Kansas GOP Sen. Roger Marshall hammered the U.S. Secret Service over “systemic failures” that contributed to the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump and is now calling for a “crisis intervention team” to address and rectify issues within the agency.
“We don’t have to wait 44 months to realize that the Secret Service has a huge cultural problem — There needs to be an intervention team to come in there, take it over and make sure President Trump is safe and secure,” he told Newsmax this week.
In a separate interview with the Fox Business Network, Marshall also criticized the FBI and said that a growing number of Americans do not trust either agency after a Senate hearing this week featured high-ranking officials from both agencies who were grilled about the security failures ahead of the assassination attempt.
“What I would share with you is that folks back home don’t trust the FBI. They have no faith or competence in the Secret Service right now. And this hearing did nothing to relieve those fears that the Secret Service has significant institutional problems, cultural issues within it. And that’s why they need a big change. We need somebody to come in there, a crisis intervention team,” he told the network.
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“And I’m just telling you, there’s nothing that this Secret Service director is gonna be able to do right now. He cannot see the forest for the trees that he’s not objective. He’s trying to protect everybody’s job. People should be at least placed on leave until we get to the bottom of it,” Marshall continued.
“He would not tell us who was responsible for denying President Trump more security, he wouldn’t tell us who makes the decisions to say no, we’re not going to use a drone. He would not say who drew this security line and left 10 buildings within the direct line of the president,” the Kansas Republican continued.
“So even within days, a normal post-mortem on a event like this should reveal those basic stops to say, here’s where the basic mistakes were, these are the people that we’ve relieved of their duty, we’ve made these corrections to protect President Trump at the next rally,” he said.
“He [Secret Service Acting Director Rowe] did deflect the blame to the local police and my specific question for him was did the Secret Service hold their meeting that morning with local police. Local police officers said that meeting never happened. I did not get a direct answer from the acting director. And he says on the one hand that he wants to cooperate with investigations, but he’s not taking full accountability,” he explained.
“We’ve all seen enough that there were individual failures. There were systemic failures there as well. So if he’s gonna do the blame game, then he’s not the right guy. This is why I’m calling for a crisis intervention team to come in there. Somebody needs to come in from the outside and clean that place out, start from the top down until they get it right. They go through their protocols or standard operating procedures, and recreate a culture of excellence,” Marshall continued.
“My second question for the acting director is why was that building not in the primary security range. There were 10 buildings within 500 yards that had a direct line of sight to President Trump, and they weren’t in the primary security range. At least he did come forth and say exactly what happened during those seven or eight minutes as you describe it,” the senator added. “Here’s a 21-year-old lone wolf, a kid with really minimal military security experiences; he jumps up on an air conditioner, jumps up on a building, and then scales the roof of four different buildings, jumping from building to building. That’s what was going on in those seven or eight minutes.”
He concluded: “There’s really no one within the Secret Service I think that can turn the program around. We need to bring somebody from the outside in.”
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