‘Woefully Unprepared’: Whistleblower Alerts Hawley That Security Agents At Trump Rally Lacked Proper Training
A whistleblower told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a letter released on Tuesday that the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler…
A whistleblower told Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri in a letter released on Tuesday that the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, were “egregiously under-prepared.”
The whistleblower told Hawley that the HSI agents were taken off child exploitation cases and reassigned in partnership with U.S. Secret Service (USSS) to work security at the rally, according to the letter. Ahead of the event, the HSI agents received just a two-hour “webinar” that lacked substance and was “riddled with technical mishaps,” with the whistleblower claiming that the training is unchanged even after the assassination attempt.
“In other words, all of these allegations together suggest that a significant number of personnel tasked with providing security for former President Trump at the July 13 rally were egregiously under-prepared by the Secret Service to carry out this mission,” Hawley said in the letter.
“Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to login individually,” the whistleblower said in the letter. “Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos (which I’m told are the same videos as last year). All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times …. The content was not helpful.”
“Nothing new, nothing improved since the assassination attempt on former President Trump,” the whistleblower continued.
Hawley previously addressed Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas about allegations that there were more HSI agents present on July 13 than Secret Service agents, according to the letter. Another whistleblower also alleged that some of the HSI agents at the rally had never worked a protective security detail before and were unaware of the proper procedures.