Counter drone system waited on customer service ahead of Trump assassination attempt, report says
Less than an hour before would-be presidential assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks flew a drone over the Butler Farm Show grounds on July 13, 2024, the operator of a counter drone system at the event was communicating with a customer service representative, according to a recent report.
“At 3:04 p.m., the technical support representative emailed the operator stating, ‘I need to escalate this matter to a specialist to further investigate[…]I’ve marked this matter as high priority … but … we have limited support during the weekend,’” the report released by the Office of the Inspector General said.
Between 3:51 p.m. and 4:00 p.m., Crooks flew his drone at the venue where now-President Donald Trump would soon speak for a campaign rally.
The report indicates that a broken Ethernet cable on the counter-drone system and the lack of customer service — among other factors — may have allowed Crooks to fly a drone over the site of Trump’s presidential campaign event.
The drone flyover would assist Crooks in his attempted assassination of Trump later that day, the report, dated June 30, said. It outlines the opportunities that the United States Secret Service missed to prevent the shooting, which ultimately left Buffalo Township firefighter and father, Corey Comperatore fatally wounded and two others seriously injured. Trump ear was wounded, and Crooks was killed in the incident.
In the first of the report’s five key findings, the Office of Inspector General determined the Secret Service may have been able to prevent the shooting entirely if its counter-drone system had been operational and manned by properly-trained personnel.
The Secret Service normally uses counter-drone systems to spot unauthorized drones at the events it is assigned to protect.
“Operating a counter-drone system is not the same thing as flying a drone,” said Dave King, CEO of Pittsburgh-based Steel City Drones. “A counter-drone system is equipment that you set up on-site that can detect drones. It requires a completely different set of training on how to operate it.”
However, at the Trump campaign event in July 2024, the counter-drone system was entrusted to one inexperienced operator, according to the recent report.
The report also states that more than one request was made to the Secret Service’s Technical Security Division to provide at least one counter-drone operator for the Butler event. The requests were either not answered or were denied.
“The lead Technical Security Division agent told us the Technical Security Division member denied his request because Technical Security Division had already assigned counter drone operators to the Republican National Convention, which occurred from July 15, 2024 to July 18, 2024,” the report reads.
Because of this, the lone counter-drone operator from the ill-fated July rally was appointed from the Office of Protective Operations’ Donald Trump Protective Division, and not from the Technical Security Division. According to the report, the counter-drone operator did not have the same extensive training as his peers in the Technical Security Division.
The report states that while counter-drone operators from the Technical Security receive a training course, younger operators from the Donald Trump Protective Division learn by shadowing more experienced operators assigned to events. However, the operator assigned to the July 2024 rally said he had never shadowed anyone before the event. Instead, another operator gave him 20 minutes of “informal training.”
“The common issue I see across the board with drones is a lack of training or lack of quality training,” King said. “Training has to be comprehensive enough so that in the event that something goes wrong, you not only know how to use it, but how to troubleshoot advanced systems like the one mentioned.”
Other factors worked against the counter-drone response. On the day of the rally, the counter-drone system malfunctioned, and the operator was not trained on how to trouble-shoot the problem. According to the report, standard procedure called for the drone operator to test the counter-drone system the day before the rally. However, this did not happen, according to the report.
“Donald Trump Protective Division policy also instructs counter drone operators to test the system the day before an event, but the...operator told us he was unaware of this instruction,” the report reads. “Because the operator did not test the system the day before the event, he did not know it was malfunctioning until he tried to turn it on after 10 a.m. the day of the event.”
After trying and failing to diagnose the problem, the operator eventually contacted the vendor of the counter-drone system for help. Support was slow in coming because it was a Saturday, and the vendor had limited support staff available.
By the time Crooks flew his drone over the rally site, between 3:51 and 4:00 p.m., the counter-drone system was still out of commission and unable to detect it.
It wasn’t until just before 4:30 p.m. when the operator finally got the system operational that the vendor’s support staff determined that an Ethernet cable was broken. The counter-drone operator had it replaced.
Crooks ultimately fired off his shots at Donald Trump at 6:11 p.m.
“To me, this event had several key failures: staff spread too thin and not enough operators for the amount of work needed, complacency due to lack of previous issues, and not enough emphasis on comprehensive training,” King said.
One of the other key findings notes that Secret Service missed 102 radio calls from local law enforcement regarding the search for Crooks.
