Senior Secret Service officials were reportedly aware of a classified threat against President Donald Trump ten days before the assassination attempt at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but failed to share this information with the agents and law enforcement officers responsible for his security at the event, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, the New York Post reports. The GAO, released at the request of Senator Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), found that the intelligence was considered “highly classified,” but the nature of the threat is not explained.
The report emphasized that the agency’s “siloed practice for sharing” sensitive information meant that only a few officials were aware of the threat, and those directly responsible for Trump’s protection were left uninformed. The Post reports, “‘Secret Service and local law enforcement personnel central to developing site security plans for the rally were unaware of the threat,’ the report notes, explaining members of the agency’s advance team assigned to the event in Butler did not receive the relevant information.”
The GAO determined that the Secret Service lacked a process to share classified threat information with partners unless it was deemed an imminent threat to life. As a result, the advance team and local law enforcement developing the rally’s security plan were unaware of the intelligence. The special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, which oversaw the rally, also did not receive the information, according to the report.
“He reported that if he had received the threat information, he would have requested additional assets, such as ballistic glass, additional drone mitigation, and a full counter sniper advance team, among other assets,” the report states.
“The Secret Service had ‘multiple opportunities to share this information’ leading up to the rally ‘but repeatedly failed to do so,’ Gassley’s office contends,” The Post reports.
The Senate Homeland Security Committee and other investigative bodies have concluded that this failure was part of a broader breakdown in communication within the Secret Service and between agencies. These lapses contributed to the security failures that allowed the gunman to carry out the attack, which left Trump wounded and resulted in the tragic death of a rally attendee whose life was lost protecting his family.
The reports recommend stronger disciplinary action and significant reforms to information-sharing protocols within the Secret Service to prevent similar failures in the future.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran said Saturday that his agency has reviewed the GAO report and is “committed to implementing all recommendations and have already made substantial progress on several of them,” according to The Post.
“Following the events of July 13, the Secret Service took a serious look at our operations and implemented substantive reforms to address the failures that occurred that day,” Curran said in a statement. “The Secret Service appreciates the continued support of President Trump, Congress, and our federal and local partners who have been instrumental in providing crucial resources needed to support the agency’s efforts.”