National security risk exposed: Why were 10 of 12 agents left clueless at Trump’s July Butler rally?

Most Secret Service agents involved in advance security planning for former President Donald Trump’s July 13 rally were not informed about a recent assassination threat against him from Iran, the agents told Senate investigators.

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee interviewed 12 Secret Service employees as part of its ongoing investigation into the assassination attempt on Mr. Trump at his July 13 campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. He returned to the same site on Saturday in a show of perseverance and to honor firefighter Corey Comperatore, who was killed by the shooter.

Only two out of the dozen Secret Service employees interviewed by the committee were told about the credible threat to Mr. Trump leading up to July 13, one of whom served in a leadership role where he received classified information about it but was not involved in planning security for the Butler rally.

While neither could or would say whether that credible threat was related to Iran, CNN reported U.S. authorities around that time obtained intelligence about an Iranian plot to try to assassinate Mr. Trump and informed senior Secret Service personnel, including the lead agent for Mr. Trump’s security detail.

Thomas Matthew Crooks, the 20-year-old gunman who fired at Mr. Trump in Butler and was killed by a Secret Service countersniper, acted alone and was not part of any foreign plot, according to the FBI.

With the Secret Service unable to stop an untrained 20-year-old, lawmakers questioned whether the agency would have been able to thwart professional assassins sent by Iran.

Iran has long expressed a desire to retaliate against Mr. Trump for ordering in 2020 the U.S. airstrike that took out Gen. Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian military’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The day before the rally, on July 12, the FBI arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistan national with ties to Iran, who was involved in a murder-for-hire plot targeting U.S. government officials, in which Mr. Trump was likely a potential target.

Most of the Secret Service employees the committee interviewed only learned of the arrest after the rally but said knowing in advance could have been useful for security planning.

Last month, intelligence officials briefed Mr. Trump on “real and specific threats from Iran to assassinate him,” coordinated plots that have “heightened in the past few months,” according to his campaign spokesman Steven Cheung.

The day after that briefing, the Senate committee released its interim report that found few Secret Service employees were told about the heightened Iranian threat.

Among those kept in the dark was the leader of a four-person countersniper team that worked the rally, the protective intelligence advance agent, the counterdrone operator and the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, which led the advance security planning.

The assistant director of the Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations, who worked at the agency for 27 years, was the only employee the committee interviewed with direct knowledge of the threat — and the only one not personally involved in securing the Butler rally.

The committee did not name him, but he has been identified in news reports about his then-pending retirement as Michael Plati. His role before he retired — the day after his Sept. 13 interview with the committee, which he said was for family reasons unrelated to the assassination attempt — was to oversee 11 protective divisions that conducted more than 5,000 protective visits last year.

The Secret Service was “not in possession of any specific adverse intelligence to Butler,” Mr. Plati said. He did receive intelligence briefings related to Mr. Trump in the weeks leading up to July 13, but said he could not discuss any adverse intelligence because it was classified.

Mr. Plati said the Secret Service had been incrementally increasing Mr. Trump’s security assets “because we had concerns with the overall threat pressure.”

He and two of his deputy directors, including the one who oversees Mr. Trump’s protection, decided in the week before the July 13 rally to authorize countersniper coverage for Butler and all larger outdoor Trump events moving forward. The decision was based on intelligence and Mr. Trump’s high profile, Mr. Plati said.

The Secret Service had used local law enforcement countersnipers at past Trump events, but the Butler rally was the first of the 2024 campaign where the agency sent its own.

That decision followed one in early April in which they added counterassault personnel as a regular asset for Mr. Trump, far earlier than normal for presidential candidates.

“We’ve never had a former president run for the office [of] president,” Mr. Plati said. “We’ve had a heightened posture on him, really, you could say, since he came out of office.”

Mr. Plati told the committee that adverse intelligence related to a protectee should be shared with agents planning events. 

“Intelligence informs operations. It doesn’t dictate operations,” he said. “And we have a directorate that is there to evaluate and disseminate intelligence they deem appropriate to inform protective operations. Yes.”

Yet, only one Secret Service employee involved in planning security for Butler was even told about the credible threat against Mr. Trump, according to the committee interview transcripts, which did not name any of the personnel.

The lead advance agent, who is responsible for coordinating among advance team members to produce security planning documents and personnel requests, said one of the supervisors on Mr. Trump’s detail called her on July 9 to say Secret Service countersnipers would be sent to Butler due to “credible intel, that he could not tell me.”

She understood that to mean the information was classified and asked him to let her supervisor, the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, know about the threat, but he was never told.

“I, as the special agent in charge of the district where the visit was, was not included on any briefing or anything for that threat,” the head of the Pittsburgh field office told the committee.

Had he been informed, the special agent said he likely would have requested additional assets, like a countersurveillance unit and a full counterassault team, and “might have made a big push that we shouldn’t be having this event at an outdoor venue.”

The lead advance agent said the threat was only mentioned in the one phone call and never escalated, so it did not inform the Butler security plans outside of the decision to deploy the countersnipers. Yet, the countersniper team leader said he was not made aware of any threats.

Since the lead agent didn’t have details on the classified information, she wrote in one of the planning documents that “no adverse intelligence” had been developed.

“Based on what intelligence we knew at the time, we were comfortable with the plan, or I was comfortable with how I acted in putting those assets in place,” she said.

An employee from the Pittsburgh field office assigned to serve as the protective intelligence advance agent for the Butler rally was not passed any intelligence from headquarters. He called the protective intelligence division’s 24/7 desk number the morning of the rally to request any updates and “did not receive any.”

That agent also sent a standard letter to the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office asking if they had any intelligence to provide ahead of Mr. Trump’s Butler visit. He did not get a response.

The site agent, sent from the Trump detail to help the Pittsburgh field office with advance planning, told the committee the protective intelligence division sends a brief out for every visit, but the one for Butler “came back with negative results, as [in] no threats or no other issues or concerns prior to the visit.” 

While the site agent had not been briefed on any threats leading up to July 13, she said the leadership of Mr. Trump’s protective division has previously passed on “some information” about an active threat against Mr. Trump from Iran “but not every detail.” Last year, she received verbal and email communication about a “possible drone attack.”

That was among the reasons the site agent had a weird “gut feeling” about the Butler location.

“It shocked me, like just being out there,” she said. “They’re planning to have a protectee with 15[000]-20,000 people in an outdoor event when there’s an active threat for the drone attack.”

An agent from Mr. Trump’s detail assigned to conduct the counterdrone planning and operation did not recall any specific threats to the Butler event. While he gets informed of threats daily and was aware of the long-standing Iranian threats, he said he had never been told of any drone-related threats.

Moving forward, the Senate committee recommends the Secret Service “ensure that the appropriate agents working protective events are informed of relevant intelligence and threats against protectees.”