Senior U.S. Secret Service officials were aware of a “classified threat” to President Donald Trump’s life 10 days before the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pa. — but failed to inform the agents assigned to protect him, according to a bombshell report released Saturday by a federal watchdog.
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the intelligence, which was presented to Secret Service leadership nearly two weeks before the attempt on Trump’s life, never reached the field team on the ground due to what the agency described as a “siloed practice for sharing classified information.” (RELATED: ‘I’m Supposed To Be Dead’: Donald Trump Reflects After ‘Very Surreal’ Brush With Death)
“The Secret Service had no process to share classified threat information with partners when the information was not considered an imminent threat to life,” the GAO wrote in the 98-page report, released by Iowa Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley.
The nature of the threat remains undisclosed, but Secret Service officials reportedly deemed it “highly classified.”
“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,” the report said.
The report also said the Secret Service didn’t have a process to share “classified threat information” with partners that’s considered “a significant threat to security operations but not considered an imminent threat to life.”
The report also said the information was general in nature and not specific to the Butler, Pa. event.
The special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office, which oversees the area where the Butler rally was held, told investigators he had no knowledge of the threat ahead of time. The report said that if the Pittsburgh Special Agent in charge 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.”
This site agent in Butler — tasked with identifying vulnerabilities — was new to the role and had never planned a large outdoor event, the report found.
The report also raised red flags about the competence and preparedness of the Secret Service agents deployed to the rally. Of the 14 agents interviewed, five said they relied on their own judgment and previous experience due to lack of consistent protective guidance.
The Secret Service also lacked functioning drones during the rally, according to the report. Some were diverted to the Republican and Democratic National Conventions, while others malfunctioned or were operated by inexperienced personnel.
The assassination attempt left fire chief Corey Comperatore dead and two others injured. Trump survived after a bullet grazed his ear.
