NEW: Acting Secret Service head says Trump assassination attempt was due to ‘failure of imagination’

While answering a question from Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-IN), who asked, "There's some people that think it didn't really happen, which of course is completely ridiculous. It did. There are some people that think all kinds of conspiracies went on within the government, which is also false. But could you just tell them what went wrong so they understand?"

Rowe responded saying that it was a "failure of imagination," adding, "a failure to imagine that we actually do live in a very dangerous world where people do actually want to do harm to our protectees."

Rowe also added, "I think it was a failure to challenge our own assumptions, the assumptions that we know our partners are going to do everything they can, and they do this every day. But we didn't challenge our own assumptions of ‘We assume that someone's going to cover that.’ We assumed that there's going to be uniform presence. We didn't challenge that internally during that advance." In the case of the Butler, Pennsylvania rally, the "partners" that Rowe referred to are local law enforcement.

As reported by RealClearPolitics, the USSS played a key role in limiting resources for Trump at the July 13 rally. Rowe had been actively involved in the denial of additional security resources and personnel that were evidently needed by the Trump team in order to avoid what happened. This was despite repeated requests from agents assigned to Trump to have more resources to be able to help keep the GOP nominee safe, per sources that spoke to the outlet.

Additionally, local law enforcement had offered the USSS extra drone coverage, which the USSS denied at the time of the rally.