After a gunman targeted the White House a decade ago, highlighting vulnerabilities at one of America’s most iconic landmarks, lawmakers in Congress received an unexpected second wave of troubling news. “The Secret Service did not identify best practices and lessons learned from the 2011 White House shooting incident,” the Homeland Security Department inspector general noted in a critical 2016 report. The report highlighted that an agency with a zero-failure mission had not learned from one of its significant setbacks, Just the News reported on Wednesday.
Eight years later, as the Secret Service grapples with another major failure, the same watchdog office is poised to release a new bombshell that is likely to significantly impact the investigation into the near assassination of former President Donald Trump, the outlet reported. This week, Congress was informed that months before the assassination attempt on Trump, Secret Service managers were warned by the Homeland Security inspector general about serious deficiencies. These included issues with communication with local police partners and insufficient training for agents conducting security sweeps at events for protectees, sources told Just the News on Wednesday night.
The report continued:
The concerns flagged by Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari were related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but involve issues that have also been raised in the Secret Service’s failures to stop a gunman from wounding Trump at a Butler, Pa., rally on July 13, the congressional aides said.
Some of the concerns could be made public as early as Thursday when Cuffari’s staff is expected to release to Congress a heavily redacted report that was completed in April and titled “USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021,” the aides said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they weren’t permitted to talk to news media.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., chairman of the House Administration subcommittee on oversight, has been urging Cuffari to release the report and to resist extensive redactions requested by the Secret Service and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. He also told the outlet this week that he was prepared to issue subpoenas to obtain the full, unredacted report. “We need to get this … report. We need to see it,” he told the “John Solomon Reports” podcast. “And it needs to happen soon because we just created a task force to look at it. And … I think there’s important information there.”
According to congressional sources, the report from April included several specific recommendations for then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle. This followed an internal investigation that revealed Secret Service agents failed to detect an active pipe bomb at the Democratic National Committee headquarters on the morning of January 6, 2021, and inadvertently brought then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris within yards of the explosive device.
Congressional aides informed Just the News that one of the findings was the recommendation for the Secret Service to enhance training related to security sweeps, similar to the one that failed to detect the pipe bomb at the DNC in 2021. This recommendation sparked a heated reaction from Secret Service management, which argued that no additional training was necessary, citing changes made in an April 2022 policy memo, the aides added.
Another recommendation addressed improving communication with local law enforcement, which is increasingly called upon to assist the Secret Service at major events, such as the Trump rally in Butler, Pa., the aides noted. During the January 6 Capitol riot, the Secret Service needed to coordinate with other agencies, including U.S. Capitol Police and the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police. “If both of those findings are formally released to Congress later this week, they will have immediate implications for simultaneous investigations ongoing in the House and Senate related to the July 13 assassination attempt,” Just the News reported.
Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, has released detailed information from local police authorities who collaborated with the Secret Service. This information includes the fact that the Secret Service missed a briefing with local law enforcement on the morning of the Trump rally, during which concerns about the eventual shooter were raised more than 100 minutes before the shooting occurred. Additionally, the Secret Service admitted it failed to secure the rooftop from which the shooter fired despite it being an ideal location for a potential shooter within the event’s security perimeter.
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