Six Secret Service agents have been suspended without pay after the assassination attempt against Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally last July.
The suspensions range from 10 to 42 days, with a loss of both salary and benefits during the absence, the agency’s deputy director, Matt Quinn, told CBS News.
The disciplinary action comes nearly a year after the 13 July shooting at the Butler farm show grounds, where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks fired multiple rounds from an unsecured rooftop, grazing Trump’s ear and killing firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Quinn defended the agency’s decision not to dismiss the agents outright, telling CBS News the service would not “fire our way out of this” crisis.
“We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation,” he said, adding that suspended personnel would return to reduced operational roles.
The shooting exposed serious security failures, as Crooks was able to position himself on a building with a clear sightline to Trump, then a presidential candidate. A Secret Service sniper eventually killed Crooks, though not before he killed Comperatore and wounded two other attenders.
Two months later, a second apparent assassination attempt against Trump was thwarted at his Florida golf course. The suspect, Ryan Routh, who authorities said staked out a spot in the trees with a gun for 12 hours before he was apprehended, has pleaded not guilty.
The first attack, which happened on live television, triggered the eventual resignation of the Secret Service director, Kimberly Cheatle, and prompted multiple congressional investigations. A bipartisan House report published in December described the security lapses as “preventable” and blamed poor leadership and training for creating the conditions in which such failures could occur.
The report highlighted coordination breakdowns between the Secret Service and local law enforcement, as well as the placement of inexperienced personnel in critical advance planning roles.
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A separate Senate investigation in September concluded that “multiple foreseeable and preventable planning and operational failures” enabled the shooting, citing unclear responsibilities, poor coordination and faulty communications equipment among the systemic problems.
Quinn told CBS News that the Secret Service bore full responsibility for the Pennsylvania debacle, calling it an “operational failure” while promising reforms to prevent future incidents. He said the agency had since introduced military-grade drones and mobile command posts to improve communication with local police, technology that was absent during the Butler rally.
