A whistleblower informed Republican Senator Josh Hawley that Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. personally directed cuts to the Counter Surveillance Division (CSD), which led to a failure in performing a threat assessment before a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The report follows congressional scrutiny over security failures at the rally where former President Trump narrowly escaped an assassination attempt.

The whistleblower claimed that the CSD, responsible for evaluating and mitigating potential security threats, did not conduct its usual assessment before the July 13 rally.

Hawley noted in a letter to Rowe that if the CSD had been present, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, the would-be gunman, could have been apprehended in the parking lot, Fox News has reported.

The whistleblower also alleged that the absence of the CSD led to security oversights that were not addressed, including the failure to secure the American Glass Research complex as part of the event’s perimeter.

Written by B.C. Begley