Butler rally shooting victims sue federal government over Secret Service security failures

Two men wounded during the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt on Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, have filed federal lawsuits against the United States government, alleging the Secret Service’s gross negligence turned a preventable security breakdown into a near-massacre.

James Copenhaver and David Dutch each filed separate but similar complaints in the Western District of Pennsylvania on Monday, Fox News Digital reported. Both lawsuits name the United States government as the sole defendant. Their wives joined them in the legal action. Each suit seeks $150,000 in damages, plus interest and attorney fees.

The filings lay out what the complaints call a “cascade of preventable failures” by the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, failures that, the plaintiffs argue, directly and proximately caused the shooting or allowed it to happen.

What the lawsuits allege

The complaints paint a damning picture of fragmented security operations at the Butler Farm Show grounds. Rather than establishing a single unified command post, the Secret Service set up separate, disconnected command centers. Agents relied on cellphones to pass messages between trailers instead of centralized radio channels. The result, the lawsuits argue, was an environment where critical information could not be shared in time.

That failure mattered because authorities had warning signs. The legal filings state that in the hours before the shooting, officials observed gunman Thomas Crooks acting erratically and using a range finder. He became the subject of a search. Yet he still managed to position himself on the roof of the nearby AGR Complex, a location the lawsuits specifically cite, and open fire on the rally crowd.

Crooks grazed Trump’s ear with a bullet, shot Copenhaver and Dutch, and killed former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, who died shielding his family. A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks seconds after he opened fire.

The complaints do not treat the shooting as an unforeseeable tragedy. They treat it as the predictable outcome of institutional negligence stretching back days before the event.

The human cost

Dutch took a bullet to the abdomen and underwent multiple surgeries. Copenhaver was struck twice, in the abdomen and left arm. Bullet fragments remain lodged in his body to this day.

Comperatore did not survive. He attended the rally with his family and gave his life protecting them. His death stands as the starkest measure of what went wrong that afternoon in Butler.

The Secret Service’s mission is often described in zero-fail terms. That day, the agency failed catastrophically, and the people who paid for it were ordinary Americans who showed up to hear a presidential candidate speak.

The agency’s own admissions

The lawsuits lean heavily on the government’s own words. The complaints quote the Secret Service acknowledging that its failures included “breakdowns in communication, technological issues, and human failure,” all of which contributed to the shooting. The agency itself called its conduct “an operational failure that the Secret Service will carry as a reminder of the critical importance of its zero-fail mission and the need for continuous improvement.”

The filings also note that numerous agents were held accountable for their acts and omissions, including suspension without pay. Others were placed on restricted duty or moved into non-operational positions.

Congressional investigations reviewed the failures as well. The lawsuits cite Senate findings concluding that the Secret Service’s conduct directly led to the shooting, a finding the plaintiffs fold into their negligence claims.

The ongoing debate over White House security funding adds another layer of context. When the agency charged with protecting the president and the public cannot secure a rally perimeter, questions about resources, leadership, and priorities are not abstract budget disputes. They are life-and-death matters.

A pattern of security concerns

The Butler shooting was not an isolated incident in a vacuum. The Secret Service has faced a string of security challenges and confrontations in recent years, raising persistent questions about the agency’s operational readiness.

Months after the Butler rally, a gunman opened fire near a White House checkpoint and was fatally shot by Secret Service agents, another stark reminder of the threats the agency faces and the stakes of any lapse.

Separately, a federal judge drew controversy when he apologized to an alleged Trump assassination suspect over jail conditions, invoking January 6 in a courtroom rebuke that struck many observers as misplaced sympathy given the gravity of the charges.

And the men and women who do step up to protect officials have not always been rewarded for it. Secret Service agents who stopped a gunman near the White House went unpaid for weeks as a DHS shutdown dragged past 60 days, a bureaucratic failure layered on top of the operational ones.

What the lawsuits seek, and what they represent

Each lawsuit seeks $150,000, plus interest and attorney fees. In the context of federal litigation, the dollar figure is modest. But the complaints are not primarily about money. They are about accountability.

The filings frame the Butler shooting as entirely preventable. They argue the Secret Service “committed egregious failures and failed to abide by and adhere to various protocols, policies and procedures which directly and proximately caused the shooting and/or allowed it to occur.” The complaints assert that the agency’s negligence extended from the days leading up to the rally through the event itself.

Fox News reported it reached out to the White House, the Secret Service, and DHS for comment. No responses were included in the reporting.

The silence is notable. The agency has already conceded, in its own language, that communication breakdowns, technological shortcomings, and human error all contributed to the disaster. The Senate reached the same conclusion. Agents were disciplined. Yet no one in government has faced the kind of formal legal reckoning that Copenhaver and Dutch are now demanding in federal court.

The question that lingers

The core allegation is straightforward. Authorities saw Thomas Crooks behaving suspiciously. They knew he had a range finder. They launched a search for him. And yet he climbed onto a rooftop within clear sight of the rally stage, took aim, and fired.

The Secret Service did not lack information that day. It lacked the ability, or the will, to act on it in time. Fragmented command posts, cellphone-relay communications, and a failure to secure a known vantage point all compounded into a disaster that left one man dead, two others gravely wounded, and a presidential candidate bleeding from the ear.

These lawsuits will now force the government to answer for those failures under oath, in a federal courtroom, with discovery and depositions. That is more accountability than any congressional hearing has managed to deliver.

Incidents involving the Secret Service continue to raise questions about whether the agency is structured and resourced to meet modern threats. Just weeks ago, a man was arrested after allegedly confronting Secret Service agents at Trump National Doral Golf Club, yet another reminder that the threat environment is not easing.

James Copenhaver still carries bullet fragments in his body. David Dutch endured multiple surgeries. Corey Comperatore’s family buried him. The Secret Service called its own performance a failure. Now a federal court will decide whether that failure carries a legal price, or whether the government can acknowledge a catastrophe and walk away from the bill.

When the agency whose motto is “worthy of trust and confidence” admits it failed, and the people it failed have to sue just to get a hearing, the problem is bigger than one rally in Butler. It is an institution that has lost the plot.