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Pennsylvania Secret Service chief Timothy Burke is among five agents put on ‘administrative duties’ as part of a probe into failures that allowed 20-year-old Thomas Crooks to shoot Donald Trump last month.
Burke is the Special Agent in Charge (SAIC) of the Secret Service Pittsburgh field office, and has been in the role since at least 2016.
When reached by phone, Burke, 48, told DailyMail.com said he could not comment on the case.
MSNBC reported Friday morning that the SAIC and four others had been placed on leave, but did not name Burke.
According to NBC News, four Pittsburgh field agents, including the head of the division, and one Trump agent have been put on leave.
The massive security failure that led to the horrific shooting has sparked probes from a wide range of government agencies that are ongoing.
A source briefed on the events of the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, told DailyMail.com that Burke was not on the ground that day, but that his role included approving the advance security plan for Trump’s campaign rally.
Timothy Burke, head of the Pittsburgh Field Office of the Secret Service
Multiple Secret Service agents have been put on leave during the investigation into the Donald Trump assassination attempt, reports suggest
Burke was named with his SAIC title in a Secret Service press release from April this year about a cybercrime crackdown, and in a 2016 release by the US Attorney’s office for the Western District of Pennsylvania about the extradition of a Cuban hacker.
The Pittsburgh Secret Service chief also took part in a cyber security video conference in 2021.
Burke knew the Secret Service had limited resources ahead of the campaign event, according to a letter House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan wrote to FBI director Christopher Wray on July 18.
Jordan said whistleblowers had told him that on a Secret Service-led briefing on July 8, five days before the Trump rally, ‘the USSS Special Agent in Charge Tim Burke reportedly told law enforcement partners that the USSS had limited resources that week because the agency was covering the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit in Washington, D.C.’
Federal law enforcement agents have been coming forward to Congress to blow the whistle on the alleged ongoing debacle inside the Secret Service which led to July’s stunning security failure, as well as other problems.
Tristan Leavitt, president of watchdog Empower Oversight which represents some of those whistleblowers, railed against the Secret Service’s lackluster response to the shooting in a public statement, saying that Burke and the four other USSS officials should have been placed on leave immediately rather than just being assigned desk duties while they are investigated.
Thomas Matthew Crooks pictured at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 before he opened fire on the crowd and former president
‘Admin leave is a paid status where you are not permitted to come into work – days "on the bricks" or "on the beach," as federal agents often call it,’ Leavitt wrote on Twitter. ‘That's not what's happening here.
‘Here, all the USSS has done is place these employees on administrative duties, which it should at the very least have done on July 13.
‘They should be taken out of the office and placed on investigative leave.’
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi did not comment on the reports that the agents have been put on leave because due to it being a 'personnel matter.'
But he told DailyMail.com that they are still 'examining the processes, procedures and factors that led to this operational failure.'
'The U.S. Secret Service holds our personnel to the highest professional standards, and any identified and substantiated violations of policy will be investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility for potential disciplinary action.'
The suspended agents are expected to still be working for the Secret Service and getting paid. They were most likely moved to an administrative role while the investigation continues.
Crooks's plot sparked the resignation of the agency's director Kimberly Cheatle and led to a slew of questions, including how he was able to get on a roof in clear sight of where Trump was speaking in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The would-be assassin was spotted by witnesses before the shooting and Secret Service and law enforcement were warned of his presence.
Yet he was still able to open fire at least eight times with the AR-style rifle he got from his father.
Republican Rep. Mike Waltz told DailyMail.com earlier this week that he wasn't convinced Crooks acted alone.
He said the gunman's motivation is still unknown and he is worried a foreign entity or other third-party could have been involved in the attack.
Waltz queried how federal law enforcement can confidently say Crooks was a lone wolf if they can't answer other questions like why he had multiple foreign encrypted messaging accounts.
His comments came after it was revealed that Iran was also plotting an attempt on the former president's life around the same time that Crooks carried out his plan.
'The more we get into it, the more questions I have,' Waltz said. 'It's really what's coming out around it that is so disturbing.
'And for me, the thing that's most disturbing is that we have ongoing plots from Iran to take out a former president, leading candidate, and that a Pakistani national was just arrested after making a down payment for hitmen, and it's barely even being covered in the news.'
Crooks, 20, was able to create multiple explosives with remote detonators, another thing that raised Waltz's eyebrows and makes him wonder whether he had help.
As the FBI, Secret Service and Department of Homeland Security conduct their investigations into the massive security failure, Waltz and 12 other lawmakers on a House task force are also looking into the attempted assassination.
'I don't understand, and I don't have any answers yet to help me understand how the [Secret] Service and DHS came out so quickly and said – and I think the FBI as well, but I'll have to check that – and said, he operated alone,' Waltz said when speaking with DailyMail.com at Trump Tower in Chicago on Wednesday.
'How do you know that mere days into your investigation?'
The Florida congressman added: 'You can't tell us his motive, but you could tell us he operated alone? You can't get into these encrypted overseas accounts, but you can tell us he acted alone? So, I don't buy that yet.'
A man was arrested in Arizona after threatening to kill Trump at a rally in Cochise County near the southern border with Mexico. Ronald Syvrud, 66, was apprehended shortly before Trump was due to speak.
In the Jly 13 shooting a bullet fired from Crooks's AR-style weapon, bought legally by his father, grazed the former president's right ear.
Crooks killed one rally-goer and critically injured two others before he was taken out.
The FBI also found explosives in Crooks' car, which was parked near the rally site. And upon raiding his parents' house, where he lived, they found more bombs.
'I don't know of many 19-year-old kids who could make multiple IEDs with a remote detonator on their own,' Waltz told DailyMail.com. 'Why didn't that get picked up if he's searching that online or buying literature on how to do that?'