Secret Service ‘repeatedly’ rejected local drone prior to Trump shooting: whistleblower

Senator Josh Hawley has raised concerns regarding security measures at former President Trump’s July 13 campaign rally, where a failed assassination attempt occurred.

According to a whistleblower, the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) repeatedly declined offers from local law enforcement to use drone technology for monitoring the event, despite its availability.

“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,” Hawley wrote to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.

“This means that the technology was both available to USSS and able to be deployed to secure the site. Secret Service said no.”

This decision comes under scrutiny after FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that the would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, flew his own drone over the rally site prior to the attack.

After the shooting, which resulted in one death and multiple injuries, the USSS requested drone assistance from local authorities, raising questions about their initial refusal to deploy drones.

Hawley is seeking all communications relating to drone coverage for the rally as part of an investigation into the security lapses that allowed Crooks to get within 150 yards of Trump.

“This raises an obvious question: why was the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) not using its own drones?” Hawley wrote.

“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.

“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,” he wrote. “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.”

Security experts suggested that the USSS’s protective model needs reevaluation, particularly regarding the integration of local assets for event security.

“That whistleblower is gonna be local law enforcement, and USSS would never allow a non-USSS drone,” an expert on active shooter response said.

“There needs to be a serious rethinking of the protective model that the USSS uses,” he said. “The model is sound and proven, but how local assets fit in needs to be reassessed.”