Lawsuit Alleges DHS, Secret Service Concealed Records Regarding Attempted Assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania

The U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) illegally hid records related to the attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump in Pennsylvania, America First Legal (AFL) alleged in a new lawsuit, filed on Thursday.

Shortly after would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Trump during a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, AFL launched a series of investigations into the Secret Service and DHS and requested information such as documents related to Secret Service hiring and employment standards and communications between federal officials on July 13. AFL says it has received no responses to the requests.

“On July 13, the American people watched in horror as a lunatic attempted to assassinate former President, and current candidate for President, Donald Trump. Today, there is widespread and bipartisan acknowledgment that there were catastrophic failures that tragic day and in the weeks and months ahead of it,” AFL executive director Gene Hamilton said. “We are committed to obtaining these records so that the American people can see for themselves exactly what senior DHS leadership was prioritizing in its mission, and why more resources were not devoted to the protection of President Donald J. Trump.”

Law-enforcement agencies “improperly denied” and “failed to process” various AFL requests, the lawsuit alleges, and AFL is asking a court to “order the Defendants to conduct searches immediately for all records responsive to AFL’s FOIA requests and demonstrate that they employed search methods reasonably likely to lead to the discovery of responsive records.”

Crooks’s motivations are still unknown by the FBI, though the Secret Service’s numerous security failures leading up to the shooting are well-documented. Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) released a whistleblower report this week detailing some of the security failures, including law enforcement’s decision to leave the rooftop that Crooks shot from unguarded, allegedly due to the heat. Crooks shot eight bullets into the crowd, wounding Trump’s ear and two individuals and killing former fire chief Corey Comperatore.

AFL’s lawsuit comes less than one week after Trump survived a second assassination attempt, this time allegedly at the hands of Ryan Wesley Routh, a Democratic donor who was caught on the perimeter of Trump’s Florida golf course with a firearm. Routh reportedly spent twelve hours staking out the site and was about 400 feet away from Trump before a Secret Service agent spotted and fired at him. Routh is now in custody.