by Jake Smith
A whistleblower alleges the U.S. Secret Service refused to use drones at former President Donald Trump’s deadly July 13 rally in Pennsylvania, even though the technology was repeatedly offered by local law enforcement, Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley said Thursday.
The Secret Service is under intense pressure observation for failing to stop a gunman from opening fire and attempting to assassinate Trump at a rally on July 13. Amid a series of reported operational failures, Hawley revealed in letter on Thursday reported to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that a whistleblower had informed him that the Secret Service had repeatedly rejected offers from law enforcement agencies in Pennsylvania to use drones for security purposes.
“The night before the rally, the U.S. Secret Service repeatedly declined offers from a local law enforcement partner to use drone technology to secure the rally. This means that the technology was both available to the USSS and could be used to secure the site. The Secret Service declined,” Hawley wrote in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday. “The whistleblower further alleges that after the shooting, the USSS reversed course and asked the local partner to use drone technology to surveil the site after the attack.”
Hawley wrote in the letter that the whistleblower also told him that the drone technology that was allegedly offered to the Secret Service had the ability to “neutralize” potential threats as well as monitor them.
“It is hard to understand why the USSS refused to use drones when they were offered, especially considering the fact that the USSS allowed the shooter to fly his own drone over the rally site just hours before [the] event,” Hawley wrote in the letter. The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, was flying drone at the meeting site a few hours before it starts to check the area.
The Secret Service is widespread criticized for failing to stop Crooks from nearly killing Trump. Crooks was able to climb onto the roof of a building just a few hundred feet from the rally and shoot Trump without being stopped by law enforcement or the Secret Service, even though they learned of his presence about 50 minutes before the former president took the stage.
Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after she was criticized by Republican and Democratic lawmakers for failing to keep the rally unthreatening.
The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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Jake Smith is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
