U.S. Secret Service whistleblowers are now claiming that agents were not properly trained to protect former President Donald Trump. 

In fact, according to U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), the whistleblowers said that agents were "woefully unprepared."

Hawley revealed as much in an interview that he did with the Fox News Channel's Jesse Watters, during Tuesday night's broadcast of Jesse Watters Primetime. 

This would help to explain how a 20-year-old nearly managed to assassinate Trump. But, many questions about the incident remain unanswered.

The latest

According to Hawley, the whistleblowers actually told him that many of the agents who were assigned to work on protective detail - including on Trump's protective detail on the day of the assassination attempt - were trained via a single two-hour webinar on Microsoft Teams.

Hawley told Watters:

Imagine 1,000 people logging onto Microsoft Teams at the same time after being informed at the last minute that everyone needed to login individually. Once it got rolling, the Secret Service instructor couldn’t figure out how to get the audio working on the prerecorded videos [which I’m told are the same videos as last year]. All told, they restarted the videos approximately six times …. The content was not helpful.

Hawley went on to reveal that "Nothing new, nothing improved since the assassination attempt on former President Trump." In other words, agents are still being trained by this two-hour, pre-recorded webinar.

More details about what the Secret Service whistleblowers have told Hawley can be found here:

You’ve gotta be kidding me. Agents assigned to Trump in Butler were only given online zoom training - but Secret Service has the resources for a DEI summit in Orlando? This is beyond outrageous https://t.co/EOkpbEBeYS

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 4, 2024

Secret Service responds

The Secret Service agency has now responded to what Hawley reported the whistleblowers as telling him.

The agency, in a statement, claimed that it "respects the role of oversight."

It continued by suggesting that it is doing everything that it can to cooperate with that oversight.

"To date, we have provided over 1,500 pages of responsive documentation to Congress and have made employees available for transcribed interviews. These efforts will continue as our desire to learn from this failure and ensure that it never happens again is unwavering," the agency wrote.

Suffice it to say that many are not convinced by what the Secret Service has to say. Hawley is one of the Congress members who is doing what he can to get to the bottom of the situation.