US Secret Service officials have kept federal auditors from Donald Trump’s campaign events to hide “that the former president is not receiving a consistent level of protective assets,” according to new whistleblower allegations.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) revealed the claims in a Tuesday letter to Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe — and demanded immediate answers about whether the protective agency was impeding an internal investigation into the 45th president’s security detail.
“The whistleblower alleges that the Secret Service denied access to [Department of Homeland Security] auditors because the former president is not receiving the full level of protective assets for all of his events, and Secret Service leadership wants to obscure or simply conceal this fact,” Hawley wrote.
Auditors with the DHS Office of Inspector General (OIG) have only been allowed to investigate “select events,” including a recent Trump rally in Wilmington, NC, the whistleblower claimed to the senator’s office.
Hawley informed DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari in a separate letter of the allegations, noting that his office’s auditors had only observed the Secret Service’s “best” Presidential Protection Division agents in North Carolina.
“As you continue to audit the agency’s programs and activities, you should be aware of these allegations, which indicate that the Secret Service is not in fact cooperating with your auditors and is instead painting a false picture,” the Missouri Republican added.
Following two assassination attempts against the former president, Rowe said that Trump, 78, would receive the “highest levels” of security — equivalent to the coverage given President Biden.
Rowe took responsibility in a press conference last month for the security failures that led to Trump being struck in the ear by would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks‘ bullet at a Butler, Pa., rally on July 13.
But he denied any lapses had allowed Ryan Wesley Routh to allegedly lie in wait for the former president with an SKS-style rifle at his West Palm Beach, Fla., golf club on Sept. 15.
The Secret Service deployed counter-snipers for the first time to the July 13 Butler rally after higher-ups received a “credible intelligence” threat, but agents on the ground were not made aware, a Senate committee report said last month.
Hawley has previously released a slew of whistleblower allegations since the near-tragedy at the rally, many of which were confirmed in the report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.
On Trump’s golf outing, a Secret Service agent walking ahead of the former president on the course spied a rifle barrel and opened fire, causing Routh to flee without getting a shot off.
The 58-year-old Routh, who flew to Florida from Hawaii via North Carolina and wrote a note detailing his plan to assassinate the 45th president, was later apprehended and indicted.
“The advance agent, who was part of the first element, whose goal was to sweep ahead, did his job,” Rowe said in the Sept. 20 press conference in Washington, DC.
“That young man is a very young agent early in his career. His vigilance, his reaction is exactly how we trained and exactly what we want our personnel to do.”
Routh had also recently self-published a manifesto urging the Iranian regime to assassinate Trump.
The manifesto surfaced after a Pakistani national suspected of acting at the behest of Tehran was arrested July 12 and accused of paying purported hitmen to kill the former president.
Biden, 81, signed a law earlier this month — introduced by Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and passed unanimously by both chambers of Congress — that mandates uniform standards of protection “for determining the number of agents required to protect Presidents, Vice Presidents, and major Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates.”
Trump returned to the Butler Farm Show grounds for a campaign event this past weekend with an enhanced security footprint.
The Post has reached out to reps for the Secret Service, DHS OIG and the Trump campaign.
