Senator Josh Hawley said a whistleblower has alleged that some of the Homeland Security agents who were tasked with protecting former president Donald Trump on the day he was the target of assassination attempt had only received webinar training and were “woefully unprepared” for the job.
The allegations, which the Missouri Republican put in a letter to Ronald Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director, come as the Secret Service is facing scrutiny over the failures that led to the July 13 shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania. He attached to the letter to a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Trump, the Republican nominee for president, was left with an injured ear after a gunman opened fire from a nearby rooftop during a rally. One person was killed and two others were injured before the gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, was killed by a Secret Service sniper.
“When Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents partner with the Secret Service, they should be properly trained,” Hawley, a Trump ally, wrote in the letter, dated September 3. “New whistleblower allegations contend this isn’t happening and that HSI agents reasoned to candidate details—including former President Trump’s—are woefully unprepared for the job.”
Josh Hawley during a hearing on Capitol Hill on July 30, 2024, in Washington, D.C. Hawley says a whistleblower alleged agents tasked with protecting Donald Trump were given only webinar training.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
Hawley said the whistleblower alleged that the only training received by many of the HSI agents reassigned to work protective details was a single two-hour webinar featuring pre-recorded videos.
The whistleblower alleged videos “were not substantive and their playback was frequently riddled with technical mishaps,” Hawley added.
He quoted the whistleblower as saying: “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. Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos… All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times… The content was not helpful.”
Newsweek has contacted Hawley’s office, the Secret Service, Homeland Security Investigations and the Trump campaign for comment via email.
Hawley’s letter also noted that other whistleblowers had previously approached his office with allegations, including that there were more HSI agents than Secret Service agents at the July 13 rally and that HSI agents at the rally had never worked a protective detail before.
“All of these allegations together suggest that a significant number of personnel tasked with providing security for former president Donald Trump at the July 13 rally were egregiously under-prepared by the Secret Service to carry out this mission,” Hawley wrote.
“Moreover, these latest whistleblower allegations contend HSI agents were pulled off child exploitation cases in order to serve on protective details for which they were unprepared.”
Hawley asked Rowe to answer a series of questions, including confirming how many HSI agents were present at the July 13 rally, how many were trained to work on protective details using webinar training, either wholly or in part, and whether that training has been revamped in any way since July 13.
On Fox News, Hawley said it was “absolutely outrageous” for agents to have only received webinar training before being put on protective details.
“What I’ve heard tonight, Jesse, is that most of the agents who were there at that rally in Butler were not Secret Service agents. They were, in fact, Homeland Security agents,” he told Jesse Watters.
“And get this, most of those Homeland Security agents, the only training that they received was an online webinar, a two-hour online webinar, and I’m told that about half the time, the sound to the webinar didn’t even work.
“So think about this. The president of the United States, former president of the United States, Donald Trump, is sent out on stage. Most of the people there aren’t trained, they’re not qualified, they only got a webinar training, and even that didn’t work. It is absolutely outrageous.”
