A new report by the Government Accountability Office claims that the U.S. Secret Service was aware of a “classified threat” to President Donald Trump’s life 10 days prior to the assassination attempt against Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, 2024.
The Government Accountability Office’s report, which was ordered by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), explained that Secret Service leadership was informed of the “classified threat” almost two weeks prior to the assassination attempt but never notified the agency’s field team regarding the threat due to a “siloed practice for sharing classified information.”
“One year ago, a series of bad decisions and bureaucratic handicaps led to one of the most shocking moments in political history,” Grassley stated in a Saturday press release. “The Secret Service’s failure on July 13 was the culmination of years of mismanagement and came after the Biden administration denied requests for enhanced security to protect President Trump. Americans should be grateful that President Trump survived that day and was ultimately reelected to restore common sense to our country.”
The Government Accountability Office’s report noted that the Secret Service did not have a process to notify partner organizations with “classified threat information” if the information “was not considered an imminent threat to life.” While the information regarding the threat was not revealed in the new report, the report indicated that the Secret Service considered it “highly classified” and that the information was not specific to Trump’s rally in Butler.
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The report stated, “This information was not more broadly shared across the Secret Service partly because the information was highly classified, which involved constraints from the Intelligence Community on sharing information.”
According to the report, the special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, which was responsible for overseeing the region where Trump’s rally was held in Butler, claimed that he was not aware of the threat prior to the rally. The report noted that if the special agent in charge had been aware of the threat, he would have “requested additional assets, such as ballistic glass, additional drone mitigation, and a full counter sniper advance team, among other assets.”
In a statement obtained by Fox News, Secret Service Director Sean Curran said the agency has reviewed the report and is “committed to implementing all recommendations and have already made substantial progress on several of them.”
“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 added.
