The assassination attempts against President-elect Donald Trump last year reportedly occurred after lawmakers and presidential administrations failed to address weaknesses within the Secret Service during the past decade.
Separate 2014 investigations by the White House and Congress found that the Secret Service was in crisis and pushed beyond its capabilities. Leadership also tended to cover up problems rather than address them, The Washington Post reported Wednesday.
The result was recommendations that included an increase in agent training and the hiring of fresh leadership.
However, the Post reported that instead of being fixed, some Secret Service problems have grown worse. For example, the agency still lacks a sufficient number of agents. That has led to burnout and low morale, with many veteran agents leaving, the outlet said.
Besides that, the outlet reported agency recruits with five years or less on the job comprise 40% of the service's workforce. In 2015, they made up 13%.
That relative inexperience contributed to the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a "junior" member of Trump's detail, as described by an independent review panel commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security, was tasked with developing a security plan for the rally.
The panel found that the agent put in charge of security at Butler had joined the service four years earlier and only joined the protective detail in 2023.
"If an agent with this little experience was responsible for planning Butler, that means there was nobody else," Jonathan Wackrow, a security executive and former supervisor on then-President Barack Obama's Secret Service detail, told the Post.
"Now we are introducing hope as a strategy. And that is just plain dangerous."
At that rally, a bullet grazed Trump's ear, one spectator was killed and two others were wounded.
A White House-commissioned probe in 2014 urged that Secret Service agents who protect the president spend 25% of their work time in training. Since that time, though, those agents have spent between 3% and 7% percent in training, government records show.
Earlier this month, a task force looking into the assassination attempts against Trump recommended changes to the Secret Service, including protecting fewer foreign leaders during the height of the election season and considering moving the agency out of the Department of Homeland Security.
The 180-page report by the bipartisan congressional task force released Dec. 10 is one of the most detailed looks so far into the July assassination attempt against Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania and a second one in Florida two months later.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Charlie McCarthy ✉
Charlie McCarthy, a writer/editor at Newsmax, has nearly 40 years of experience covering news, sports, and politics.
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