Grassley Letter to Secret Service Director Highlights Major Security Lapses

An email with the subject line, “203.080 First Lady Dr. Jill Bident to Pittsburgh, PA,” notes that the “following 12 personnel have been selected for a temporary assignment as post-standers in support of the First Lady Dr. Jill Biden to Pittsburgh, PA on July 13, 2024.” The email then lists the names of those personnel.

A separate email with the subject line “203.080 Candidate Donald Trump to Pittsburgh, PA” notes that “the following 3 personnel have been selected for a temporary assignment as post-standers in support of candidate Donald Trump to Pittsburgh, Pa on July 13, 2024.”

Sen. Chuck Grassley, an Iowa Republican and longtime champion of government whistleblowers, obtained emails from protected whistleblower disclosures while conducting his own investigation into the security lapses at the rally that provided an opening for shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks to nearly kill Trump and murder rally-goer Corey Comperatore and injure two others. Grassley noted that the emails were from whistleblowers “facilitated” by Empower Oversight, a legal firm assisting whistleblowers' communications to Congress. 

In a letter sent Saturday to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, Grassley noted that the information about the post-standers doesn’t include a list of Department of Homeland Security personnel or a total list of Secret Service personnel that may have been assigned to the Trump rally, nor does it provide a total personnel breakdown for the first lady’s dinner that night.

Three days after the shooting, Grassley requested a list of all personnel from every agency present at the rally that day. In his Saturday letter, Grassley reiterated that request as well as a request for all records and information that pertains to the federal and state personnel present on July 13, 2024.

“I welcome any additional information you can provide relating to these communications and the total number of federal employees that were present that day,” Grassley told Cheatle in the letter.

On Sunday, July 14, RealClearPolitics first reported that many Secret Service special agents and Uniformed Division officers are furious about the security failures on July 13 and are especially concerned over the “diversion” or “mis-allocation” of resources between the two events. They are also critical of several agency management protocols and advance work and planning decisions for the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally even while lauding the work of the agents and counter snipers on the ground, most of whom they said performed admirably.

Sources in the Secret Service community also say that further straining Secret Service resources was an event headlined by Vice President Kamala Harris in Philadelphia and, even more so, the NATO summit in Washington and preparation for the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, two complex events requiring a massive draw of agency and DHS manpower.

RealClearPolitics emailed a set of six detailed questions to Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi on Sunday, but instead of answering them and reaching out to try to inform our reporting, Guglielmi roundly denied the accuracy of RCP’s reporting.

“[T]his is very wrong,” Guglielmi posted on X.com in direct response to our reporting. “We did not divert resources from FPOTUS [sic] Trump, & protection models don’t work that way.”

The Secret Service had previously also denied reporting by RCP and others, including assertions by GOP Rep. Mike Waltz, that the Secret Service details assigned to Trump and the Trump campaign had repeatedly requested additional security resources over the course of many months, and that Secret Service managers had denied them.

Cheatle is set to testify Monday morning before the House Oversight Committee under subpoena. Unless she opens the hearing with a resignation letter and refuses to respond to questions, she will be asked to publicly answer detailed questions from lawmakers on how the most colossal Secret Service failure in four decades happened under her watch.

Members of Congress will ask her about myriad security failures and the puzzling management protocols and decisions that allowed Crooks to scramble to the top of an unmanned building with his father’s AR-style rifle and fire several rounds at Trump and the crowd.

Another factor, according to these sources within the Secret Service community, was that the agency was relying heavily on supplemental special agents (not Trump’s regular team of special agents) and local law enforcement because many special agents in Trump’s regular protective detail were overburdened and needed to take time off after working several consecutive seven-day weeks.

RCP has also learned that there may have been only one regular special agent detailee on site the day of the rally. The rest are from the Candidate Nominee Operation Section, or CNOS, “temps” in Secret Service shorthand. First instituted in 1998, the CNOS teams comprise special agents from 142 field offices and operate on 21-day rotational assignments. When they complete their rotations, they return to their field offices.

This is not unusual for a former president to experience, but the threats against Trump, the only former president in modern political history to run again and one who has faced prosecutions and comparisons to Hitler from Democrats, are obviously greater than most ex-commanders in chief whose profiles have tended to decline after leaving public office.

In addition, the site agent who was in charge of putting all security measures for a particular event in place was a relatively new female agent from the Pittsburgh field office with limited experience, a Secret Service source told RCP.

“Trump has a permanent detail, however, it’s much smaller in the number of bodies than the president’s,” the source explained. “His detail has been worked so hard with all the travel that they’re working seven days a week with shift changes, so headquarters sends in temporary agents to supplement. Not a good scenario.”

Cheatle has led the agency since 2022, when Biden appointed her at the behest of Jill Biden, who got to know her while Biden was vice president.

Prior to becoming the Secret Service director, Cheatle worked for PepsiCo as the senior director in global security, according to her biography with the Secret Service. There, Cheatle oversaw and directed security protocols for the company’s facilities in North America. Corporate security work is a common career path for senior agents who have retired or resigned from the agency with decades of experience and seek more lucrative private-sector work.

Before joining PepsiCo, Cheatle was the agency’s assistant director of the Office of Protective Details. She also served as the special agent in charge of the Secret Service's Atlanta Field Office and the Rowley Training Center.