In the days before Donald Trump’s July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service needed a member of his protective detail to develop a security plan to keep the former president safe as he addressed a crowd of thousands at an open-air fairground.
With agents stretched thin by the presidential campaign, the agency turned to a “junior” member of the detail, according to an independent review panel commissioned by the Department of Homeland Security.
Multiple former agents confirmed that in the past, the Secret Service would have trained new agents in a field office for a minimum of five years and had them work at least two more in a protective detail before assigning them to oversee such a significant public event. The panel found that the agent in charge of security at Butler had joined the Secret Service four years earlier and only started in the protective detail in 2023.
“If an agent with this little experience was responsible for planning Butler, that means there was nobody else,” said Jonathan Wackrow, a security executive and former supervisor on then-President Barack Obama’s Secret Service detail. “Now we are introducing hope as a strategy. And that is just plain dangerous.”
The July 13 shooting, in which the agency’s failure to block sight lines from a nearby rooftop allowed a gunman with limited firearms training to come close to killing Trump, stunned many Americans and prompted lawmakers to ask what had happened to an agency long charged with keeping sitting and former presidents safe. Besides a bullet that grazed Trump’s ear, the shooting left one spectator dead and two injured.
According to transcripts of their interviews, Bank and DuBrey told investigators that they did not realize the clear line of sight from the AGR building had not been properly blocked until after the rally was underway.
Administration officials said Perez, DuBrey, Bank, and Tim Burke, the head of the Pittsburgh field office, have been assigned to telework pending the conclusion of the agency’s review of the incident. Perez and Burke have been reassigned unrelated to the review. Lawyers for Menster and Burke declined to comment in response to written questions from The Post.
Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said: “The responsibility of the U.S. Secret Service is to protect President Donald J. Trump. Based on the sworn testimony, they abdicated that responsibility, and their dereliction resulted in President Trump being shot in the ear, one death, and injuries to others.”
The panel found that another Secret Service agent on Trump’s detail assigned to scan the skies over the candidate at Butler had similarly insufficient training for his task. He was supposed to operate a device to spot suspicious drones in the area but struggled to get it to work on July 13. The agent had only operated the device twice before; his training was limited to an informal tutorial by a fellow agent.
The unnamed agent spent five hours on the day of the rally, including on the phone with tech support, trying to get the device to operate and finally succeeded at 4:30 p.m. The result, the panel said, was that he missed an opportunity to spot the gunman, who had sent a drone over the fairground for about 10 minutes shortly before 4 p.m.
In the wake of the Butler shooting, the Biden administration and Mayorkas have been working with Congress on the administration’s record-setting request for the $2.3 billion injection into the Secret Service — the equivalent of a 74 percent addition to the agency’s annual budget. The proposal would add 1,000 law enforcement agents and officers and invest more than $500 million to both build the mock White House and begin a sweeping upgrade of the agency’s training facilities. President-elect Trump will soon decide whether to embrace another key recommendation made a decade ago and revived in the wake of Butler: to hire an outsider to lead the agency.
The causes of the mistakes in Butler, the Secret Service’s biggest security failure since the 1981 attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan, had been years in the making, a Post review found.
Spurred by a string of humiliating security lapses during the Obama administration, the White House and Congress launched separate investigations in 2014 that diagnosed the Secret Service as being in crisis and stretched beyond its abilities. The investigative panels recommended sharp increases in agent training and hiring fresh leadership to disrupt an insular culture that the probes said tended to cover up problems rather than own and fix them.
However, three presidents and Congress have failed to fix the Secret Service’s significant vulnerabilities identified a decade ago. Instead, some problems have grown worse and left the agency weaker on key measures. For instance, the agency could never hire enough staff to spare agents for routine training; instead, its mission expanded and was shouldered by an overworked workforce, leading to burnout and low morale.
An exodus of veteran agents over the past 10 years forced the agency to rely even more on less experienced agents, analysis of internal workforce data revealed. Recruits with five years or less on the job made up 13 percent of the agent workforce in 2015, but this year, they make up nearly 40 percent.
In 2014, the White House-commissioned investigation urged that the Secret Service’s most elite agents, those who protect the president, spend 25 percent of their work time in training. However, since that recommendation, government records show that they have only clocked between 3 and 7 percent each year.
With one brief exception, all three presidents in the past 10 years have rejected a key recommendation to appoint an outsider to lead and reform the agency. Obama tapped his former detail leader, a Secret Service lifer. As president, Trump chose an outsider for director but soon fired him and replaced him with a 24-year veteran of the Secret Service. President Joe Biden chose a senior member of his previous vice-presidential detail.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency implemented 13 of the 19 changes the White House-commissioned investigation recommended but did not have funding to complete the job.
“Resource constraints hindered our ability to implement all of the panel’s recommendations fully,” Guglielmi said. He added that a massive funding request advanced by the White House and presented to Congress months after the Butler shooting would expand the staff and build a new training facility “so we can finally move the Secret Service to a more sustainable training model.”
The Secret Service’s annual funding has risen in the past eight years, from $2.3 billion in the 2017 fiscal year to roughly $3.1 billion in 2024. After adjusting for inflation, that amounts to a 5 percent increase, which did not come close to covering the 30 percent increase in security details and expenditures stemming from a rising threat environment, Secret Service leaders said.
Guglielmi declined to comment on individual agents’ actions in Butler or the experience required for their assignments. He noted that agency leaders are reviewing the Butler incident and are expected to decide soon whether to discipline the agents involved. He said the Secret Service is committed to ensuring that the security lapses that contributed to the shooting never recur.
The two investigations, launched a decade ago, one led by the House Oversight Committee and the other by a blue-ribbon panel appointed by the Obama administration, were launched after a man was able to jump the White House fence in 2014, scramble across the yard, and get inside the building.
The panel called the breach a “catastrophic failure of training,” noting that a relatively new officer armed with a gun let the intruder enter through the front door in part because he had no clear training for what to do in that circumstance. It also found that members of an emergency response team did not chase the intruder inside because they had never trained inside the White House. That spurred a recommendation to expand the Secret Service’s training facility to add a replica of the presidential mansion and grounds.
The two investigations also scrutinized additional security lapses, including the Secret Service’s fumbling response when a would-be assassin strafed the White House residence with gunfire in 2011 and the agency allowing a private security guard with an arrest record to stand inches from Obama in 2014, after failing to run required background checks on him and other event staff.
Those investigative panels warned that the lives of future presidents and other top leaders would remain at heightened risk without the reforms they urged for the Secret Service. The blue-ribbon panel described training and leadership changes as among the most critical of its 19 recommendations.
Jeh Johnson, then-secretary of homeland security, the parent agency of the Secret Service, lamented that several recommendations were similar to changes proposed in earlier reviews of the Secret Service — but never implemented. “This time must be different,” Johnson said.
But in critical ways, it was not. While the government acted on a recommendation to add 85 special agents, they were quickly absorbed into an agency that was overwhelmed by the newly arrived President Trump’s record-breaking travel and the task of protecting members of his extended family. The Secret Service went from 29 full-time details under Obama to 42 after Trump came into office, according to a Secret Service official who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security arrangements.
The Trump and Biden administrations and Congress made modest additions to the workforce, adding a few to several dozen agents in a year. However, according to Secret Service officials, those additions only helped the Secret Service keep up with the rising workload and were not enough to spare agents for dedicated training time.
Alejandro Mayorkas, Biden’s homeland security secretary, stated he pressed the White House budget office to add $200 million to the president’s proposed $2.8 billion budget for the Secret Service in 2022 to construct the mock White House training facility. The White House turned him down, he said.
“I have fought intensely for additional resources,” said Mayorkas, deputy secretary when the agency was under fire in 2014 and helped investigate the fence jumper incident. “I have fought tooth and nail for a reform of their training facility and more people.”
Since the Butler shooting, he and the administration have requested a $2.3 billion injection on top of the Secret Service’s existing budget, administration officials said. Congress approved $231 million as an emergency supplement to the agency in September.
Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned as director after the Butler attack, said Congress and presidents have historically poured money into the Secret Service only after severe attacks or failures. Arriving in 2022, she sped up hiring and offered retention bonuses to slow departures, but she said the agency needs a far bigger team to meet its mission.
The Secret Service has historically had modest protection teams for first ladies and presidents’ family members. Still, by the time Trump took office in 2017, the increasingly perilous threat environment required agents to travel the globe with Trump’s grown sons and secure a Midtown Manhattan skyscraper, Melania Trump’s temporary home at Trump Tower in 2017.
“Sadly, tragedy has to occur for focus and help to come to an agency,” Cheatle said of resistance by presidents and Congress to give the agency more money. “If you are humming along and you’re not the squeaky wheel, the assumption is things are fine. They don’t need anything more.”
The Biden White House declined to comment. An administration official speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations said the White House proposed and Congress approved adding 275 officers and agents to the agency over Biden’s tenure, which led to new hiring.
In response to questions, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung issued a statement that did not address why the first Trump administration failed to follow the recommendations for outside leadership and increased training. He accused the media of “disgustingly” seeking to blame the Trump administration for the attempted assassination.
A spokesperson for the Obama administration declined to comment.
In 2021, the Secret Service set an aspirational goal to meet its expanded mission by increasing its workforce from 7,896 that year to 9,595 in 2025. However, partly because of high attrition rates, the Secret Service ended last year with a workforce of roughly 7,700, according to a review of internal data from the Government Accountability Office.
Max Stier, the president of the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group focused on improving federal government management, said the lack of critical reforms and reinforcements led to staff burnout, which naturally fueled the departures of thousands of mid-career agents.
“We should know that if we don’t do better in investing in leaders and workforce, we won’t get what we need from our government,” Stier said. “Low morale drives talented people out. More departures create lower morale.”
Secret Service officials, recognizing the potential damage from a particularly large exit of senior agents in 2022, tried to stem the departures by offering $25,000 retention payments for those who agreed to stay.
However, as data shows, the initiative was not enough to reverse the trend.
In 2015, veteran agents with 11 to 15 years of experience comprised nearly one-third of the Secret Service agent workforce. They now make up just 8 percent, a massive experience drain of the people who typically teach and supervise recruits.
“The red lights were blinking, and Congress and our national leaders were not paying attention,” Stier said. “The U.S. Secret Service is in a negative downward spiral.”
The independent panel that reviewed the Butler shooting identified numerous security lapses: The rooftop where the gunman positioned himself was not secured; sight lines from there to the stage were not properly obstructed; law enforcement agencies on the ground could not communicate effectively. The panel also faulted senior supervisors for assigning a relatively inexperienced agent to lead the security planning and for failing to detect and address vulnerabilities in the plan. Supervisors did not adequately consider the agent’s “level of experience and associated aptitude and training, or lack thereof, for contributing to planning a major outdoor rally event like Butler,” the panel said.
The day before the July 4 holiday, agent Myosoty Perez learned she had been assigned as the “site agent” for the rally in Butler just 10 days later. In that role, Perez would spend several days in Butler leading what was called “the advance” by planning for a security bubble around Trump.
The independent review panel commissioned by Mayorkas did not identify Perez by name, referring to her as the “site agent.” Her name and those of other agents involved in security that day from officials and others familiar with the matter, who spoke anonymously to discuss sensitive security subjects. The Post also learned details of agents’ accounts by reviewing transcripts of interviews given for congressional investigations of the incident.
The panel found that Perez was one of the few agents on Trump’s 60-member detail who was available, given Trump’s busy travel and campaign schedule over the summer. According to Secret Service officials and Trump’s campaign schedule, the candidate had clocked seven rallies in the previous 30 days and would soon head to the Republican National Convention, requiring numerous agents to spearhead advances across the country.
“The site agent assigned by the Trump detail to coordinate with the Pittsburgh field office to conduct site advance work and site security planning for the Butler rally only graduated from the Service’s academy in 2020, had only been on the Trump detail since 2023, and had engaged in minimal previous site advance work or site security planning and certainly nothing to the level of the July 13 Butler rally,” the independent panel wrote in its report.
Perez, one of the agents whose actions are under review by the Secret Service, declined to comment through a lawyer.
Two more seasoned agents from the Pittsburgh office were assigned to help Perez with the security plan. Dana DuBrey, Perez’s local counterpart agent, had suffered a foot injury and was not supposed to be working. Still, according to officials and others briefed on the incident, she reported for duty anyway. Meredith Bank, the “lead advance” agent, coordinated with local police to ensure Trump’s security from landing at the Butler airport until he departed.
Lawyers for these two agents also declined to comment in response to written questions.
In helping advise on a site plan in the days before Trump’s arrival, Bank and DuBrey repeatedly expressed concern about blocking the line of sight from several areas around the field, according to transcripts of interviews they gave for separate House and Senate investigations. That included the building owned by AGR International — just 150 yards from the rally stage — that would-be assassin Thomas Crooks would later use as his platform to shoot at Trump.
Bank and DuBrey said in the interviews that they asked Trump’s campaign staff about positioning some of the campaign’s Penske trucks between Trump’s stage and the AGR building to create a physical block. Bank and DuBrey said the campaign resisted, saying large equipment close to the rally could interfere with good press shots of the event.
“Trucks were discussed to block line of sight and denied by DJT staff,” Pittsburgh field office agents wrote in an email that was cited during those interviews and was not previously reported.
According to transcripts of her interviews with congressional investigators, DuBrey said she and the campaign discussed other physical blocks to address the line-of-sight concern, such as farm equipment, bleachers, and flags and banners. Bank said she warned the campaign that a senior supervisor from Trump’s detail, Nick Menster, would want a solution when he arrived on Friday, the day before the event.
Campaign staff and Secret Service site agents routinely haggle over security plans for such events, with agents erring on the side of caution. Secret Service supervisors also typically overrule campaign objections.
Menster, a 17-year veteran of the agency, told congressional investigators that he had understood that farm equipment would block the AGR building. He said Perez did not raise a line-of-sight problem with him, according to someone familiar with his account. In reviewing Perez’s site plan and symbols that marked the location of local police, Menster believed that local counter snipers would be stationed on the roof of the AGR building to mitigate the risk of an attack, according to one Secret Service official and a person familiar with his account. The panel found that he did not inquire further to ensure this step would be taken to secure the building.
In the end, no local police were explicitly assigned to secure the roof, the independent panel found.
According to transcripts of their interviews, Bank and DuBrey told investigators that they did not realize the clear line of sight from the AGR building had not been properly blocked until after the rally was underway.
Administration officials said Perez, DuBrey, Bank, and Tim Burke, the head of the Pittsburgh field office, have been assigned to telework pending the conclusion of the agency’s review of the incident. Perez and Burke have been reassigned unrelated to the review. Lawyers for Menster and Burke declined to comment in response to written questions from The Post.
Danielle Alvarez, a Trump campaign spokeswoman, said: “The responsibility of the U.S. Secret Service is to protect President Donald J. Trump. Based on the sworn testimony, they abdicated that responsibility, and their dereliction resulted in President Trump being shot in the ear, one death, and injuries to others.”
The panel found that another Secret Service agent on Trump’s detail assigned to scan the skies over the candidate at Butler had similarly insufficient training for his task. He was supposed to operate a device to spot suspicious drones in the area but struggled to get it to work on July 13. The agent had only operated the device twice before; his training was limited to an informal tutorial by a fellow agent.
The unnamed agent spent five hours on the day of the rally, including on the phone with tech support, trying to get the device to operate and finally succeeded at 4:30 p.m. The panel said he missed an opportunity to spot the gunman, who had sent a drone over the fairground for about 10 minutes shortly before 4 p.m.
In the wake of the Butler shooting, the Biden administration and Mayorkas have been working with Congress on the administration’s record-setting request for the $2.3 billion injection into the Secret Service — the equivalent of a 74 percent addition to the agency’s annual budget. The proposal would add 1,000 law enforcement agents and officers and invest more than $500 million to both build the mock White House and begin a sweeping upgrade of the agency’s training facilities. President-elect Trump will soon decide whether to embrace another key recommendation made a decade ago and revived in the wake of Butler: to hire an outsider to lead the agency.
