A whistleblower told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that the Secret Service did not conduct a typical evaluation of the Trump rally site in Pennsylvania before the former president was nearly assassinated.
In a letter to Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe, Hawley said that the whistleblower told his office that the Secret Service Counter Surveillance Division (CSD) did not conduct a threat assessment of the Butler rally site the day of the rally. The whistleblower also added that CSD was not at the location on the day of the attack. During the rally, former President Donald Trump was struck in the ear, two rally attendees were seriously injured, and 50-year-old Corey Comperatore was killed.
“This is significant because CSD’s duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event,” Hawley wrote on Thursday. “The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder.”
“You acknowledged in your Senate testimony that the American Glass Research complex should have been included in the security perimeter for the Butler event,” he added. “The whistleblower alleges that because CSD was not present in Butler, this manifest shortcoming was never properly flagged or mitigated.”
According to the whistleblower, Rowe also “personally directed cuts to CSD,” and moved to cut the division’s manpower by up to 20%.
The whistleblower also told Hawley’s office that Secret Service agents had been retaliated against in the past for raising concerns about the agency relying on local law enforcement to secure a golf tournament Trump participated in last August.
Since the attempted assassination, Hawley has made a number of revelations based on whistleblower information. He previously revealed that the rooftop where 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot at Trump was reportedly abandoned by law enforcement because of the heat.
In a new statement on Friday, Rowe acknowledged that the security failures at the Trump rally fell entirely on the shoulders of the Secret Service.
“The Secret Service takes full responsibility for the tragic events of July 13th,” Rowe told reporters. “This was a mission failure. The sole responsibility of our agency is to make sure our protectees are never put in danger.”
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