From The Center Square

By Bethany Blankley

Senate committee holding bipartisan investigation, hearing

Multiple whistleblowers have come forward telling U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., that many working as part of former President Donald Trump’s security detail at a rally in Pennsylvania one week ago weren’t Secret Service and were “unprepared and inexperienced personnel,” Hawley says.

The accusation comes after the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, on which Hawley sits, announced it will conduct a bipartisan investigation into the July 13 assassination attempt of Trump.

Multiple whistleblowers contacted his office “with disturbing new information behind the assassination attempt on the former president,” he said.

They did so after Hawley opened a whistleblower tip line, pledging to protect the anonymity of everyone who contacts his office. Whistleblowers are encouraged to make protected disclosures by calling (202) 224-6154 or emailing [email protected].

In response to the information he has received so far, Hawley contacted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the U.S. Secret Service, demanding answers.

“Whistleblowers who have direct knowledge of the event have approached my office. According to the allegations, the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event,” he wrote to Mayorkas.

“Whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations. This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations.”

Other security failures identified, he says, include not using canine units to monitor entry and detect threats among the perimeter or crowd; unauthorized individuals accessing the backstage areas; and DHS personnel not “appropriately polic[ing] the security buffer around the podium and … not stationed at regular intervals around the event’s security perimeter.”

Hawley demanded answers after DHS “has not been appropriately forthcoming with members of Congress,” he said, and after he called on the committee’s chair, U.S. Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich., to immediately launch an investigation.

“Although we still do not have all the facts, the little that we do know suggests a staggering security failure,” he wrote to Peters. “Evidently, the shooter was able to gain an elevated position on a rooftop with a clear line of sight of the President, well within accurate range, with a firearm. The details of this tragedy must be vigorously investigated by Congress, including the motive of the shooter, and the serious operational failures that occurred on July 13.” Hawley called on Peters to “launch a full, public, and comprehensive committee investigation into this assassination attempt and failures to adequately protect the former president,” including calling Mayorkas and Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to testify.

Peters and U.S. Sen. Rand Paul, R-KY, the ranking member of the committee, announced the committee will conduct a bipartisan investigation and hold a hearing. They first requested an urgent briefing with the Secret Service, DHS and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. A call committee members did have, Hawley says, was ended before they could ask a single question. “This is completely unacceptable and contrary to the public’s interest in transparency,” he added.

Peters said the committee “is focused on getting all of the facts about the security failures that allowed the attacker to carry out this heinous act of violence that threatened the life of former President Trump, killed at least one person in the crowd, and injured several others.”

Peters and Paul also sent letters to Mayorkas and to FBI Director Christopher Wray requesting a range of documents and information on security process, among other information. A briefing was requested before July 25 and a public hearing is scheduled for Aug. 1.

Hawley is also demanding answers from BlackRock CEO Larry Fink requesting all records related to the assassination attempt after it became public that the alleged shooter appeared in one of BlackRock’s commercials.

What appears to be a clip of the commercial “has circulated widely on social media and raised the question about what your company knows about the shooter,” Hawley told Fink.

Fink is requested to provide the information by July 24.

When accepting his party’s nomination for president, Trump said at the Republican National Convention last week that surviving the assassination attempt was “a gift from God.” At a rally on Saturday, one week after the shooting, he said he “took a bullet for democracy.”