The gunman who tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a July campaign rally in Pennsylvania apparently bought a ladder to be able to scale the roof from which he was able to elude Secret Service agents, fire shots, and injure the former president—but he didn't end up using it. As NBC News reports, Thomas Crooks instead used a built-in stepping stone to get on the roof of the building complex adjacent to the Butler Farm Show: an air-conditioning unit. Security video from an ice cream shop nearby shows the gunman using such a unit to get onto the roof that put him roughly 450 feet away from where Trump was speaking. It's not clear if that video will be released publicly.
CBS News notes that members of the congressional task force investigating the assassination attempt were on the grounds on Monday and were finding a fair amount of flaws in what led up to Crooks' ability to fire on a former president. "Before I was in Congress, I was an Army Ranger serving in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Democratic Rep. Jason Crow of Colorado. "One of the fundamental principles you operate on is you always secure the high ground or you have eyes on the high ground. So, I definitely took note today that there are a lot of lines of sight that weren't secured." (Security at Trump's next outdoor rally was decidedly tighter.)
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