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Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) claimed on Friday that whistleblowers have informed him that several members of former President Donald Trump’s security detail were not trained Secret Service members, a significant departure from previous remarks by the agency’s director.
Hawley claims whistleblowers have told him that the Biden Administration authorized DHS officials to replace Secret Service agents on Trump’s security detail.
In a letter released on X, the Missouri conservative writes to U.S. Department of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas asking why he reportedly authorized DHS officials to replace trained Secret Service agents responsible for securing the travels of President Trump.
“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event. For example, detection canines were not used to monitor entry and detect threats in the usual manner. Individuals without proper designations were able to gain access to backstage areas. Department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium and were also not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter,” he writes.
“In addition, whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”
🚨🚨 Whistleblowers tell me that MOST of Trump’s security detail working the event last Saturday were not even Secret Service. DHS assigned unprepared and inexperienced personnel 👇 pic.twitter.com/eo4jNmJWFT
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 19, 2024
Hawley, a member of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, has promised to hold Homeland Security responsible for failing to ensure that agents around Trump were appropriately trained though will likely be blockaded by Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) who chairs the committee.
Going on, Sen. Hawley claims to have “learned more from your whistleblowers than your department officials,” a reference to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle who faces heavy scrutiny for overseeing the agency’s worst failure since the 1981 shooting of former President Ronald Reagan. In the letter, he goes on to ask how DHS selected local law enforcement partners for securing the rally, some of whom remain under investigation by the FBI after failing to confront the gunman. Hawley also asks if the agents around Trump were properly trained and whether security gaps existed. Supporters of Trump have pointed to several female agents who appeared to struggle with their firearms or cover Trump in the aftermath of the shooting, something Trump has refrained from doing himself. However, he was spotted several days later on the floor of the Republican National Convention with an all-male security team.
Sen. Hawley also demanded to know how long agents spend “on the ground” surveying the site before Saturday’s rally began, alluding to claims that the gunman was able to scour the field and surrounding buildings up to six days in advance. Before he was shot and killed, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks was able to fire multiple high-caliber rifle rounds at President Trump from a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the stage. Cheatle has blamed a slope in the roof for choosing not to place an agent at the location.