A whistleblower is coming forward with further allegations against the Secret Service related to the agency’s failure to prevent the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump’s life less than two weeks ago.
Senator Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) wrote a letter to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas asking for more details about a whistleblower allegation that the Secret Service rejected requests from local law enforcement to fly drones over the Trump rally.
“According to one whistleblower, the night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally. This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no. The whistleblower further alleges that after the shooting took place, USSS changed course and asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site in the aftermath of the attack,” Hawley wrote.
“The failure to deploy drone technology is all the more concerning since, according to the whistleblower, the drones USSS was offered had the capability not only to identify active shooters but also to help neutralize them.”
Hawley is a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, which will hold a hearing next week on the Trump assassination attempt. The hearing will feature top officials from the Secret Service and FBI. The Secret Service referred National Review to the DHS in response to a request for comment.
“DHS responds to congressional requests directly via official channels, and the Department will continue to respond appropriately to congressional oversight. We are committed to working with the appropriate and relevant investigations of what happened on July 13, including with Congress, the Inspector General, and both internal and independent reviews,” a DHS spokesperson told NR.
The DHS inspector general is investigating the Secret Service failures surrounding Trump’s rally, and the DHS is establishing a bipartisan outside task force to investigate the shooting.
Whistleblowers have also come forward to Hawley about DHS allegedly deploying untrained personnel at the Trump rally and law enforcement allegedly abandoning the roof later used by would-be Trump assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks.
FBI Director Christopher Wray testified Wednesday about the bureau’s ongoing investigation into Crooks, a 20-year-old lone wolf and recreational gun hobbyist who managed to climb up a nearby rooftop and fire eight shots into the crowd. Crooks’s bullets wounded Trump and two others and killed former fire chief Corey Comperatore.
Hours before the attack, Crooks flew a drone over the perimeter of the Trump rally, roughly 200 yards away from the stage Trump would later stand on. He manned the drone for approximately 11 minutes and may have live-streamed footage from the drone, Wray testified. The FBI recovered Crooks’s drone from his vehicle after he was killed during the attack.
On Monday, then-Secret Service director Kim Cheatle testified at the first hearing on security failures surrounding the attempt on Trump’s life. Cheatle refused to answer basic questions and repeatedly declined to discuss whether the Secret Service used drones to help secure the Trump rally. She resigned in disgrace on Tuesday after bipartisan calls for her resignation over her lack of transparency at the hearing.
House lawmakers voted unanimously Wednesday night to establish a bipartisan task force to further investigate the assassination attempt on Trump, reflecting the political consensus on the issue of political violence.