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The Butler County, Pennsylvania, district attorney told Fox News on Wednesday that local snipers were not responsible for monitoring the rooftop where a gunman tried to assassinate former President Trump.
Richard Goldinger is the latest official to dispute acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe’s testimony at a Senate hearing on the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Goldinger, who coordinated local snipers working at the July 13 rally, said they were assigned to a window with a different vantage point than the one Rowe pointed to during his testimony on Tuesday.
Goldinger said monitoring the roof of the AGR building, where Thomas Matthew Crooks perched and opened fire, was not the local snipers’ assignment.
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“The snipers from the Butler and Beaver ESU teams were posted in the second floor of the building adjacent to where the shooter was located, were posted in the two windows toward the end of the building,” Goldinger said. “From their post and vantage point, they were unable to see the shooter on the roof of the other building.”
“They were not posted at a location that would overlook the roof,” he continued. “Monitoring that roof was not their assignment.”
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In his testimony on Tuesday, Rowe appeared to place blame on local law enforcement for not seeing Crooks on the roof. He used exhibits of the site and pointed to the roof that Crooks fired from, which he said showed that local snipers had a better vantage point of Crooks’ shooting position than Secret Service snipers.
“I will not, and I cannot understand why there was not better coverage or at least someone looking at that roofline when that’s where they were posted,” Rowe said.
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In response to Goldinger’s comments, a Secret Service spokesperson pointed back to Rowe’s testimony and said that the agency coordinated with the Butler County Emergency Services Unit, which was the “tactical lead” for the site.
Beaver County Emergency Services Unit Commander Patrick Young told Fox News on Tuesday that his unit was told where to go by Butler County ESU, which he assumed had guidance from the Secret Service.
There were two snipers inside the AGR building that Crooks shimmied onto – one from the Butler County ESU and another from the Beaver County ESU.
“They were in place by Butler County ESU, which I assume was with the approval of Secret Service. Their assignments that day (were) to be clearly defined and in no uncertain terms,” Young said. “Their areas included the entry control point, the area before and after the magneton monitor and then the area in front of the stage. Those are all within the interior and secure perimeter as defined by the Secret Service. That was their locations … and their priority.”
Previously, Beaver County ESU sharpshooter Jason Woods said that a planned face-to-face briefing with Secret Service agents “never happened.”
“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” he told ABC News. “We had no communication.”
At 5:34 p.m. that day, Young said, one of his officers saw Crooks with a rangefinder then checked into the “sniper text group” to get a picture out. He also said it was previously discussed by the Secret Service not to communicate through text, but he could not figure out any other way to share a picture via the radio.
Eventually, the Beaver County sniper saw Crooks pick up a backpack and disappear behind the edge of the building. The sniper then set out to the first floor to search for Crooks, interacted with the patrol and said the suspicious person was around back before returning to his post. At the same time, Young said, the Butler sniper remained at the window.
Meanwhile, members of Trump’s Secret Service detail and his top advisers have questioned why they were not told that local police had spotted a suspicious person who turned out to be a would-be assassin.
Trump’s advisers thought that the sounds of shots, which they heard from a large white tent behind the stage, were fireworks, according to the Washington Post.
“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” the former president said in an interview with Fox News’ Jesse Watters. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.”
Fox News’ Greg Wehner contributed to this report.
