{"id":11258,"date":"2025-07-13T17:46:43","date_gmt":"2025-07-13T17:46:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/sen-rand-paul-sees-cultural-cover-up-about-trump-shooting-last-july\/"},"modified":"2025-07-13T17:46:43","modified_gmt":"2025-07-13T17:46:43","slug":"sen-rand-paul-sees-cultural-cover-up-about-trump-shooting-last-july","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/sen-rand-paul-sees-cultural-cover-up-about-trump-shooting-last-july\/","title":{"rendered":"Sen. Rand Paul sees \u2018cultural cover-up\u2019 about Trump shooting last July"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

One year after a shooter injured then-candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Sen. Rand Paul called for congressional oversight of the Secret Service, complaining of a \u201ccultural cover-up\u201d that he claimed masked critical security failures before the attack.<\/p>\n

The Kentucky Republican, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, told CBS\u2019 Margaret Brennan on “Face the Nation” that \u201csomebody was begging\u201d for security in both writing and phone calls but was repeatedly denied resources by the Secret Service.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey did not want to assess blame or look internally, and they wanted to discount any of their actions that may have led to this,\u201d Paul said. \u201cThere was no way the director of the Secret Service did not know the request had been made.\u201d<\/p>\n

The breakdown in security led to Trump\u2019s ear being grazed by one of the bullets. Fire chief Corey Comperatore was killed, and two others were wounded before a Secret Service sniper fatally shot 20-year-old Thomas Crooks. Former President Joe Biden called for investigations into the Secret Service<\/a> soon after the deadly incident, and at least one found “deep flaws” in the organization. Meanwhile, congressional Republicans accused the former director of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, of lying under oath when she denied that those requests existed, a point Paul repeated Sunday.<\/p>\n

A new report<\/a> from the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs found that the Secret Service had \u201cdenied or left unfulfilled at least 10 requests” for additional resources for Trump.<\/p>\n

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) in a separate interview on Sunday blamed the Biden administration for the security failure.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe report from the [Government Accountability Office], as well as the Senate reports, indicate that there were serious failures in communications and the allocation of resources,\u201d Cotton said on “Fox News Sunday.” \u201cUnder the Biden administration, the Secret Service simply was not responsive to the request not only of the Trump campaign, but the head of his security detail, Sean Curran, who is now the head of the Secret Service as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

Paul said that regardless of party identification, the rallies posed \u201cextraordinary risk\u201d for their sheer size. Such events, he added, require a lot of detailed planning and organization.<\/p>\n

But when individuals were subpoenaed, Paul said, \u201cno one would actually admit to being in charge of security for Butler.”<\/p>\n

\u201cThey were not going to discipline anybody until I subpoenaed and asked what they had done, but in the end, nobody was fired,\u201d Paul said. \u201cI think even the investigation by the Secret Service was inadequate. That’s why we need congressional oversight.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One year after a shooter injured then-candidate Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Sen. Rand Paul called for congressional oversight of the Secret Service, complaining of a \u201ccultural cover-up\u201d that he claimed masked critical security failures before the attack. The Kentucky Republican, chair of the Homeland Security Committee, told CBS\u2019 Margaret Brennan on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-congress"],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11258\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bluelightnews.com\/category\/politics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}