(NewsNation) — A whistleblower says that the Homeland Security agents working the campaign rally where a gunman tried to kill former President Donald Trump only got a single two-hour webinar training before the event.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-MO, detailed the allegations in a letter to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald L. Rowe. Rowe was appointed to his position after the director,Kimberly Cheatle resigned following bipartisan criticism of the Secret Service’s actions in the July shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Hawley wrote in the letter that a whistleblower alleged that the only training received by many HSI agents assigned to the rally that day was a “single two-hour webinar on Microsoft Teams featuring pre-recorded videos.”
Not only that — the whistleblower said these videos were “not substantive” and their playback was “riddled with technical mishaps, leaving the HSI agents ill-prepared for the protective mission to which they were newly assigned.”
“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, according to Hawley. “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.”
The Secret Service has not changed, updated, or otherwise improved its webinar “trainings” since the assassination attempt, the whistleblower told Hawley. Others came to his office with similar allegations as well, Hawley said.
“(A)ll 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 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.”
A bipartisan congressional task force has been investigating the assassination attempt. Members made a trip to Butler last week led by Chairman Mike Kelly, R-Pa., and ranking member Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo.
Rep. Clay Higgins, also a member of this bipartisan task force, released information earlier this month giving a glimpse into the direction the investigation is heading. This report was not done in conjunction with other task force members, however.