(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and current acting boss Ronald Rowe have both told Congress that Donald Trump’s security team received all the resources it asked for ahead of the July 13 deadly rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
But according to Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., Trump’s security detail was told ahead of time that it shouldn’t ask for additional resources. Citing an unnamed whistleblower “with knowledge of Secret Service planning,” Hawley said Friday that Secret Service headquarters encouraged agents in charge of the trip not to request any additional security assets in its formal manpower request— effectively denying these assets through informal means.
“According to the whistleblower, the lead advance agent for a protectee trip typically submits a ‘manpower request’ to the local field office. This normally includes the number of personnel and other security assets needed for the event and is submitted to the U.S. Secret Service’s Office of Protective Operations – Manpower (OPO – Manpower) for final approval,” Hawley said in a letter to Rowe.
“According to the allegations, officials within this office preemptively informed the Pittsburgh field office that the Butler rally was not going to receive additional security resources because Trump is a former president and not the incumbent President or Vice President. According to the whistleblower, the manpower request did not include extra security resources because agents on the ground were told not to ask for them in the first place.”
🚨🚨 NEW – Whistleblower says Secret Service HQ told agents working the Butler PA event NOT to request additional manpower resources for the rally & warned any such requests would be denied. Contradicts Director Rowe testimony, who said no resources were ever denied pic.twitter.com/85sHTAI82u
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) August 23, 2024
Crucially, Hawley continued, the lack of additional resources meant that there were no one from the agency’s Counter Surveillance Division, which performs threat assessment of event sites before the event occurs. A separate whistleblower has told Hawley 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 before Trump took the stage.
Hawley’s letter did say that the Secret Service approved snipers the day before the event, which seems to contradict his whistleblower’s allegations. In fact, the July 13 rally where Trump was nearly assassinated may have been the first time Secret Service snipers were ever deployed to guard a former President, according to findings from Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La.
Hawley seeks info from Rowe about the whistleblower allegations, including a copy of the manpower request submitted by Trump’s security to Secret Service Office of Protective Operations. Hawley demanded answers “immediately.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
