by Rebeka Zeljko
A whistleblower told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a letter released on Tuesday that the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were “egregiously under-prepared.”
The whistleblower told Hawley that the HSI agents were taken off child exploitation cases and reassigned in partnership with U.S. Secret Service (USSS) to work security at the rally, according to the letter. Ahead of the event, the HSI agents received just a two-hour “webinar” that lacked substance and was “riddled with technical mishaps,” with the whistleblower claiming that the training is unchanged even after the assassination attempt.
“In other words, all of these allegations together suggest that a significant number of personnel tasked with providing security for former President Trump at the July 13 rally were egregiously under-prepared by the Secret Service to carry out this mission,” Hawley said in the letter.
The agents assigned to President Trump in Butler PA were pulled off child exploitation cases and thrown onto Trump’s protective detail with nothing more than a 2hr online training. And we know this ONLY because of brave whistleblowers pic.twitter.com/m8CY5eqmUl
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 4, 2024
“Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to login individually,” the whistleblower said in the letter. “Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos (which I’m told are the same videos as last year). All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times …. The content was not helpful.”
“Nothing new, nothing improved since the assassination attempt on former President Trump,” the whistleblower continued.
Hawley previously addressed Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas about allegations that there were more HSI agents present on July 13 than Secret Service agents, according to the letter. Another whistleblower also alleged that some of the HSI agents at the rally had never worked a protective security detail before and were unaware of the proper procedures.
One of the HSI agents working at the rally “only receive[d] one power-point presentation for training,” according to the letter.
Due to these security lapses, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to fire multiple shots from a rooftop positioned 130 yards away, wounding the former president, killing volunteer firefighter Corey Comperatore and injuring two attendees. Crooks was reportedly spotted by witnesses, flagged by Secret Service agents and even identified by a local counter sniper over an hour and a half before Trump went on stage.
In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle provided an evasive testimony on July 22 before the House Oversight Committee, which resulted in bipartisan scrutiny and calls for her resignation. Cheatle resigned from her post just a day after her testimony and ten days after the assassination attempt.
“The U.S. Secret Service respects the role of oversight,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “To date, we have provided over 1,500 pages of responsive documentation to Congress and have made employees available for transcribed interviews. These efforts will continue as our desire to learn from this failure and ensure that it never happens again is unwavering.”
The U.S. Secret Service and the Homeland Security Investigations did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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Rebeka Zeljko is a reporter at Daily Caller News Foundation.
Background Photo “Secret Service Members” by Secret Service.
