Trump says he will call for unity in speech revised since shooting at Pennsylvania rally – live

Kimberly Cheatle, the director of the Secret Service, has issued her first major statement since the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, in which she said the agency was increasing security for the former president and the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee.

The statement reads:

I would like to start by extending my deepest condolences to the family and friends of Corey Comperatore, who was killed during the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump’s life in Butler, Pennsylvania, Saturday, as well as those who were injured during this senseless act of violence.

Secret Service personnel on the ground moved quickly during the incident, with our counter sniper team neutralizing the shooter and our agents implementing protective measures to ensure the safety of former president Donald Trump.

Since the shooting, I have been in constant contact with Secret Service personnel in Pennsylvania who worked to maintain the integrity of the crime scene until the FBI assumed its role as the lead investigating agency into the assassination attempt. I have also been coordinating with the protective detail for former President Trump and have briefed President Biden on the details of the incident.

The Secret Service is working with all involved Federal, state and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened, and how we can prevent an incident like this from ever taking place again. We understand the importance of the independent review announced by President Biden yesterday and will participate fully. We will also work with the appropriate Congressional committees on any oversight action.

The incident in Pennsylvania has understandably led to questions about potential updates or changes to the security for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. The U.S. Secret Service, in conjunction with our Federal, state and local law enforcement and public safety partners, designs operational security plans for National Special Security Events (NSSE) to be dynamic in order to respond to a kinetic security environment and the most up-to-date intelligence from our partners.

I am confident in the security plan our Secret Service RNC coordinator and our partners have put in place, which we have reviewed and strengthened in the wake of Saturday’s shooting. The security plans for National Special Security Events are designed to be flexible. As the conventions progress, and in accordance with the direction of the President, the Secret Service will continuously adapt our operations as necessary in order to ensure the highest level of safety and security for convention attendees, volunteers and the City of Milwaukee. In addition to the additional security enhancements we provided former President Trump’s detail in June, we have also implemented changes to his security detail since Saturday to ensure his continued protection for the convention and the remainder of the campaign.

The Secret Service is tasked with the tremendous responsibility of protecting the current and former leaders of our democracy. It is a responsibility that I take incredibly seriously, and I am committed to fulfilling that mission.

Donald Trump arrived yesterday in Milwaukee for the Republican National Convention, where he is due to accept his party’s formal nomination with a speech later this week after being the target of an attempted assassination at his campaign rally on Saturday.

“The speech I was going to give on Thursday was going to be a humdinger,” the former president told the Washington Examiner in an interview published on Sunday evening.

In his newly revised nomination acceptance speech, Trump said, he will call for a new effort at national unity, noting that people from different political views have called him. He said:

This is a chance to bring the whole country, even the whole world, together. The speech will be a lot different, a lot different than it would’ve been two days ago.

Republicans will gather today in downtown Milwaukee to Thursday, where they will officially annoint Trump as their presidential nominee. He is also expected to announce his vice-presidential pick, who will be expected to deliver a speech of their own on Wednesday night.

Angela Giuffrida is the Guardian’s Rome correspondent

An Italian sports journalist and blogger has described how he became the target of fake news after he was accused of being the suspect behind Donald Trump’s attempted assassination.

Marco Violi told Il Messaggero that he woke up to hundreds of messages in the early hours of Sunday after two accounts on X posted a photo of him alongside a message saying that Butler police department had identified Trump’s shooter as “Mark Violets, a rabid Antifa member”. Mark Violets is a direct English translation of his name. The accounts had millions of followers, with the message circulating for several hours and republished on a number of international websites before the real suspect was identified.

“First my name was mangled as Mark Violets but then my real name appeared,” Violi told Il Messaggero. “I immediately realised that it all started from a tweet from a couple of accounts on X which have been persecuting me on social media for six years. The incredible thing is they went viral in an instant. Media from all over the world covered this fake news without anyone trying to verify it.”

The Rome-based journalist said he had become a target of online trolls after criticising James Pallotta, an American businessman and the former owner of AS Roma football club. Violi said he was ready to take legal action “to protect my image” and to ask for closure of the online accounts “which have been persecuting my family and I since 2018”.

President Joe Biden will receive the official nomination from fellow Democrats for a second term in a virtual vote as planned in late July, ahead of the party’s national convention, despite calls for him to step aside and the shock of an assassination attempt on Biden’s likely opponent, Donald Trump.

Reuters cited four people involved in the process, but said it remains unclear how the early nominating process will work.

Reuters spoke to more than 20 of the 4,500 delegates who will be involved in the nomination. Eight told Reuters they either had not heard about what senior Democrats have described as a “virtual roll call” or they had not heard any details on it recently.

The early nomination is needed to deal with an Ohio law that could have kept Biden’s name off ballots in the state if he wasn’t nominated by 7 August, prior to party’s convention in Chicago. The plan was put in place before Biden’s performance in the 27 June debate.

Britain’s King Charles III is understood to have written privately to Donald Trump after the former US president survived an assassination attempt, Buckingham Palace has said.

PA Media reports Charles’s message was in keeping with UK prime minister Keir Starmer’s conversation with Trump, in which he condemned the violence, expressed his condolences for the victims and their families, and wished the former president and those injured a quick recovery.

The king’s message was delivered on Sunday via the UK embassy in Washington DC. Buckingham Palace said the contents of the correspondence would be kept private.

Former US Secret Service agents spent the early aftermath of what authorities say was an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump at a political rally on Saturday speaking out about what might have prevented their previous employer from failing to halt the shooter before he opened fire.

Evy Poumpouras, who served in the Secret Service’s presidential protective division during Barack Obama’s time in the White House, told NBC’s Today show that rallies like the one this weekend – in a relatively exposed rural tract of Butler county, Pennsylvania – “are the most anxious you’re ever going to be as an agent because you’re trying to secure all of it”.

In her remarks Sunday, the author and journalist suggested local- and state-level law enforcement officers who collaborate with the Secret Service for such events were likely the first line of defense in the area surrounding the Trump rally venue – a position reportedly confirmed by agency spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi.

At Saturday’s rally, a man with a rifle was able to climb atop the roof of a bottle manufacturing plant and fire several shots at the former president at a distance of only about 165 yards.

Multiple people who were outside the venue but near that building – listening to Trump campaign for another presidency – reported trying to point out the gunman to police officers stationed there. But Poumpouras said a key question to answer moving forward is to determine whether those people were directly speaking to officers or if they were unsuccessfully trying to get their attention.

Read more here: Ex-Secret Service agents say ‘massive realignment’ warranted after Trump rally shooting

The Kremlin said on Monday that Russian president Vladimir Putin had not contacted Donald Trump after the assassination attempt on the Republican US presidential candidate and had no plans to do so, Reuters reports.

Edward Helmore reports for the Guardian

In Bethel Park, where the man who is suspected of opening fire at a Donald Trump campaign rally on Saturday lived with his mother and sister, the houses are small and built of brick, Walmart and Target form central social hubs, and moms watch over their children at a junior league baseball park next to a tributary of the Allegheny river.

Claire, a young woman who had known Thomas Matthew Crooks through his elder sister and who did not provide a last name, said she could not quite believe the boy she had once knew had attempted to assassinate a US president. “He’s so young to want to go do that”, she said.

She said Crooks had had a difficult time socially. “He wasn’t the most attractive-looking and I don’t think he did sports that can add appeal’” she said.

Jameson Myers said that Crooks had tried out for the school rifle team but had not made the roster. “He didn’t just not make the team, he was asked not to come back because how bad of a shot he was, it was considered like, dangerous”, Myers told ABC News. Jameson Murphy told the Post that Crooks was “a comically bad shot”.