At Trump Rally, Local Police and Gunman Were in Same Warehouse Complex

While a gunman was climbing onto the roof of a warehouse less than 500 feet from where former President Donald J. Trump was speaking on Saturday, three law enforcement snipers were positioned inside the same complex of buildings, looking for anything amiss in the crowd.

The director of the Secret Service said the local forces were in the very same building, an account suggesting that the gunman was literally on top of them. A local law enforcement official told The New York Times on Tuesday that was not the case, and that the local forces were in an adjacent building.

The discrepancy in their accounts is just one unsettled element in the effort to determine how security broke down and allowed a 20-year-old with an semi-automatic rifle to open fire in a rapid barrage that left Mr. Trump hurt, one man dead and two other people at the rally gravely wounded.

That this matter is still not easily resolved three days after the shooting shows that the law enforcement agencies have turned to finger pointing after a would-be assassin came close to felling the Republican presidential nominee two days before the Republican Party convention.

At the heart of the investigation is the warren of warehouses adjacent to the rally site, the Butler Farm Show grounds.

What’s clear is that the complex was outside what the Secret Service chose as its most secure perimeter, so the buildings were delegated to local law enforcement to sweep and secure. While local law enforcement officers are used for additional security in an event like a campaign rally, the Secret Service is the agency charged first and foremost with protecting America’s leaders, including former presidents, and it was the agency’s job to determine the security zone and keep the