Secret Service refused drones to secure Trump rally, whistleblower says
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Secret Service obstructed the use of drone technology to investigate the site of the Butler rally, where an assassin attempted to shoot former President Donald Trump, a whistleblower has said. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., revealed that a whistleblower told his office the night before the rally that the Secret Service “repeatedly rejected offers from a local law enforcement partner to use drone technology to secure the rally.”
The whistleblower alleged that after the shooting, the Secret Service “changed course and asked the local partner to deploy drone technology to monitor the location following the shooting.” The drones provided “had the capability not only to identify active shooters, but to eliminate them,” Hawley said.
Homeland Security Sec. Alejandro Mayorkas Hawley has demanded all documents and communications related to the drone offer. The new demand adds a new layer to the investigation into the Secret Service’s worst security lapse since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981.
After a damning six hours of testimony on Monday, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday. She had spent much of the day dodging and giving contradictory answers to questions such as why the roof where gunman Thomas Crooks carried out his attack was not within the security perimeter, despite being within gun range of the stage, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage despite Crooks being identified as a suspect an hour before he fired shots.
When asked why there was no agent on the roof, the director explained that it was because the agency generally “prefers sterile roofs.” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Wednesday that the 20-year-old gunman flew a drone 200 yards from the stage just two hours before opening fire in Butler, Pennsylvania, and that he had three explosives in his car.
Crooks shot Trump in the ear on July 13 just 400 feet from the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania, from the roof of a nearby building just outside the event’s security perimeter. Wray said Crooks and his family owned 14 guns between them, and that Crooks had visited a shooting range the day before the rally. Crooks used an AR-style weapon that was legally purchased by his father and sold to him in October 2023.
Wray said eight rounds of ammunition were found on the roof where Crooks fired his shots at the former president. And he wouldn’t rule out the possibility that Crooks had accomplices in the crime, saying police are still looking into it.
When confronted with questions about why the president was allowed on stage when the “threat” was reported 20 minutes before the shots were fired, Wray said, “We don’t know the answer to that.” He said no one at the police station saw Crooks in a shooting position with a weapon in his hand until “moments” before he fired, but that they did see him on the roof “minutes before.”
The FBI and Secret Service told lawmakers last week that they identified Crooks as a person of interest 62 minutes before he fired a shot. He was seen carrying a rangefinder, which Cheatle said was “not a prohibited item” at Trump rallies. That wasn’t enough to identify him as a threat. Crooks was spotted on a roof 20 minutes before he fired a shot. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear. One audience member, Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed and two others — David Dutch, 57, and James Copenhaver, 57 — were seriously injured but are in stable condition.
