Whistleblowers have come forward alleging that the Secret Service was “woefully unprepared” to protect former President Donald Trump during an assassination attempt in 2022, raising concerns about the agency’s security protocols and preparedness, Fox News reports.
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) has revealed that whistleblowers have alleged the Secret Service provided inadequate training and preparation to Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) agents assigned to protect Trump.
According to Hawley, whistleblowers have claimed that HSI agents received a single, two-hour webinar on Microsoft Teams as their only training for protecting Trump. The webinar featured pre-recorded videos that were riddled with technical difficulties, including a failure to properly set up audio. Whistleblowers allege that the content of the videos was also insufficient and has not been updated since the reported assassination attempt on July 13th.
“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,” one whistleblower told 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.”
These allegations come after Hawley’s office previously reported that the lead site agent at the Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13 was considered inexperienced and incompetent. Whistleblowers claimed that the agent did not properly enforce security protocols, including failing to check IDs and utilize Secret Service agents.
“The site agent, the lead agent, was known to the Trump campaign to be inexperienced, to be ineffectual, to be, frankly, incompetent at their job,” Hawley said in a previous interview.
Hawley, appearing on “Jesse Watters Primetime,” blasted the Secret Service for their “nightmare” handling of the assassination attempt, calling the situation a “national security crisis” and demanding accountability.
