A whistleblower has come forward to accuse acting Secret Service director Ronald Rowe of personally ordering personnel cuts on threat assessment team agents just before the infamous assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) broke the news in a letter sent to Rowe, which quickly went viral on social media.
🚨🚨 BREAKING: Whistleblower tells @HawleyMO USSS Acting Director Rowe PERSONALLY DIRECTED cuts to the agents who do threat assessments for events.
Whistleblower says those agents were NOT present in Butler – and some of them had warned of security problems for months pic.twitter.com/tRNoSYKW3E
— Abigail Jackson 🇺🇸 (@abigailmarone) August 1, 2024
“A whistleblower has alleged to my office that the Secret Service Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), the division that performs threat assessment of event sites before the event occurs, did not perform its typical evaluation of the Butler site and was nor present on the day,” Hawley wrote in the letter.
The Missouri Republican went on to note that the whistleblower had asserted that the assassination attempt would have been quickly foiled if these agents were on site.
“This is significant because CSD’s duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event,” the letter continued. “The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder.”
Hawley then revealed that the whistleblower directly accused Rowe of taking this action that led to Secret Service failures that day — which the acting Secret Service director curiously neglected to mention during his recent testimony before the Senate.
“The whistleblower further alleges that you personally directed significant cuts to CSD, up to and including reducing the division’s manpower by twenty percent,” he wrote. “You did not mention this in your Senate testimony when asked directly to explain manpower reductions.”
Hawley’s letter also included allegations that many threat assessment team agents had been warning Secret Service leadership for some time about potential dangers.
He concluded the letter by demanding that the acting Secret Service director hand over materials related to his “personal involvement in revising, updating, or otherwise changing Secret Service policies and personnel related to CSD,” as well as other records — giving him a deadline of August 8.
UPDATE: Trump Assassination Attempt
The Acting Secret Service Director Rowe Lied to Congress — He Cut Threat Assessment Agents Right before the Butler Rally
• the Acting Director of Secret Service, Ronald Rowe said the agency did not cut resources from Trumps detail…
• a… pic.twitter.com/6KSIijX1RA
— MJTruthUltra (@MJTruthUltra) August 2, 2024
This is not the first Secret Service whistleblower related to the assassination attempt, as an email from a Secret Service counter-sniper recently went viral calling out the agency’s leadership for repeatedly failing to enact reforms demanded by on-the-ground agents who have been expressing concerns about potential assassination attempts for years.
“Sadly we have fallen short for YEARS. We just look good doing it. I have conveyed these thoughts to not only supervisors (to include the current Captain of CS, but those responsible for training us (SOTS/CS). Only to be brushed off as those with less experience somehow knew more than me,” the email read, in part.
🚨🚨🚨 EXCLUSIVE: A Secret Service counter sniper sent an email Monday night to the entire Uniformed Division (not agents) saying he will not stop speaking out until "5 high-level supervisors (1 down) are either fired or removed from their current positions." The counter sniper… pic.twitter.com/0dg99EESQk
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) July 30, 2024
