Two men who were shot during the July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump say the U.S. Secret Service was “negligent” in failing to protect Trump and bystanders at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

David Dutch, 57, a Marine veteran, and James Copenhaver, 74, a retired liquor store manager, told NBC News in an exclusive interview Monday they were excited to be sitting in the bleachers behind the Republican nominee at the fairgrounds in Butler on July 13 when gunshots rang out and they were hit.

Another man, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the shooting while shielding his family.

Trump was wounded in the ear.

Two men who were shot when a gunman tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally said the U.S. Secret Service failed them and Trump that day in July and was negligent in its security response. @LlamasNBC reports in this exclusive for NBC. pic.twitter.com/qkFEdU4j4R

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) October 15, 2024

The interview with the two Pennsylvania men who were critically injured marked their first public statements since 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, opened fire  from an unsecured rooftop nearby before he was fatally shot.

“It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in the chest,” said Dutch, who served in both Desert Shield and Desert Storm in his time with the Marines from 1986 to 1992.

He said he could see chunks of the bleacher and metal “flying all around” until the shooting stopped.

Dutch said Monday he was still “angry that the whole situation even happened. It should have never happened.”

“I believe there was 100 percent negligence on the Secret Service, probably everybody involved in setting that security, down to inter-department communications,” he said.

“The negligence was vast. It was terrible.”

NBC News reported the two men’s attorneys said they were looking into possible litigation over what they view as negligence by the Secret Service.

“I’m sure there was negligence. It wouldn’t have happened, had it been secure,” Copenhaver told the network.

Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service at the time, called the attempt on Trump’s life at the Pennsylvania rally the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades.”

She stepped down July 23 after lawmakers called for her to resign.

Trump returned earlier this month to the Pennsylvania fairgrounds where he was nearly assassinated in July, urging a large crowd to deliver an Election Day victory that he tied to his survival of the shooting.

The Western Journal has reviewed this Associated Press story and may have altered it prior to publication to ensure that it meets our editorial standards.

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