ONE YEAR LATER: One Year after Butler, Secret Service, FBI Face New Questions.
Despite the early classified briefings about a threat, those senior officials failed to relay the information to federal and local law enforcement personnel responsible for securing and staffing the event. Those excluded from the briefing shockingly include Perez, the agent in charge of planning and executing security for the July 13 Trump event, the Government Accountability Office found. Grassley commissioned the GAO to investigate the rally failures.
Sources in the Secret Service community, however, tell RCP that Perez may have not be forthcoming with GAO investigators — that she had to know of a heightened threat because counter snipers were added to the rally — the first time such the added layer of security usually reserved for presidents was taken during the 2024 Trump campaign. Additionally, throughout the campaign, all Secret Service agents had been briefed about the ongoing Iranian threat upon their arrival at Mar-a-Lago. (The report Grassley released only identifies agents by their titles, but multiple sources have confirmed to RCP the names and identities of all the agents involved in the Butler security planning and execution.)
Meredith Bank, the lead advance agent from the Pittsburgh Field Office, was briefed on the threat, which was not specific to the Butler rally, although other members of that office, including top supervisors who were placed on suspension with her, were not briefed, the GAO found. Bank’s job as the lead agent was broader than securing the site itself. She was charged with devising the plans to secure Trump from the time he touched down at the airport to the time he left the rally and his plane departed.
As a result of the siloed information sharing, many federal and all local law enforcement planning and staffing the event, including Perez and other members of the Trump protective detail and the Pittsburgh Field Office, were unaware of the active threat. Local law enforcement officers told the GAO that if they had received the threat information, they “would have requested additional assets” for the Butler rally.
Read the whole thing, but this line stands out: “The Secret Service argued that the entire agency had failed, not just the individuals, so firings wouldn’t solve the problem.”
Firings certainly would have sent a message about what level of basic competence is expected, but I guess that’s not something the Secret Service cares too much about.