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.
Jim Copenhaver, 74 and David Dutch, 57, told NBC News in an exclusive interview Monday that they were elated to be at the rally and sitting up in the bleachers behind the former president before the gunshots erupted and they were hit.
Both men said they believed the Secret Service and law enforcement officials were negligent in undertaking their duty to protect a former president and innocent civilians.
“I believe there was 100% negligence on the Secret Service, probably everybody involved in setting that security, down to inter-department communications,” Dutch said. “The negligence was vast. It was terrible.”
Read more on this story at NBCNews.com and watch “NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt” tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT.
Get Tri-state area news delivered to your inbox. Sign up for NBC New York's News Headlines newsletter.
“I’m sure there was negligence. It wouldn’t have happened, had it been secure,” Copenhaver said.
When asked if he believed the Secret Service failed him and the former president, Dutch said: “Big time.”
“The whole security setup was poor,” he said.
Attorneys for the men said they plan to sue and are in the early stages of investigating whom they will pursue a case against.
Copenhaver and Dutch were critically injured in the July 13 shooting at the Trump campaign rally in Butler. Copenhaver was shot in the triceps and abdomen, and Dutch was hit in the liver.
“It was like getting hit with a sledgehammer right in the chest,” Dutch said, adding that he could see chunks of the bleacher and metal “flying all around” until the shooting stopped.
Copenhaver said he didn't realize what was happening until he saw part of his sleeve get blown away.
“I turned around to my friend, and I said, ‘I think I was shot,’ and that’s when I got the second one and then I went down,” he said, adding that he had collapsed onto the bleachers and couldn’t stand up.
Dutch and Copenhaver said the shooting has left them with ongoing health problems.
Copenhaver said he has lost 30 pounds and now has to walk with a cane. He still gets pain in his abdomen from time to time.
Dutch said he still needs help tending to his bullet wound. He lost 25 pounds and can’t drive or lift more than 10 pounds, he said.
“I never thought I’d be in this position,” he said. “I was usually the other guy helping other people out.”
“It’s a struggle every day,” Dutch said.
Another man, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed in the shooting while shielding his family. Trump was wounded in the ear.
A Secret Service countersniper shot and killed the 20-year-old gunman, who had shot from the roof of a building about 450 feet from where the former president was speaking.
The assassination attempt raised alarm about the Secret Service and security failures that allowed the gunman to fire eight shots at the former president.
Kimberly Cheatle, director of the Secret Service at the time, stepped down this summer after lawmakers called for her to resign.
Last month, the “initial mission assurance report” compiled by the Secret Service’s own internal investigators found that bad planning and poor communication among agencies caused the security lapses that allowed the assassination attempt to happen.
Dutch said that during the shooting, he was “angry” at the security lapse that failed to prevent the incident from happening and the fact that someone “tried to shoot the president, shot into a defenseless crowd.”
“I was just angry that the whole situation even happened. It should have never happened,” he said.
This story first appeared on NBCNews.com. More from NBC News:
