Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) said he believed there is a “cultural cover-up” within the Secret Service following a new report on the assassination attempt of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, last year.
A report from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that the Secret Service “denied or left unfulfilled at least 10 requests” from Trump’s security detail for “additional resources” ahead of the shooting.
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Trump has said he is satisfied with the information he has received from the agency about what went wrong that day, but Paul said some people have not been telling the truth.
“It was a cultural cover-up for the agency. They did not want to assess blame. They did not want to look internally,” Paul said on CBS News’s Face the Nation. “And they wanted to discount any of their actions that might have led to this. This was a cover your ass sort of moment, and I do believe that they did know.”
“There’s no way that the director of Secret Service, that she did not know that these requests had been made. And, so, yes, it was a huge failure,” Paul continued.
The report accuses then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle of “falsely” testifying to Congress that “no USSS asset requests were denied for the Butler rally.” Cheatle resigned as director shortly after her testimony.
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“She did not tell the truth. She said that there were no assets that were requested in advance. We found at least four occasions, actually maybe five occasions, where requests were made,” Paul said of Cheatle.
On July 13, 2024, a 20-year-old gunman opened fire on Trump from the rooftop of a nearby building during a campaign event in Butler. A bullet grazed Trump’s ear and one person was killed, with two others critically injured. The gunman, Thomas Crooks, was killed on the scene by a Secret Service sniper.