BREAKING: Acting Secret Service head PERSONALLY DIRECTED cuts to threat assessment agents in advance of Butler Trump rally: whistleblower

It has been alleged by a whistleblower that the acting Secret Service (USSS) head personally cut agents from the threat assessment team leading up to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Penn. on July 13.

In a letter from Sen. Josh Hawley to Acting USSS Director Ronald Rowe, it states, "A whistleblower has alleged to my office that the Secret Service Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), the division that performs threat assessment of event sites before the event occurs, did not perform its typical evaluation of the Butler site and was nor present on the day." 

"This is significant because CSD's duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event. The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder." 

Hawley continued, “The whistleblower further alleges that you personally directed significant cuts to CSD, up to and including reducing the division's manpower by twenty percent. You did not mention this in your Senate testimony when asked directly to explain manpower reductions.”

The Missouri Senator further added that the allegations from the whistleblower included that some of the agents who had been working on threat assessment had been warning the agency of dangers for months ahead of the rally. Hawley also demanded that Rowe provide materials regarding his “personal involvement in revising, updating, or otherwise changing Secret Service policies and personnel related to CSD” by August 8 among other records.  

During a Senate hearing earlier this week, Rowe was grilled by Hawley as well as several other Senators on what led up to the assassination attempt.  

In his opening statement, Rowe said, "I went to the roof of the AGR building where the assailant fired shots and laid in a prone position to evaluate his line of sight. What I saw made me ashamed. As a career law enforcement officer, and a 25-year veteran with the Secret Service, I cannot defend why that roof was not better secured."