Ronald Rowe, Jr, (l) Acting Director of the U.S. Secret Service and Paul Abbate, Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, arrive to testify on the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump during a joint hearing with the Senate Homeland Security Committee and the Senate Judiciary Committee on July 30, 2024. (Credit: Josh Morgan/USA Today)
Secret Service leaders meddled in an independent government investigation of the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump and are still not following many basic agency security protocols for presidential candidates, presidents, and vice presidents in the final days before the election, according to emails reviewed by RealClearPolitics and several sources in the Secret Service community.
As Secret Service failures came to light in the weeks after the July assassination attempt, USSS managers sent emails to employees asking them to alert them to any “direct requests for information or interview” from the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, or DHS OIG. The internal government watchdog is conducting its probe of the failures that led to the near assassination of Trump, the killing of fireman Corey Comperatore, and the wounding of two other rally-goers at the western Pennsylvania campaign event.
The emails, which RealClearPolitics reviewed, contained the subject line “DHS OIG Inquiries” and directed employees to tell their supervisors if an OIG official reaches out to them so Secret Service managers could coordinate “an organized response.” Supervisors sent the email five days after the same inspector general issued a negative report on the Secret Service’s actions before and on Jan. 6, criticizing the agency for failing to detect a pipe bomb near Vice President Kamala Harris and not flagging signs of potential violence to other agencies.
Normally, responding to DHS OIG investigators without talking to superiors would not warrant coordination with supervisors, the email stated. But after the first assassination attempt against Trump, USSS leadership needed to provide the proper context and a coordinated response.
“Generally, not an issue; however, this is NOT the normal course of action, and the Service needs awareness and to ensure an organized response with information in the correct context,” Secret Service supervisors wrote in the emails, noting that “only we know what we do.”
The email is now under Senate scrutiny. Sen. Chuck Grassley, a longtime champion of government whistleblowers, on Wednesday sent a letter to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe expressing concern that the email and any other communications like it could have “a chilling effect” on employee disclosures to the inspector general’s office, as well as on congressional investigations.
“If this email is an accurate representation of the actions taken by Secret Service management, it could have a chilling effect on its employees from fully cooperating and providing information to the DHS OIG as well as congressional investigations out of fear of retaliation since supervisors will apparently be keeping tabs on their communications,” Grassley wrote in the letter, a copy of which his office provided to RCP.
Instead of trying to control the flow and context of information, Secret Service leaders should be “encouraging” employees to “come forward to provide truthful information to the DHS OIG and Congress so that lessons can be learned to prevent future assassination attempts,” Grassley added.
Tristan Leavitt, an attorney and president of Empower Oversight, which represents Secret Service, IRS, and other government whistleblowers, said the email demanding that potential whistleblowers coordinate communications with their bosses stifles the free flow of information, which could help improve the agency’s performance and which federal law protects. (Read more: RealClearPolitics, 10/31/2024) (Archive)