One year after Butler: GAO confirms intel on Trump threat was withheld from security team

By Lindsey McPherson | The Washington Times

The Secret Service obtained classified intelligence information about a threat to President Trump 10 days before an attempt on his life at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, but failed to share it with its agents and law enforcement partners in charge of securing the event. 

Although the threat was unrelated to the gunman who shot at Mr. Trump in Butler last year, had the intelligence been shared with officials in charge of securing the rally, it would have changed the security posture for the event, the Government Accountability Office found. 

Sen. Chuck Grassley, Iowa Republican, requested the GAO, a nonpartisan government auditor, conduct a review of the Secret Service’s failure to thwart the assassination attempt, and the auditor spent nearly a year doing so. 

The GAO’s report, which Mr. Grassley released Saturday, a day before the one-year anniversary of the July 13 Butler rally, drew many of the conclusions as those from two congressional panels, an independent review panel and the Secret Service’s internal review.

“Siloed information-sharing practices prevented officials with significant security responsibilities from having access to threat information that could have changed how they secured the area,” the GAO said. 

Secret Service officials and state and local law enforcement partners who were kept in the dark about the threat told the GAO they would have taken different steps to secure the rally had they known about the threat. 

The Washington Times previously reported that most Secret Service agents involved in security planning for the Butler rally were not told about the existence of a credible threat against Mr. Trump.

The GAO report does not mention the specific threat, which was considered classified intelligence, but various reports have confirmed it was about an Iranian plot to assassinate Mr. Trump.

The intelligence community shared the classified information with the Secret Service on July 3, 10 days before the Butler rally. Only senior Secret Service executives were briefed at that time, and senior agents assigned to Mr. Trump’s protective detail were briefed on July 8. 

Of the Secret Service employees tasked with planning the security for Butler, only the lead advance agent was told generally about the existence of a threat against Mr. Trump. She was not given specifics and didn’t share the information with other agents involved in the security planning because she was told it was classified. 

The special agent in charge of the Pittsburgh field office that did most of the security planning for the rally said he would have requested additional assets, such as ballistic glass, additional drone mitigation technology and a full countersniper advance team, if he had known about the threat.

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