Months before the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, Secret Service managers were warned by the Homeland Security Department’s chief watchdog about serious deficiencies, including communication woes with local police partners and inadequate training for agents who conducted security sweeps at events for protectees, congressional aides briefed on the warning told Just the News on Wednesday night.
The concerns flagged by Homeland Security Department Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari were related to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot but involve issues that have also been raised in the Secret Service’s failures to stop a gunman from wounding former President Donald Trump at a Butler, Pa., rally on July 13, the congressional aides said.
Some of the concerns could be made public as early as Thursday when Cuffari’s staff is expected to release to Congress a heavily redacted report that was completed in April and titled “USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021,” the aides said, speaking only on condition of anonymity because they weren’t permitted to talk to news media.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., the chairman of the House Administration subcommittee on oversight, has been pressing Cuffari to release the report and to resist extensive redactions being sought by the Secret Service and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
Loudermilk told Just the News earlier this week he was prepared to issue a subpoena to force disclosure of the report.
“We need to get this … report. We need to see it,” he told the John Solomon Reports podcast. “And it needs to happen soon because we just created a task force to look at it. And … I think there’s important information there.”