Whistleblower: Secret Service denies Butler agents additional staff before shooting at Trump rally
A Secret Service personnel department asked agents not to request additional security for the rally where an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump took place, a whistleblower report said.
The informant told Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) that the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations – Manpower essentially “informally” rebuffed security forces by asking agents not to request more personnel for the rally, Hawley wrote in a letter to acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe on Friday.
Hawley accused Rowe of making false statements when he appeared before the Senate in July and was questioned about the assassination.
“If you’re talking about Butler, Pennsylvania, all of the assets requested were approved,” Rowe testified.
Hawley said Rowe must “immediately explain this obvious inconsistency” and asked the acting director to answer numerous questions about the incident.
The rally on July 13 was the Secret Service’s biggest security failure in decades. A 20-year-old gunman managed to get onto a roof in close proximity to Trump and fire into the crowd. One man died, two were seriously injured, and Trump suffered a minor injury.
Agents responsible for protecting Trump at the rally made a routine personnel request before the event, but did not ask for sniper teams or Counter-Surveillance Division personnel, Hawley wrote. The end result, Hawley said, was that field agents did not receive those resources until the last minute, leaving the additional security personnel little time to prepare for the rally.
“According to the informant, the personnel request did not include additional security resources because agents on the ground were told not to request them in the first place,” Hawley said.
The Missouri senator’s letter came after former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned in the wake of the assassination and the Secret Service recently placed five agents on leave over the incident.
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Hawley said the measures were inadequate and the whistleblower’s allegations suggested that other higher-level Secret Service employees also contributed to the failure of the rally.
“Your actions to furlough some field staff are not enough,” Hawley wrote. “These serious allegations suggest that the failures to protect the former president extended to senior agency officials.”
The Washington Examiner has reached out to the Secret Service for comment.
