July 13, 2024,” the report stated. The Security Room Agent, for example, was informed by PSP that a suspicious individual was spotted with a rangefinder trained on the stage. “At a USSS protected event, the individual in charge of communications is the security room agent. The security room agent’s duties include conducting appropriate radio checks, passing all pertinent protectee movement to the post standers, and in the event of an emergency, communicate situational information to the shift and post standers accordingly,” the report explained. But the security room agent didn’t do that. Instead, he acted with “a lack of urgency,” eventually alerting counter-sniper personnel but not the USSS personnel with Trump, who could have prevented him from going onstage.

Communications breakdowns also included “ill-defined responsibilities for USSS agents serving in advance roles” and a lack of coordination between USSS and state and local police. For example, PSP and Butler police had a command post separate from the USSS command post, but the USSS security room agent was not aware of this fact until the afternoon of the rally. Both USSS agents and state and local police also relied heavily on cell phones for communication, rather than radios. Multiple agents and law enforcement officers testified afterwards that this cell phone use fragmented communication, as messages relayed via radio would go to all posts and personnel, while cell phone calls and texts would reach only one individual. However, cell phones were heavily relied upon because the various protective and law enforcement entities involved all had different radios incompatible with each other’s.

What Now?

Trump addressed the security failures in a recent interview. “So there were mistakes made, that, you know, shouldn’t have happened,” he said, but ultimately concluded that USSS just “had a bad day.”

Still, very little is known about Thomas Crooks, the 20-year-old who opened fire on Trump, and the Committee’s final report notes that some federal agencies — namely, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosive (ATF) have failed to cooperate in several instances and have even engaged in “obstruction.”