Watch: SWAT Officer Reveals That Pennsylvania Police Had No Contact With Secret Service Before Trump Assassination Attempt

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A SWAT officer who was part of a local team assigned to former President Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania where he was shot said there was no contact between his team and the U.S. Secret Service who were assigned to Trump’s protection.

In an interview with ABC News, Jason Woods, the lead sharpshooter on the team from Beaver County, said that his team was “supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service members whenever they arrived, and that never happened.”

He argued that the failure to communicate on the part of the Secret Service was a massive contributing factor to the failure, which resulted in 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks taking up a sniper position just 130 yards away from the former President, wounding him, killing spectator Corey Compartore, and injuring two other rallygoers before being shot dead by a Secret Service sniper.

“I think that was probably a pivotal point, where I started thinking things were wrong because it never happened,” he said. “We had no communication.”

Woods told ABC News that he and his team were in position hours before Trump was on stage at the rally, but did not communicate with Secret Service for the first time “until after the shooting,” and by then it was “too late.”

The assassination attempt has led to intense backlash against the U.S. Secret Service, as they face intense scrutiny for their failure to act on the threat that Crooks posed to Trump. As more information regarding the assassination attempt has been revealed, critics have only become more harsh.

ABC reported that one of the Beaver County snipers took pictures of Crooks, calling into command about his presence at the venue, and labeling him suspicious. This, however, did not prevent Crooks from climbing to the roof of a nearby building and taking up a sniper position.

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned in the wake of the attempt, amidst congressional scrutiny, and several congressional and law enforcement probes have been announced.

Members of Trump’s Secret Service detail, as well as his top advisers, have wondered why they were not informed about Crooks’ presence. When the shots first rang out, Trump’s advisers believed they were the sound of fireworks, the Washington Post reported.

Additionally, Two unnamed advisers told ABC News that they were uncertain why the alert had not been passed on to them so they could consider a delay to Trump’s speech, something that Trump himself noted in an interview with Fox News earlier this week.

“Nobody mentioned it. Nobody said there was a problem,” Trump said in an interview with Jesse Watters on Monday. “They could’ve said, ‘Let’s wait for 15 minutes, 20 minutes, five minutes,’ something. Nobody said — I think that was a mistake.”

Beaver County Chief Detective Patrick Young refused to let his team take the full blame for the failure, saying that they did “everything humanly possible” on the day of the assassination attempt, and pointed to a lack of teamwork as the primary cause.

“I believe our team did everything humanly possible that day,” Young said. “We talk a lot on SWAT that we as individuals mean nothing until we come together as a team.”