Report Shines Light On Dangerous Secret Service Incompetence

A day after another crazed leftist was arrested and accused of attempting to assassinate former President Donald Trump, U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley has released a blistering 22-page Whistleblower Report on the U.S. Secret Service’s epic failure to protect the GOP presidential nominee.  

The Missouri Republican’s report examines the years of negligence and “gross incompetence” that led to the attempt on Trump’s life at the July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Penn. The left’s No. 1 nemesis was shot in the ear, coming within centimeters of assassination by a 20-year-old killer whom the Secret Service allowed to scope out the campaign grounds, move suspiciously about the crowd, climb the rooftop of a nearby building, and fire off eight rounds before being fatally shot by an agency counter-sniper. 

As we’re learning more despite the slow-walking and stonewalling of President Joe Biden’s law enforcement agencies, July 13, 2024, is a day that will live in infamy for the protectors of presidents. 

“Two months have now elapsed since former President Donald J. Trump was nearly assassinated. And the American people still know far too little about why this happened,” the Missouri Republican, a member of the Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee, states in “Whistleblower Report: Failures of the United States Secret Service in Connection with the Attempted Assassination of Former President Donald Trump.”

“Instead, it has been left to courageous whistleblowers to tell the story of what really happened,” the report concludes. “They have testified to the serious security failures pervading every level of the Butler rally operation. They have highlighted longstanding problems at these security agencies, shedding light on decadent and unserious internal cultures.”

Absent from Duty 

Among its findings, the Hawley Report includes several new whistleblower allegations, including: 
• “The lead agent responsible for the entire Butler visit, including the rally, failed a key examination during their [sic] federal law enforcement training to become a Secret Service agent and was known to be a low-caliber agent.”
• “Secret Service intelligence units—teams of Secret Service agents paired with state and local law enforcement to handle reports of suspicious persons—were absent from the Butler rally.” Deployment of these units would have mitigated poor communication between different law enforcement components, which has emerged as one of the core operational failures of the day. 
• “The hospital site where former President Trump received treatment after the shooting was poorly secured.” The Secret Service site agent responsible for hospital security did not know what was going on and “could not answer basic questions about site security.”

The new allegations underscore what insiders have said in the weeks following this first homicidal attack, that the Biden-Harris administration’s protective services operation provided ridiculously inadequate security to the former president and hated political opponent of Biden and his presidential campaign successor, Vice President Kamala Harris. 

Following Sunday’s arrest of a man suspected of attempting to assassinate Trump at his West Palm Beach golf course, a local law enforcement official echoed the absurd justifications for failing to protect the former president. 

“At this level that he is at right now, [Trump] is not the sitting president,” Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, a five-term Democrat, told reporters at a press conference. “If he was, we would have this entire golf course surrounded. But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas the Secret Service deems possible.” 

Lacking ‘Competence and Experience’

Much of the information in the Hawley report, while shocking, has been reported in the two months following the attempt on Trump’s life. As The Federalist reported last month, a whistleblower told the senator that Secret Service brass not only failed to provide resources requested for the Butler rally, they told underlings not to even bother asking. 

The claims appear to make liars out of Trump-Harris protective services officials. 

“I have received new whistleblower allegations that again call into question your recent testimony before the Senate,” Hawley wrote in a letter to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe. “One whistleblower with knowledge of Secret Service planning for former President Trump‘s trip to Butler, Pennsylvania alleges officials at Secret Service headquarters encouraged agents in charge of the trip not to request any additional security assets in its formal manpower request — effectively denying these assets through informal means.”

Yet even some of the too-few agents provided, according to the Hawley report, were either incompetent or lacked adequate training.

“One whistleblower alleged that the Secret Service’s lead site agent—the agent with specific responsibility for the security of the rally site—was known to lack competence and experience in the role. The whistleblower claimed that this agent was responsible for mitigating line-of-sight concerns at the Butler site,” the report states. 

Another whistleblower told Hawley’s office that the lead site agent “personally made decisions that likely compromised the overall security of the event.” The report notes that campaign material, including flags, were allowed to be put up around the stage, an allowance that compromised the agents’ view of potential threats. 

‘Loose’ Security

A whistleblower also claims the Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), the threat assessment unit, failed to perform the usual evaluation of the campaign rally site. Had the CSD been at the rally, the whistleblower said, “the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder.”

“The whistleblower further alleged that Acting Director Rowe personally directed significant cuts to CSD, up to and including reducing the division’s manpower by twenty percent,” the report states. “Acting Director Rowe did not mention this in his July 30 Senate testimony when asked directly to explain manpower reductions.”

A whistleblower told Hawley’s office that the Secret Service considered the rally a “loose” security event. So, the source claimed:

• “Detection canines were not deployed to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner for outdoor campaign rallies.”
• “Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas.”
• “DHS personnel failed to properly police the 5-foot security buffer near the stage and allowed people to move barricades around the buffer.”
• “DHS personnel were not stationed at regular intervals around the security perimeter.”

‘The Secret Service Failed’ 

Hawley’s report takes aim at federal agencies that have been anything but cooperative with investigations into the assassination attempt. That’s a common theme. 

U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., ranking member of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations told The Federalist in an interview Sunday evening that he is particularly frustrated by the Secret Service’s and FBI’s failure to grant the committee overseeing these agencies access to key sources. 

“FBI Deputy Director [Paul] Abbate said they’ve done over 1,000 interviews. We’ve done 12,” Johnson said. “The Secret Service hasn’t let us to talk to them. The FBI hasn’t given us one 302 [interview report]. When we get documents, they’re often the day before, and heavily redacted.”

Johnson told me he expects the investigations committee will release its preliminary report in the next couple of weeks. As the Hawley report notes, the Secret Service’s mission is to protect the president, vice president, former presidents, and other important government officials. Its annual budget is approximately $3 billion.  

“Yet despite these vast resources, the Secret Service failed to protect former President Trump from a 20-year-old would-be assassin, who appears to have single-handedly outwitted the world’s most famous protective service. This level of incompetence demands an explanation,” the report states. 

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.