Forgotten radios and missed warnings: New details emerge about communication failures before Trump rally shooting

The day before the attempted assassination on Donald Trump, a tactical team of local police officers set aside radios for their Secret Service partners so the two agencies could communicate during the former president’s July 13 campaign rally.

The day before the attempted assassination of Donald Trump, a tactical team of local police officers set aside radios for their Secret Service partners so the two agencies could communicate during the former president’s July 13 campaign rally. But those radios were never picked up. The next day, three minutes before shots were fired toward Trump, local police radioed that a man was on a nearby roof. That warning never made it to the Secret Service, whose snipers didn’t know the would-be assassin was on the roof until shots rang out. In the 15 seconds it took for snipers to lock onto and kill the shooter, he was able to fire off eight shots. Standing over the gunman’s dead body minutes later, a local police officer who responded to the initial warning expressed frustration that his own radio calls about a man on the roof seemed to go unheeded by the other officers. “That’s what I was f**king calling out bro, f**king ‘On top of the roof,’” the officer said, according to body camera footage. “We’re not – we on the same frequency?” More than a month after the near assassination, new details continue to emerge about the failures of that day. Congressional inquiries, local and federal law enforcement, and other sources who spoke with CNN reveal stunning gaps in communication, highlighting how crucial information was lost in a confusing thicket of police radio chatter, text messages, state trooper middlemen and command posts tasked with communicating with federal agents on the ground.