Local police in Butler, Pennsylvania, repeatedly offered to provide drone coverage in the sky above former President Donald Trump’s July 13 campaign rally, but were turned down by the Secret Service.
This is what a whistleblower said in a bombshell revelation, Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri wrote in a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees the Secret Service.
“According to reports, the shooter used a drone to survey the site in preparation for his attack,” Hawley stated. “This was confirmed by FBI Director Christopher Wray in his testimony just yesterday.
“In fact, he confirmed that the shooter was operating the drone approximately two hours before President Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania. This raises an obvious question: why was the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) not using its own drones?”
Hawley continued: “According to one whistleblower, 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.
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“This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no.”
🚨🚨 NEW – Whistleblower tells me local law enforcement partners & suppliers offered drones to Secret Service BEFORE the rally – but Secret Service declined pic.twitter.com/UM0jfrMc9z
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) July 25, 2024
It is mind-boggling that the agency rebuffed repeated offers of drone coverage from local police, but allowed Thomas Crooks — the 20-year-old man who tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump — to fly his drone above the rally venue before the shooting.
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“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 event,” Hawley wrote to Mayorkas.
“The failure to deploy drone technology is all the more concerning since, according to the whistleblower, the drones USSS was offered had the capability not only to identify active shooters but also to help neutralize them,” the senator noted.
According to the whistleblower, the Secret Service changed course and asked local law enforcement to deploy their drones to survey the site after Trump and several rally goers got shot.
NEW: Thomas Crooks was able to fly a drone over the Pennsylvania rally location before the event started according to the Wall Street Journal.
So a 20-year-old would be assas*in can use a drone but not the Secret Service?
“The gunman who tried to kill Donald Trump was able to… pic.twitter.com/RiHacRFjdc
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) July 20, 2024
Hawley, who torched Mayorkas for allowing “historic” and “staggering security failures,” has asked the DHS secretary to turn over all communications regarding drone coverage at the rally by Aug. 1.
The secret service says it has received “NEW INFORMATION”.
This NEW INFORMATION is that the secret service has been lying for the past week. They now admit that they denied Trump’s requests for more security.
This is why they’re not holding press conferences. Coverup pic.twitter.com/IMKgoCBdEF
— Gregg Re (@gregg_re) July 21, 2024
The American public deserves an explanation for the monumentally egregious security lapses that almost got Trump killed and the subsequent stonewalling by the Secret Service and Mayorkas.
The United States is buckling under the strain of daily border invasions, escalating racial tensions and crushing inflation as we teeter on the brink of a third world war.
There is no excuse for the abject incompetence being displayed by bloated federal agencies that receive billions of tax dollars every year but seem unable to justify their existence.
