US Secret Service officials kept federal auditors from Donald Trump campaign events to hide “if the former president did not receive a consistent level of protective assets,” according to new whistleblower allegations.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) Revealed the claims in a letter Tuesday to Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe – and demanded immediate answers about why the protective agency was impeding an internal investigation into the 45th presidential security detail.
“Whistleblower asserts that the Secret Service denied access to (Department of Homeland Security) auditors because the former president did not receive full-level asset protection for all events, and Secret Service leaders wanted to obscure or simply hide this fact,” Hawley wrote.
Auditors with DHS’s Office of Inspector General (OIG) are only allowed to investigate “selected events,” including a Trump rally in Wilmington, NC, a whistleblower claimed to the senator’s office.
Hawley told DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari in a separate letter of the allegations, stating that his office’s auditors only oversee the Secret Service’s “best” Presidential Protection Division Agents in North Carolina.
“As you continue to examine the agency’s programs and activities, you should be aware of these allegations, which show that the Secret Service did not cooperate with auditors and instead painted a false picture,” the Missouri Republican added.
After two assassination attempts on the former president, Rowe said Trump, 78, would receive the “highest level” of security – similar to the coverage given to President Biden.
Rowe took responsibility at a press conference last month for the security failure that led to Trump being struck in the ear by a bullet from would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks at a July 13 Butler, Pa., rally.
But denying any lapses has allowed Ryan Wesley Routh to lie in wait for the former president with an SKS-style gun in West Palm Beach, Fla., golf club on September 15.
The Secret Service deployed counter-snipers for the first time at Butler’s July 13 rally after higher-ups received a “credible intelligence” threat, but agents on the ground were not identified, a Senate committee report found last month.
Hawley had previously published many whistleblower allegations since the tragedy near the public hearing, many of which were confirmed in reports from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
At Trump’s golf outing, a Secret Service agent walked in front of the former president on the road, saw the barrel of a gun and fired, causing Routh to flee without being shot.
Routh, 58, who flew to Florida from Hawaii via North Carolina and wrote notes detailing plans to kill the 45th president, was later arrested and charged.
“The advance agents, who are part of the first element, whose purpose is to go forward, are doing their job,” Rowe said at a September 20 press conference in Washington, DC
“The young man is a very young agent at the beginning of his career. His alertness, his reaction is exactly what he is trained to do and exactly what the personnel wants.
Routh also recently published a manifesto calling on the Iranian regime to kill Trump.
The manifesto came after a Pakistani national suspected of acting on orders from Tehran was arrested on July 12 and accused of paying assassins to kill the former president.
Biden, 81, signed the legislation earlier this month — introduced by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and was unanimously approved by both chambers of Congress – which mandated uniform protection standards “to determine the number of agents needed to protect the President, Vice. President, and major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.”
Trump returned to the Butler Farm Show grounds for a campaign event last weekend with an enhanced security footprint.
The Post has reached out to reps for the Secret Service, DHS OIG and the Trump campaign.
