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Rand Paul Calls Out ‘Cultural Cover-Up’ Within Secret Service on Anniversary of Trump Assassination Attempt

The Secret Service was more interested in covering up its failings at the 2024 rally where President Donald Trump was shot, than getting to the truth, Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky said Sunday.

During an appearance on “Face the Nation,” Paul said Secret Service officials did not reveal the truth when they said denied requests were made for extra assets to protect Trump at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where he was shot.

“I think it was a cultural cover-up for the agency,” Paul said in a viral clip posted to X.

“They did not want to assess blame. They did not want to look internally. 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,” he said.

“And so, yes, it was a huge failure. And if you talk to the current head of the Secret Service, who is Trump’s lead detail, and Trump has a great deal of confidence in, he’ll admit that these failures existed,” he said.

Paul said the agency has been slow to embrace internal accountability.

“But even the disciplinary action that they finally took, they only took because I subpoenaed. I wanted to know, who is disciplined. We weren’t going to release the names. But I wanted to know, who was disciplined and what the discipline was,” he said.

Do you trust the Secret Service?

“They refused for a year to tell me that. They told me that a week ago. You saw the news reports. But some of the people were just disciplined two weeks ago. So, they weren’t going to discipline anybody until I subpoenaed and asked them what they had done. But, in the end, no one was fired,” Paul said.

Paul said a supervisor who had a key role in what went wrong was not fired.

“And the supervisor who heard about the person on the roof, who did not tell the detail immediately to take the president off the stage, there was a several minute delay there, he stayed in his job. He did retire recently, but stayed in his job,” he said.

“So, no, I think even the investigation by the Secret Service was inadequate. But that’s why we need to have congressional oversight,” he said.

Noting that Trump rallies have major security concerns, Paul said that at Butler, everyone passed the buck.

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“When we ask the Secret Service, who was in charge of the roof? How could you walk through at 3:00 in the afternoon and see the roof? Nobody walked through. Nobody was in charge. Everybody said, oh, she was in charge of the roof, or he was in charge of the roof. No one would actually admit to being in charge of security for Butler,” he said.

A report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee release on Paul’s website blamed Trump being shot on “stunning failures by the United States Secret Service.”

“One year later, the facts remain as chilling as ever: a former President of the United States and major party candidate was shot in the head at a public rally by an individual who was reported as suspicious and carrying a rangefinder to the Secret Service at least 25 minutes prior. It is a miracle that President Trump survived,” the report said.

“This report reveals a disturbing pattern of communication failures and negligence that culminated in a preventable tragedy. What happened was inexcusable and the consequences imposed for the failures so far do not reflect the severity of the situation,” the report continued.

The report noted that “Agents and officers chose not to retrieve radios from local and state law enforcement, limiting coordination at a critical time. Known line-of-sight vulnerabilities were identified in advance but not addressed. An inexperienced operator was tasked with managing counter-unmanned aerial systems. Personnel who were vital to mission success were not requested.”

The report said Secret Service “advance agents told the Committee that when their requests went unanswered, they had no way of knowing whether they would receive the support needed to protect the former President. Some did not even bother submitting requests at all, convinced they would be denied by headquarters.”

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