Two men who took bullets at the July 13, 2024, Trump campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, have filed federal lawsuits against the United States government, alleging that the Secret Service's gross negligence turned a preventable threat into a near-assassination and a mass shooting.
James Copenhaver and David Dutch filed separate but similar complaints Monday in the Western District of Pennsylvania. Their wives joined the legal actions. The defendant in both cases: the United States of America. The core charge: the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security failed to secure the Butler Farm Show grounds despite clear warnings, and that failure directly caused the injuries they now carry.
The lawsuits land nearly a year after Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire from the roof of a nearby building known as the AGR Complex, grazing President Trump's ear, killing former volunteer fire chief Corey Comperatore, and wounding Copenhaver and Dutch. Crooks was killed seconds later by a Secret Service sniper. But as Fox News Digital reported, the complaints make clear that those seconds should never have happened at all.
The lawsuits draw heavily on congressional investigations that followed the shooting. Senate findings, the complaints state, concluded that Secret Service failures "directly led to the shooting complained of herein." The filings borrow the Senate's own language to describe what went wrong:
"Congressional investigations also reviewed the USSS's failures on the day of the assassination attempt, including Senate findings which concluded that the USSS's failures directly led to the shooting complained of herein, including, but not limited to, that the USSS's conduct consisted of a 'cascade of preventable failures.'"
That phrase, "cascade of preventable failures", was not coined by the plaintiffs' lawyers. It came from the government's own investigators. And the complaints go further, citing the Secret Service's own internal admissions.
"Indeed, the [Secret Service] has itself acknowledged that its failures included 'breakdowns in communication, technological issues, and human failure' all of which contributed to the shooting, and that its conduct constituted '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.'"
A "zero-fail mission" that failed. The agency's own words.
The lawsuits lay out a detailed indictment of how the Secret Service handled, and mishandled, security at the Butler rally. The AGR Complex roof, from which Crooks fired, was identified as a vulnerability. It was not secured. The complaints allege the Secret Service created fragmented, separate command centers rather than a single unified post, a decision that fractured coordination at a moment when seconds mattered.
Agents relied on cellphones to pass messages between trailers instead of centralized radio channels. In the hours before the shooting, authorities observed Crooks acting erratically and using a range finder. He became the subject of a search. None of it was enough to stop him from climbing onto that roof with a rifle.
The complaints frame the entire sequence as foreseeable and avoidable:
"The assassination attempt on President Trump's life was entirely preventable and was caused, in whole or in part, by the [failures of the USSS] in the days leading up to the event as well as on the day of the assassination attempt."
And more bluntly:
"The defendant United States of America, by and through 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 filings also state that the Secret Service's fragmented setup "severely impeded" the agency's ability to respond.
David Dutch was shot in the abdomen. He underwent multiple surgeries. James Copenhaver was struck by two bullets, one in the abdomen, one in the left arm. Fragments remain lodged in his body to this day.
Corey Comperatore, a former volunteer fire chief, never made it out. He died shielding his family from the gunfire. He went to a political rally and gave his life protecting the people he loved from a threat the Secret Service was supposed to prevent.
Both Copenhaver and Dutch seek $150,000 in damages, plus interest and attorney fees. Given the severity of their injuries, the figure is notably modest, a signal, perhaps, that the lawsuits are aimed less at a windfall than at formal accountability.
The complaints note that numerous Secret Service agents were held accountable in some form after the shooting. Some were suspended without pay. Others were placed on restricted duty or moved into non-operational positions. But reassigning agents to desk jobs is not the same as answering, under oath and in open court, for what went wrong and why.
Fox News reported reaching out to the White House, Secret Service, and DHS for comment on the lawsuits. No responses were included in the reporting.
That silence is familiar. The pattern after Butler has been one of slow-drip admissions, the agency acknowledging "breakdowns," Congress issuing findings, personnel shuffled, but no single moment of full public reckoning. These lawsuits may force one.
The Butler shooting was not a bolt from the blue. Crooks was spotted behaving suspiciously. He was carrying a range finder. He drew enough attention to trigger a search. The roof he used had already been flagged as a security concern. The command structure was split. Communications ran through cellphones instead of secure radio channels. Every link in the chain that should have held gave way.
Congressional investigators called it a cascade. The Secret Service called it an operational failure. Copenhaver and Dutch call it gross negligence. Whatever the label, the facts described in these filings tell the same story: the people responsible for preventing exactly this kind of attack did not do their jobs, and Americans bled for it.
The lawsuits now sit in federal court in western Pennsylvania. They will proceed through discovery, depositions, and, unless the government settles, trial. For Copenhaver, who still carries bullet fragments in his body, and for Dutch, who endured multiple surgeries, the legal process will be long. But at least it is a process. At least someone has to answer.
When the government's own investigators call its failures "preventable," and the agency itself admits to "breakdowns in communication, technological issues, and human failure," the only real question left is what accountability looks like. Internal reshuffling clearly was not enough. A courtroom might be.
The men who were shot at Butler did nothing wrong. They showed up to hear a presidential candidate speak. The government owed them competence. It gave them chaos. Now it owes them answers, under oath.