GOP senators call for more Secret Service whistleblowers after assassination attempt

Senate Republicans urged Secret Service agents Tuesday to become whistleblowers and report their concerns about the agency to Congress after some had already anonymously come forward with information about the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump.

Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI), Ted Cruz (R-TX), and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) indicated that whistleblowers have been able to fill in key details since the shooting on July 13, which left one dead, two seriously injured, and Trump with a minor injury.  

“We need more whistleblowers,” Johnson said. “We need people inside the agencies who are willing to talk to us, tell the American people what’s really happening.”

Johnson’s remarks came during a press conference the lawmakers held right after a Senate hearing on the shooting, where acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate both testified.

Blackburn applauded whistleblowers who had already come forward, pointing to a report in RealClearPolitics of an internal email allegedly written by a Secret Service whistleblower decrying the bureau’s perceived culture of “CYA,” an acronym for “cover your a**.”

At the hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) confronted Rowe about a whistleblower report he received indicating that the Secret Service was offered the option to use drone technology at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where the shooting occurred, but an agent repeatedly rejected the offer.

“There was an offer to fly a drone on that day,” Rowe said. “We probably should have taken them up on it.”

Rowe was put in the hot seat after his predecessor, former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, resigned following her inability to answer numerous questions at a similar hearing about the stunning security failures that led to the assassination attempt. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was able to access a nearby rooftop and fire eight shots into the rally crowd.

Several senators at the hearing zeroed in on communication failures between the Secret Service and local law enforcement at the rally, but Cruz grilled Rowe on reports that the Secret Service had at times denied additional security requests from Trump since he left office.

Rowe said Trump was provided all the security assets his team requested for the rally, but he indicated that there were times in the past couple of years when this was not the case.

Cruz said he believed Secret Service leadership “made a political decision to deny these requests.”

“Secret Service agents are not political,” Rowe replied.

Later at the press conference, Cruz commended Rowe for doing “marginally better” than Cheatle but was still unconvinced that politics were not a factor in the Secret Service. Cruz reiterated the plea for more whistleblowers, saying they could shed light on the matter.

“I want to underscore the call that has come from multiple senators for whistleblowers,” Cruz said. “I believe the rational inference from the evidence we know now is it was political bias at the top, at the leadership of the Secret Service, that led to insufficient agents and insufficient resources being devoted to protecting President Trump.”