By It might be one of the biggest lies in the history of the Secret Service. Shortly after Donald Trump was shot in head by a gunman during his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the former president’s campaign announced that for months they had been requesting more protection from the Secret Service.
The accusations received support from anonymous law enforcement officials who tried to blow the whistle on the Secret Service that the agency had turned down request for more agents and specialty sniper teams.
“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former president’s team requested additional resources and that those were rebuffed,” Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, claimed on the day after the shooting.
Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, also told The New York Times that the charge that he issued the denials was “a baseless and irresponsible statement and it is one that is unequivocally false.”
On Saturday, the Secret Service could no longer coverup its lies when The Washington Post revealed the shocking news that the Biden administration did, in fact, reject Trump’s call for more protection.
Top officials at the U.S. Secret Service repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel sought by Donald Trump’s security detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania last Saturday, according to four people familiar with the requests.
Agents charged with protecting the former president requested magnetometers and more agents to screen attendees at sporting events and other large public gatherings Trump attended, as well as additional snipers and specialty teams at other outdoor events, said the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe sensitive security discussions. The requests, which have not been previously reported, were sometimes denied by senior officials at the agency, who cited various reasons, including a lack of resources at an agency that has long struggled with staffing shortages, they said.
Those rejections — in response to requests that were several times made in writing — led to long-standing tensions that pitted Trump, his top aides and his security detail against Secret Service leadership, as Trump advisers privately fretted that the vaunted security agency was not doing enough to protect the former president.
The Secret Service, after initially denying turning down requests for additional security, is now acknowledging some may have been rejected. The revelation comes as agency veterans say the organization has been forced to make difficult decisions amid competing demands, a growing list of protectees and limited funding.
So far, Secretary Mayorkas and Secret Service head Kim Cheatle have both refused to resign and both have claimed that Biden said he has “100 percent confidence” in their work.
As Congress begins to investigate the attempted assassination of the presidential frontrunner, Senator Ron Johnson from Wisconsin has suggested that there could have been a second shooter.
While speaking about the assassination attempt on Fox News’ Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo, the Republican senator said, “Was it one rifle? Was it more than one? I’ve seen some pretty interesting video on the internet by experts that does certainly call into question what the FBI is telling us about a single shooter.”
“How do you explain that?” the Fox News host wondered.
“I don’t know. I’m not an expert,” Johnson admitted. “But the individual putting that video out says it clearly shows that there were at least three different weapons fired that day.”
Security officials in charge of protecting the former president told lawmakers last week that 20 minutes went by between Secret Service snipers first seeing the assassin on a rooftop of a building and the firing of shots at Trump, according to ABC News.
“The FBI director, his deputy director and the head of the Secret Service told lawmakers Crooks was identified as a person of interest a full 62 minutes before the shooting took place, according to the law enforcement officials and lawmakers briefed.
According to the sources, the timeline presented in the briefing was as follows:
5:10 p.m. Crooks was first identified as a person of interest
5:30 p.m. Crooks was spotted with a rangefinder
5:52 p.m. Crooks was spotted on the roof by Secret Service
6:02 p.m. Trump takes the stage
6:12 p.m. Crooks fires first shots
From the time Crooks fired his first shot to the gunman being killed was just 26 seconds, according to law enforcement officials. Eleven seconds after the first shot, Secret Service counter snipers acquired their target — and 15 seconds after that, Crooks was shot dead.”
[Read More: Trump Gets His Wish]
