The U.S. Secret Service has come under fire for allegedly refusing to utilize drones at the Pennsylvania rally for former president Donald Trump on July 13, despite offers from local law enforcement. Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri disclosed this information on Thursday. Following a failed attempt to assassinate Trump at the rally, the Secret Service has faced criticism for operational shortcomings. In a letter to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Hawley stated that a whistleblower informed him about the Secret Service’s repeated rejection of drone assistance offered by Pennsylvania law enforcement for security measures.
“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.”
In the letter, Hawley mentioned that the whistleblower informed him about the drone technology’s ability to “neutralize” potential threats and monitor them, which was reportedly offered to the Secret Service.
“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.
Thomas Crooks, a 20-year-old gunman, used a drone to survey the rally site before the event began. The Secret Service has faced heavy criticism for failing to prevent Crooks from attempting to harm Trump.
Despite being alerted to his presence 50 minutes before the former president took the stage, law enforcement and the Secret Service were unable to stop Crooks from shooting at Trump from a building just a few hundred feet away. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned following intense scrutiny from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers over her failure to guarantee the safety of the rally.
