Panel urges Secret Service shake-up after Trump assassination bid

WASHINGTON: An independent panel called on Thursday for a sweeping shake-up of the US Secret Service following its “historic” failure to prevent the July assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.

“The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static,” the four members of the bipartisan review panel said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas that accompanied their 52-page report.

“The Secret Service as an agency requires fundamental reform to carry out its mission,” they said, and without reforms another assassination attempt such as the one that took place in Butler, Pennsylvania “can and will happen again.”

Trump was grazed on his right ear when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop while the Republican presidential candidate was holding a campaign rally in Butler on July 13.

One person in the audience was killed and the gunman, Thomas Crooks, was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.

Much of the report was devoted to identifying the specific security failures that allowed the assassination attempt at the Butler rally, many of which have already been publicly acknowledged by the Secret Service.