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>>>Local police alerted the Secret Service before former president Donald Trump’s rally Saturday that they lacked the resources to station a patrol car outside a
key building where a gunman later positioned himself and shot at Trump, according to local and federal law enforcement.
Richard Goldinger, the district attorney in Butler County, Pa., where the Trump rally took place, said the Secret Service “was informed that the local police department did not have manpower to assist with securing that building.”
Goldinger’s account was confirmed by Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi. Guglielmi said the proposal to station a patrol car and officer outside the Agr International building complex had been part of the Secret Service’s advance planning for securing the prominent structure, which had an expansive roof with an unobstructed view of the rally stage less than 150 yards away, where Trump would later stand.
Guglielmi said that about 20 to 30 minutes before the shooting, local police assigned to the inside of the building warned the Secret Service security team by radio of a suspicious person with a golf range finder and backpack. Those officers also forwarded a photograph of the person, Guglielmi said.
Authorities from a number of jurisdictions were on the scene Saturday, and officials are still determining how the building was guarded — and how the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, reached the roof. But the twin warnings from local law enforcement — first of insufficient manpower, then of a man behaving strangely — add to questions about whether the Secret Service adequately planned for and provided adequate security for the high-stakes presidential campaign visit.
The warnings also underscore a tension that has emerged in recent days between federal and local authorities over who bears responsibility for security lapses preceding the attempted assassination. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who had previously stressed that local police were responsible for the outer security perimeter, issued a statement to The Post on Wednesday stressing the importance of collaboration with local authorities.<<<