A whistleblower is alleging that the U.S. Secret Service declined to use drones at the deadly Pennsylvania rally for former president Donald Trump on July 13, even though the technology was repeatedly offered by local law enforcement, Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said on Thursday.
The Secret Service has fallen under intense scrutiny for failing to prevent a gunman from opening fire and attempting to assassinate Trump at the July 13 rally. Amid a series of reported operational failures, Hawley revealed in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday that a whistleblower had told him that the Secret Service repeatedly rejected offers from law enforcement in Pennsylvania to utilize drones for security purposes. (RELATED: Security Had Reportedly Been Stationed On Rooftop Used By Trump Rally Shooter, But Abandoned It Due To ‘Hot Weather’)
“The night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally. This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no,” Hawley wrote in his letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday. “The whistleblower further alleges that after the shooting took place, USSS changed course and asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site in the aftermath of the attack.”
Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is rushed offstage during a rally on July 13, 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania. Butler County district attorney Richard Goldinger said the shooter is dead after injuring former U.S. President Donald Trump, killing one audience member and injuring another in the shooting. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Hawley wrote in the letter that the whistleblower also told him that the drone technology that was allegedly offered to the Secret Service had the capability to “neutralize” potential threats as well as monitor them.
“It is hard to understand why USSS would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” Hawley wrote in the letter. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, flew a drone over the rally site hours before the event began to scope out the area.
The Secret Service has been widely criticized for its failure to stop Crooks from nearly killing Trump. Crooks was able to climb onto the roof of a building just hundreds of feet away from the rally and shoot Trump without being stopped by law enforcement or the Secret Service, even though they were made aware of his presence roughly 50 minutes before the former president took the stage.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after being berated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers for her failure to ensure that the rally would be safe.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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