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Hawley: Whistleblowers say Trump’s security detail was unprepared, inexperienced
From The Center Square
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.”
Honest reporting on election integrity
Censorship Industrial Complex
Mark Zuckerberg Tells Joe Rogan That Biden Admin Would ‘Scream’ And ‘Curse’ At Meta Employees To Censor ‘True’ Content
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Cohen
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told podcast host Joe Rogan on Friday that officials in President Joe Biden’s administration would yell and hurl profanities at his company’s employees over content censorship.
The Biden administration pushed Facebook to censor posts about COVID-19 that it deemed misinformation, according to documents published by House Judiciary Committee chairman Jim Jordan in July 2023. Zuckerberg, on “The Joe Rogan Experience,” revealed that also Meta faced investigations and backlash after Biden accused Facebook of “killing people” in July 2021 for not censoring so-called COVID-19 misinformation.
WATCH:
“Basically, these people from the Biden Administration would call up our team and like scream at them and curse,” Zuckerberg said. “And it’s like these documents are — it’s all kind of out there.”
Rogan asked if Meta had recorded any of the calls, but Zuckerberg said he did not believe so.
“I mean, there are emails. The emails are published. It’s all kind of out there …. And basically, it just got to this point where we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to — we’re not going to take down things that are true. That’s ridiculous,’” Zuckerberh said. “They wanted us to take down this meme of Leonardo DiCaprio looking at a TV, talking about how ten years from now or something, you’re going to see an ad that says, ‘Okay, if you took a COVID vaccine, you’re eligible, like for this kind of payment,’ like this sort of like class-action lawsuit-type meme. And they’re like, ‘No, you have to take that down.’”
“We just said, ‘No, we’re not going to take down humor and satire. We’re not going to take down things that are true.’ And then at some point, I guess — I don’t know — it flipped a bit,” he added. “I mean, Biden, when he was — he gave some statement at some point, I don’t know if it was a press conference or to some journalist, where he basically was like, ‘These guys are killing people.’ And I don’t know. Then like all these different agencies and branches of government basically just like started investigating and coming after our company. It was brutal.”
Facebook executives believed they were engaged in a “knife fight” with Biden’s White House on COVID-19 censorship, according to a House Judiciary Committee report published in May.
Zuckerberg in August expressed remorse that Facebook caved to pressure from the Biden administration to censor content in a letter to Jordan. He wrote that senior Biden administration officials “repeatedly pressured” Facebook teams to censor COVID-19 content that the platform otherwise would not have suppressed, and voiced frustration when Facebook disagreed.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” Zuckerberg wrote. “I also think we made some choices that, with the benefit of hindsight and new information, we wouldn’t make today.”
Zuckerberg also alleged in 2022 on “The Joe Rogan Experience” that the FBI warned Facebook of a “Russian propaganda” dump just before the Hunter Biden laptop story broke.
“The FBI basically came to us and some folks on our team and said, ‘Hey, just so you know, you should be on high alert, we thought there was a lot of Russian propaganda in the 2016 election and we have noticed that basically there’s about to be some kind of dump that’s similar to that, so be vigilant,’” he said.
The Meta CEO said he could not recall whether the FBI specifically mentioned the Hunter Biden laptop story, but asserted it fit “the pattern.”
The White House did not immediately respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.
Meta referred the DCNF to documents released by the House Judiciary Committee and Jordan.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Jason Hopkins
President-elect Donald Trump is expected to launch his promised large-scale deportation operation the day after he is sworn into office, according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.
The incoming Trump administration will immediately begin mass deportation efforts in major sanctuary cities across the United States, with Chicago predicted to be first on the docket, according to The Wall Street Journal. The raid in Chicago is anticipated to begin Tuesday morning and last the entire week, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to deploy 100 to 200 agents to execute the operation.
Incoming border czar Tom Homan — who led ICE during the first Trump administration — previously told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the White House will focus on the “worst first,” prioritizing illegal migrants who have criminal histories and orders of removal. However, Homan also made clear that any illegal migrant in the U.S is fair game.
“Like the first Trump administration, we’re going to prioritize public safety threats, national security threats and fugitives,” Homan stated to the DCNF, adding that gang members and other criminals would be their main focus. “Those that had due process at great taxpayer expense, were given orders of deportation, never left and became a fugitive – them too, they’re a priority.”
“The ones who pose the biggest threat to the country – they come first. The worst first,” Homan went on. “But let’s be clear, if you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table.”
The Chicago City Council recently slapped down an attempt by two moderate aldermen to scale back the sanctuary city laws currently in place.
Aldermen Raymond Lopez and Silvana Tabares, both Democrats, proposed amending Chicago’s Welcoming City ordinance to allow for ICE cooperation when an illegal migrant has been arrested of certain criminal activities, arguing that such a policy would be a net benefit for the city’s immigrant community as it would allow deportation officers to better focus on criminals instead of making enforcement actions in the city at large. However, their proposal was quickly shot down by the council on Wednesday.
Other sanctuary cities in the U.S. have also expressed steep opposition to Trump’s enforcement agenda. Los Angeles passed its sanctuary law shortly after Trump emerged victorious in the presidential election, San Diego County doubled down on its existing law and Boston reaffirmed its sanctuary status in December.
Homan has said that city officials refusing to cooperate with ICE will not deter their agenda, and he added that those who knowingly harbor illegal migrants from law enforcement will be recommended for prosecution.
Along with large-scale deportation operations, Trump has also vowed to end birthright citizenship for those born on U.S. soil by illegal migrant parents, resume construction on the U.S.-Mexico border wall, bring back the Remain in Mexico program and implement other hawkish policies.
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