Top senators briefed on 'major errors' leading up to Trump assassination attempt

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Sen. Blumenthal says Americans will be 'shocked' by Secret Service failures in Trump assassination attempt

Lawmakers said an interim report is expected to be released on what they've learned so far about the shooting.

A handful of leading senators on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) were briefed Thursday by Acting U.S. Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe on the investigation into the July assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump. 

"I think the American people are going to be shocked, astonished and appalled by what we will report to them about the failures by the Secret Service in this assassination attempt on the former president," HSGAC Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations (PSI) Chairman Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told Fox News Digital following the briefing. 

The senator refused to go into details about what he had heard in the meeting, however. 

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Four top senators on the Homeland Security Committee were briefed on the investigation into the assassination attempt against Trump.  (Reuters)

Rowe briefed Blumenthal, PSI Ranking Member Ron Johnson, R-Wis., HSGAC Chairman Gary Peters, D-Mich., and HSGAC Ranking Member Rand Paul, R-Ky., before venturing to the House of Representatives to similarly brief the Task Force on the Attempted Assassination of Donald J. Trump. 

"I do think that the director is attempting to try to make sure this doesn't happen again. And so I do appreciate that he's trying," Paul said after exiting the briefing. 

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President Trump famously raised his fist and yelled, ‘Fight!’ to the crowd after surviving an assassination attempt in July. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

He added that "major errors" had occurred on July 13 when Trump was shot in the ear at an outdoor campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and one attendee was killed, while two others were critically injured. 

He detailed that the committee's bipartisan interim report on the assassination attempt would be coming out in a few days.  

"I think it's going to identify very specific errors that were made in this," Paul said. 

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Johnson was one of the senators briefed.  (Umit Bektas)

Peters emphasized that the forthcoming report will "only be an interim report, because there's a lot more information that we need to find." 

"We hope once this report comes out, and we can get the additional information necessary to have a complete report of what happened, as well as steps of what we need to do in the future to make sure that this never happens," he told Fox News. 

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Blumenthal predicted that people would be shocked by the report.  (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

Paul additionally told reporters that he had not learned any new information about the shooter's motive or anything else. 

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The Secret Service provided senators with an initial briefing just days after the assassination attempt, which left many senators unsatisfied. At the time, Johnson said "virtually no information" was shared, and the discussion was primarily meant to "check the box." 

A Peters aide told Fox News Digital one day after the shooting that the committee would be launching an investigation into the assassination attempt, also revealing that the chairman had been scheduled to speak with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Mayorkas that weekend.