Sen. Josh Hawley released whistleblower allegations Monday that the lead agent in charge of the scene at the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in July was known to be a “low-caliber agent.”
The Missouri Republican also said the Secret Service didn’t have an intelligence unit team deployed to Mr. Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which fueled poor communications between federal authorities and state and local law enforcement.
And Mr. Hawley said agents failed to secure the hospital where Mr. Trump was rushed after being struck in the ear by a bullet.
The allegations follow previous information Mr. Hawley has developed, including that the Secret Service didn’t do a regular threat assessment of the site, rebuffed local police offers to use drones to keep eyes on the scene, and didn’t deploy personnel to the rooftop used by the gunman “because of hot weather.”
“The resulting findings are highly damaging to the credibility of the Secret Service and DHS. They reveal a compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding,” Mr. Hawley’s investigators said in their report.
It was released a day after a second assassination attempt on Mr. Trump.
Authorities say a gunman managed to get onto the golf course in Florida where Mr. Trump was playing. Secret Service agents saw a rifle poke through bushes and they fired, sending the would-be attacker fleeing. He was later caught while driving in an SUV.
In the initial attempt, Mr. Trump was speaking at a rally when at least eight shots were fired by a gunman who’d gained access to a rooftop. The former president was bloodied by a shot to his ear, one rally-goer was killed and two others were seriously wounded.
A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the gunman.
The agency has come under severe criticism for lapses from that first attempt, including several that Mr. Hawley revealed thanks to whistleblower complaints.
In his latest report, he said the lead agent for the Pennsylvania rally had “failed a key examination during their federal law enforcement training to become a Secret Service agent.”
He also said the agency didn’t use an intelligence unit to coordinate with state and local authorities at the scene, which fueled a breakdown in communications.
And he said the Secret Service failed to properly secure the hospital where Mr. Trump was taken for treatment and the “site agent could not answer basic questions about site security.”
In a statement, the Secret Service said it “is aware of the senator’s report.”
Mr. Hawley said his attempts to get answers from the agency, and from the broader Homeland Security Department, have been largely unsuccessful.
There are several formal and informal congressional probes of the Butler assassination attempt underway, as well as an official review by the Secret Service.
• Stephen Dinan can be reached at sdinan@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.