Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. personally directed cuts to the Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), according to a whistleblower who reached out to Missouri Senator Josh Hawley.

As a result, the Secret Service threat assessment team failed to perform its typical duties prior to the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The Republican senator’s findings come after lawmakers grilled agency leaders on the mounting security failures at the Pennsylvania rally where former President Trump narrowly escaped assassination.

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X Screenshot – Josh Hawley
X Screenshot – Josh Hawley

The CSD, the division that performs a threat assessment of event sites before the event occurs, did not perform its evaluation prior to the fateful rally in Western Pennsylvania on July 13. “This is significant because CSD’s duties include evaluating potential security threats outside the security perimeter and mitigating those threats during the event,” said Hawley in a letter to Rowe on Thursday.

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The whistleblower said that if the CSD performed their normal duties, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks “would have been handcuffed in the parking lot.” “The whistleblower claims that if personnel from CSD had been present at the rally, the gunman would have been handcuffed in the parking lot after being spotted with a rangefinder,” Hawley wrote to Rowe.

“The whistleblower alleges that because CSD was not present in Butler, this manifest shortcoming was never properly flagged or mitigated,” he said.

Hawley’s office also revealed Rowe’s alleged personal involvement in cutting staffing to CSD. “The whistleblower further alleges that you personally directed significant cuts to CSD, up to and including reducing the division’s manpower by twenty percent,” Hawley said. “You did not mention this in your Senate testimony when asked directly to explain manpower reductions.”

Rowe’s leadership also created a cultural problem at the agency, according to the whistleblower, who claimed that retaliation has been threatened to those who raised security concerns. “The whistleblower also alleges retaliation against those within the Secret Service who expressed concern about the security at President Trump’s events,” Hawley said. “The whistleblower claims that following an event with the former President at a golf tournament in August of last year, Secret Service personnel present expressed serious concern that the Secret Service’s use of local law enforcement was not adequate for security needs: local law enforcement were not properly trained for the event or otherwise prepared to execute the tasks given them.”

“Further, Secret Service personnel expressed alarm that individuals were admitted to the event without vetting,” he said. “The whistleblower alleges that those who raised such concerns were retaliated against.”