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Secret Service Repeatedly Rejected Offers To Use Drones At Deadly Trump Rally, Whistleblower Says

Published

1 year ago

3 minute read

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle appears before the House Oversight Committee on July 22, 2024. (Screenshot / C-SPAN 2)

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JAKE SMITH

 

A whistleblower is alleging that the U.S. Secret Service declined to use drones at the deadly Pennsylvania rally for former president Donald Trump on July 13, even though the technology was repeatedly offered by local law enforcement, Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley said on Thursday.

The Secret Service has fallen under intense scrutiny for failing to prevent a gunman from opening fire and attempting to assassinate Trump at the July 13 rally. Amid a series of reported operational failures, Hawley revealed in a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Thursday that a whistleblower had told him that the Secret Service repeatedly rejected offers from law enforcement in Pennsylvania to utilize drones for security purposes.

“The night before the rally, U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied offers from a local law enforcement partner to utilize drone technology to secure the rally. This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no,” Hawley wrote in his letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Thursday. “The whistleblower further alleges that after the shooting took place, USSS changed course and asked the local partner to deploy the drone technology to surveil the site in the aftermath of 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 capability to “neutralize” potential threats as well as monitor them.

“It is hard to understand why USSS would decline to use drones when they were offered, particularly given the fact USSS permitted the shooter to overfly the rally area with his own drone mere hours before [the] event,” Hawley wrote in the letter. The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Crooks, flew a drone over the rally site hours before the event began to scope out the area.

The Secret Service has been widely criticized for its failure to stop Crooks from nearly killing Trump. Crooks was able to climb onto the roof of a building just hundreds of feet away from the rally and shoot Trump without being stopped by law enforcement or the Secret Service, even though they were made aware of his presence roughly 50 minutes before the former president took the stage.

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after being berated by Republican and Democratic lawmakers for her failure to ensure that the rally would be safe.

The Secret Service did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Featured image credit: Screenshot / C-SPAN 2)

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By Cindy Harper

Sarah Rogers’ comments draw a new line in the sand between America’s First Amendment and Europe’s tightening grip on online speech.

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She said the situation “forced” the US to defend its constitutional protections, warning that “when British regulators decree that British law applies to American speech on American sites on American soil with no connection to Britain,” the matter can no longer be ignored.
Rogers called it “a perverse blessing” that the dispute is forcing a renewed transatlantic conversation about free expression, observing that “Britain and America did develop the free speech tradition together.”
Rogers announced that the State Department will soon publish a collection of previously unreleased internal emails and documents describing earlier US government involvement in social media moderation efforts.
The release is part of what she termed a “truth and reconciliation initiative” that will include material linked to the now-defunct Global Engagement Center, which she said had coordinated with outside organizations to identify content for takedown.
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Her remarks mark one of the strongest rebukes yet from a senior American official toward the growing European model of compelled content moderation.
Rogers suggested that this model not only undermines open debate but also sets a precedent for governments worldwide to police political speech beyond their borders.
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