Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) revealed details on how unprepared security was at former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in which he came within inches of losing his life.
The Secret Service has been under massive scrutiny since Trump narrowly survived the assassination attempt in July, with several investigations looking into the failures that allowed it to happen. Citing information that had been passed to him by whistleblowers, Hawley detailed that the agents protecting Trump at his rally were Homeland Security agents, not Secret Service agents, who only received a two-hour online training course before being deployed to guard the former president.
“So think about this: The former president of the United States, Donald Trump, is sent out onstage, most of the people there aren’t trained, they’re not qualified, they only got a webinar training, and even that didn’t work,” Hawley said on Fox News’s Jesse Watters Primetime. “It is absolutely outrageous.”
A previous whistleblower report on Trump’s assassination attempt revealed that a Secret Service officer in charge of manpower asked agents not to ask for additional security at Trump’s rally.
Hawley also said he was told that Homeland Security agents were pulled off of child exploitation cases to stand guard at Trump’s rally. Additionally, the two-hour training course they took did not have the sound working “about half the time.”
The Missouri senator described the security failure of Trump’s Butler rally as a “nightmare,” stressing the need for firings at the Secret Service.
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The bipartisan House task force investigating Trump’s assassination attempt issued a sweeping records request to the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security, asking for access to documents on the event’s preparation and security decision-making. Lawmakers are also pushing for interviews with Secret Service personnel who were on duty and were responsible for the security detail that day.
Meanwhile, Reps. Cory Mills (R-FL) and Eli Crane (R-AZ) are leading an independent investigation into the assassination attempt, which just conducted a forum interviewing three witnesses considered subject matter experts on government security. The Florida congressman argued last week that the investigation has only raised more questions, such as how the shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had access to “multi-channel detonating devices,” along with having no presence on social media.