Agent Googling During Trump Gunfire

Secret Service agent stands guard outside the White House.

While Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed a rooftop 150 yards from Donald Trump and took aim, a Secret Service agent was googling that same rooftop on their phone.

Story Snapshot

A Department of Homeland Security inspector general report found a Secret Service agent was googling a rooftop location during the July 13, 2024, Butler, Pennsylvania shooting instead of monitoring the threat.
Secret Service agents missed more than 100 radio warnings about the gunman before shots were fired, according to the same federal report.
The Secret Service received classified threat intelligence 10 days before the rally but never shared it with local law enforcement partners.
Two men wounded at the rally have filed a federal lawsuit against the United States, citing a cascade of preventable security failures including an unsecured roof the shooter climbed freely.

The Googling Agent and 100 Missed Warnings

The Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General reviewed 70,000 documents and conducted 92 interviews about the Butler rally attack. What they found is hard to explain away. One agent, during the active shooting, was googling the AGR building rooftop that Crooks had already climbed. At the same time, agents collectively missed more than 100 radio transmissions warning about the gunman. These were not close calls buried in noise. These were direct warnings that went unanswered.

Local law enforcement had already spotted Crooks acting suspiciously. Officers saw him using a rangefinder and issued an alert with his photo. That alert never made it through Secret Service channels. The agency had no process to share threat information with partners unless the threat was deemed immediately life-threatening. Crooks was climbing a roof with a rifle. That bar was apparently not met in time.

Classified Intel Sat Unused for 10 Days Before the Rally

A Government Accountability Office report requested by Senator Chuck Grassley confirmed that senior Secret Service officials received classified threat intelligence 10 days before the Butler rally. They did not pass it along to federal or local law enforcement partners. The agency had no formal process to share non-imminent threat information. That gap in policy did not exist by accident. It existed because no one built the bridge, and no one demanded it be built.

Cell phone service at the crowded rally was spotty. Agents and local officers relied on their phones for real-time communication. The Secret Service had no policy in place to address known audio and data problems at large events. Two command centers operated at the venue, and local officers did not even know both existed. Vital information about Crooks moved outside Secret Service radio frequencies entirely, reaching almost no one who needed it.

The Roof Nobody Secured and the Lawsuit That Followed

The AGR building roof, where Crooks positioned himself, was not secured. Two men wounded during the shooting, Jim Copenhaver and David Dutch, filed a federal lawsuit against the United States. Their lawsuit states that the Secret Service failed to secure the roof, failed to deploy available drone technology, and ignored a cascade of warnings that any reasonable security operation would have acted on. The Secret Service has declined to comment on the pending litigation.

Secret Service Missed 102 Warnings Before Trump Assassination Attempt in Butler: Report – The U.S. Secret Service missed multiple opportunities to detect, prevent, and disrupt the attempted assassination of Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024, including missing more… pic.twitter.com/lllg9dcwu1

— The American Messenger (@TheAmMessenger) July 3, 2026

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle called Butler the most significant operational failure at the agency in decades before resigning her post in July 2024. Senator Rand Paul’s Senate Homeland Security Committee report went further, stating Cheatle falsely testified to Congress that no Secret Service asset requests were denied before the rally. Six personnel were suspended following the attack. That accountability, while real, does not answer the core question of how a gunman climbed a roof in plain sight of a presidential security detail.

A Pattern the Agency Has Never Fully Broken

The Secret Service has a long institutional history of identifying failures after the fact and implementing reforms that do not hold. Agents drunk at a White House bomb scene in 2015. Communication breakdowns on January 6, 2021. And now Butler. Each incident produces reports, suspensions, and promises. The Grassley report noted the agency has since adopted recommendations to share threat information more proactively. That is progress. But it came after a former president was nearly killed while an agent searched Google instead of scanning a rooftop.

The Department of Homeland Security inspector general report remains heavily redacted. The full 82 pages, including raw radio logs and agent interview transcripts, have not been released to the public. Judicial Watch has pursued Freedom of Information Act litigation to force disclosure of related records. Until those documents are fully public, the complete picture of what went wrong in Butler stays locked behind government redactions. What is already confirmed is damning enough.