(WASHINGTON) — Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe is set to testify before a joint Senate panel on Tuesday, and offer more detail about the Secret Service’s communications at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a man tried to assassinate Trump.
Rowe is expected to offer details about the security arrangements that were put in place for Trump’s rally on July 13.
Rowe is prepared to tell Senators, that Secret Service leadership was communicating directly with the Butler Emergency Services Unit (ESU) or their equivalent of a SWAT team. The Service says they have uncovered text messages that have been reviewed and interviews they’ve conducted with officials there on site that give them a fuller picture of what took place. The text messages, according to a source, are with a senior official from the Butler ESU team; they detail the Butler official describing the personnel that was available and some information about deployments, according to the source.
The Butler ESU was responsible for helping to put together the security package outside the Secret Service bubble.
The source confirmed that the Secret Service never had direct communications with police from Beaver County, as ABC News reported on Monday morning.
The source said the Secret Service was communicating with Butler and that the Beaver County team was providing mutual aid or support to Butler.
Rowe was named acting director when Director Kim Cheatle resigned. Formerly, he was number 2.
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