Joseph Cuffari, the Trump-appointed inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), has opened two investigations into the U.S. Secret Service's monumental failure in its handling of the July 13 assassination attempt on the 2024 GOP presidential candidate.
Republicans have however already warned that Cuffari will have a hard time getting anything out of Biden administration officials.
There is a record to back those concerns, a report said.
Cuffari "has been stonewalled by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on other internal examinations" including ones on the Secret Service's hidden role on January 6, Julie Kelly reported for RealClearInvestigations on Tuesday.
"What is DHS and USSS afraid the American people will learn about Jan 6?" Kelly asked. The Secret Service is a component of DHS.
Citing congressional sources, Kelly noted that Cuffari’s report, “USSS Preparation for and Response to the Events of January 6, 2021,” has been on Mayorkas’s desk since at least April.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk, chairman of a House subcommittee tasked with a separate investigation into Jan. 6 as well as the now-defunct J6 committee, recently accused Mayorkas of intentionally holding the release of the report. The Georgia Republican told Mayorkas in a letter that “the failure to provide an in-depth review of the department’s security planning and operational failures related to January 6 not only raises concerns about the department’s botched planning for former president Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania on July 13, 2024, but it is quite possible that such reports could have prevented the security breakdown that resulted in the near assassination of a former president and presidential candidate.”
Related: Flashback: Secret Service text messages from Jan. 5-6, 2021 were deleted, July 16, 2024
Cuffari's report, according to Politico, will “cast light on a series of embarrassing security lapses for the agency.” And given some comparisons between Jan. 6 and July 13, the report might shed light on systemic issues that impacted both events.
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Unanswered questions that could be cleared up by Cuffari include why the Secret Service allowed Trump to take the stage at The Ellipse outside the White House around noon on Jan. 6 amid reports of individuals with weapons in the vicinity – a question many Americans have about the July 13 assassination attempt. Law enforcement and spectators noted the presence of a suspicious individual, later identified as the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, at least a half hour before Trump took the stage in Butler, Pennsylvania.
"In addition, no one has explained how the Secret Service failed to notice an alleged pipe bomb found outside the Democrat National Committee DC office on Jan. 6 – while then Vice President-elect Harris was inside the building," Kelly noted. Previous reporting by RealClearInvestigations shows multiple law enforcement officers, including one with a bomb-sniffing dog, walking past the bench where the device was found.
Democrats have been keen to remove Cuffari from his DHS IG position ever since he notified Congress that a trove of Secret Service texts from January 5 and 6, 2021 had been deleted in late January 2021 soon after the Biden administration began. The purge of the texts occurred weeks after every federal agency received a directive from Congress to preserve all evidence related to J6.
Cuffari said messages belonging to at least 24 Secret Service officials including then director James Murray and Kimberly Cheatle, who was an assistant director of the agency on January 6, were gone. So, too, were the texts of then acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf and acting deputy secretary Ken Cuccinelli, both Trump appointees.
“The USSS erased those text messages after OIG [Office of Inspector General] requested records of electronic communications from the USSS, as part of our evaluation of events at the Capitol on January 6,” Cuffari wrote in a July 2022 letter to the chairs of both the Senate and House Homeland Security committees, including Rep. Bennie Thompson, who also chaired the Jan. 6 Select Committee.
As Cuffari begins his probe of the attempt on Trump’s life, his Jan. 6 report may also shed light on an alleged threat to Kamala Harris.
More than three-and-a-half years later, investigators still have not arrested anyone for planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of both the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021. The FBI’s investigation reportedly remains open but apparently went cold.
For reasons still unknown, Harris left Capitol Hill around 11:15 a.m. on Jan. 6 following a briefing for the Senate Intelligence Committee. Although an official schedule indicated she planned to go home, she instead arrived at DNC headquarters along with a Secret Service detail at 11:25 a.m.
Video captured by a security camera outside the building showed a bomb-sniffing dog conducting a vehicle search at 9:44 a.m., roughly two hours before Harris’s arrival. The canine did not detect the explosive device sitting just a few feet away near an outdoor bench. Neither did officers from Capitol Police and D.C. Metropolitan Police, who intermittently arrived at the building throughout the morning and into the early afternoon. Harris’s Secret Service detail did not appear to conduct any meaningful search of the premises before or during her visit.
When a plainclothes Capitol Police officer discovered the pipe bomb at 1:07 p.m., no officer appeared overly concerned that a device the FBI later said was viable and deadly was within distance of Harris.
She was evacuated about 10 minutes later.
Kelly noted: "How did the Secret Service miss the device in plain view? Was anyone fired for failing to properly sweep the area and endangering the life of their protectee? Were new protocols put in place to avoid repeating such a frightening scenario in the future?"
Cuffari’s report presumably will finally answer those questions because agency officials have not.
Harris herself has yet to discuss the pipe bomb incident publicly.
Why won't Kamala talk about how she narrowly avoided political assassination on January 6th?
What should have been from beginning Dems number 1 Jan 6 talking point has been their most carefully guarded secret What's the deal with Kamala Harris, the Secret Service, and the Jan 6… https://t.co/QX0QTQKSyj — Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) July 25, 2024
Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe worked closely with disgraced former director Kim Cheatle, not only during Trump’s July 13 rally but also on January 6.
Both Rowe and Cheatle had specific oversight roles for Trump’s protective detail on Jan 6—Rowe as the Deputy… — Haley Jane (@ms_haleyjane) July 31, 2024
