(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revealed whistleblower allegations Tuesday about the lack of training of the DHS Homeland Security Investigations agents assigned to guard Donald Trump at the deadly July 13 rally in Butler Pennsylvania.
According to Hawley, a whistleblower told him that the only training received by many HSI agents was a single two-hour webinar on Microsoft Teams featuring pre-recorded videos.
“The whistleblower alleged that these videos were not substantive and their playback was frequently riddled with technical mishaps, leaving the HSI agents ill-prepared for the protective mission to which they were newly assigned,” Hawley said Tuesday in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
NEW Whistleblower tells me most of the agents at the Trump rally the day of the assassination attempt were Homeland Security NOT Secret Service — and the only training they received was a 2-hour online “webinar”! Outrageous pic.twitter.com/iwNwjN2lfZ
— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 4, 2024
“To quote the whistleblower directly: ‘Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to login individually. Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos (which I’m told are the same videos as last year). All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times …. The content was not helpful,’” Hawley said.
Ever worse, the senator added, is the fact that DHS hasn’t changed its training methods in the wake of the July 13 assassination attempt.
Finally, Hawley noted that some HSI agents were pulled from child sexual-exploitation cases to serve as security for Trump.
Hawley asked Mayorkas a series of questions about the matter, including the number of HSI agents at the July 13 Trump rally, the number of those who received webinar training, and the number reassigned from child exploitation cases.
Hawley’s office was the one to reveal on July 19 that the majority of Trump’s security detail allegedly weren’t actual Secret Service agents—but instead the HSI agents discussed above.
“This is especially concerning given that HSI agents were unfamiliar with standard protocols typically used at these types of events, according to the allegations,” Hawley noted in July.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
