At least five members of the U.S. Secret Service (USSS) have been placed on administrative leave following the July 13 assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, Fox News has confirmed.

One member of Trump’s personal protective team and four members of the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh Field Office, including the special agent in charge, have been sidelined nearly six weeks after the incident. The five are still employed but are teleworking and are no longer allowed in the field. They cannot do any investigative work. 

The news comes after the Secret Service concluded internal interviews to understand how Thomas Matthew Crooks was able to fire several shots from the AGR building in Butler. The Secret Service was not able to conduct the interviews right away because the FBI was interviewing them for a separate criminal investigation, according to a source briefed on both probes.

Additionally, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., on Friday revealed that a Secret Service whistleblower has come forward to claim that officials at Secret Service headquarters encouraged agents in charge of the rally to not request any extra security assets in their formal planning request. 

One bullet grazed Trump’s right ear, while firefighter Corey Comperatore was fatally struck. Rally-goers James Copenhaver and David Dutch were also shot and injured.

Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned less than two weeks after the shooting and after giving her initial testimony about the event before members of Congress. Various lawmakers have called on the Secret Service to make personnel changes and fire employees in the wake of the deadly incident. 

Fox News has also learned that the threat to Trump from Iran was communicated internally at the Secret Service prior to the Butler, Pennsylvania, event and the investigation is likely looking into why the Butler event went forward, given the threat. 

The Secret Service said in a statement that the agency is committed to investigating the decisions and actions of personnel in relation to the July 13 event. 

"The U.S. Secret Service’s mission assurance review is progressing, and we are examining the processes, procedures and factors that led to this operational failure," Anthony Guglielmi, the USSS chief of communications said in a statement.

"The U.S. Secret Service holds our personnel to the highest professional standards, and any identified and substantiated violations of policy will be investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility for potential disciplinary action. Given this is a personnel matter, we are not in a position to comment further."

The FBI criminal probe and the internal Secret Service review both remain active.

The FBI has previously stated that Crooks accessed the roof of a building by climbing up HVAC equipment and piping. Crooks then traversed multiple rooftops before he found his shooting position on top of a building about 150 yards from where the former president spoke at his rally.

Text messages sent by local law enforcement responsible for monitoring the rally flagged Crooks to colleagues as suspicious at least 90 minutes before he opened fire. Despite this, he was still able to shoot at Trump and the crowd.

House Oversight Committee Chairman Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., welcomed the news that action has been taken on some Secret Service members. 

"There must be accountability at the Secret Service for its historic failures that led to the attempted assassination of President Trump," Comer said. 

"Holding negligent employees accountable is the first step. I look forward to the Task Force’s findings of its investigation. We must ensure the Secret Service does not fail again."

Hawley also welcomed the action taken by the agency, saying it should have happened weeks ago.

"We still need real answers about the attempt on President Trump's life and accountability for everyone involved," Hawley said.

Hawley also revealed on Friday whistleblower claims that officials at Secret Service headquarters informally encouraged agents in charge of the Butler rally to not request any extra security assets in their formal planning request as they would be denied because Trump was a former president and not an incumbent president or vice president.

Hawley shared on X a letter he penned to Acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe asking for an explanation into who made such a call, if he knew about it and which security assets were left out of the manpower request for the event. 

Hawley writes that the assets included counter-sniper teams and counter Sniper Division (CSD) personnel. He writes that counter-snipers were ultimately approved but only a day before the event and that a separate whistleblower claimed previously that CSD personnel would have handcuffed the gunman after he was spotted in the parking lot with a rangefinder.

"Yet you have repeatedly suggested that no security assets had been denied for the Butler event. You must explain this apparent contradiction immediately," Hawley writes, in part.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Merrick Garland, speaking at an unrelated event, said Friday that he could not comment on any specific suspensions.

"This was a security failure and there is both an internal and external independent investigation," Garland said. "They will provide lessons learned to prevent such a failure from happening again."

Former NYPD inspector Paul Mauro, a Fox News contributor, said that there were serious discrepancies in the planning and operation of the rally.

"Those discrepancies argue more things are not so much mistakes, but instead, institutional rot," Mauro said. "And what bothers me is that the executives who have been overseeing and not solving the problems that the Secret Service clearly has will likely get off scot-free. And certainly [Homeland Security Secretary] Mayorkas and Cheatle should not be able to ride off into the sunset with their reputations intact."

Fox News' Audrey Conklin contributed to this report. 

Vice President Kamala Harris gave a ringing speech that fired Democrats up to close the Democratic convention and this more or less picture-perfect convention came to an end. Harris will likely continue to strengthen in the polls as is typical after a convention and there is no doubt that the Democrats are in better shape now than they were if they had kept with President Joe Biden as their candidate. 

More than anything, what Harris has done was to bring back core Democratic constituencies including Black voters, young voters, women and elites and this returned the race to at least even. 

The second thing that the convention did was to make it appear that former President Donald Trump was the incumbent president responsible for the last four years and not the Biden-Harris team. The future is Harris, and the past is Trump in their messaging, and there was little to no attempt to justify the last four years — they simply didn’t exist.  

DEMOCRATS DEFEND HARRIS’ LACK OF SUBSTANCE: AMERICANS 'DON'T VOTE ON POLICY PRESCRIPTIONS’

Perhaps the surprise of the night was Harris’ clear statement that she would defend Israel and would be prepared to defend against Iran. These elements had been missing from virtually every speech at the convention and were absent from Biden’s remarks.  

The huge, feared protests against Israel did not materialize and in their place were a few thousand extremists whose leaders called for the destruction of Israel and who should never have been dignified by Biden. Harris did not repeat that mistake. 

For all the pounding that Trump takes every time he criticizes Harris, the vice president and most of the major speeches attacked Trump in highly personal terms, and frequently distorted his views. The speech called for national unity and then slashed away.  

Trump is not for a national ban on abortion, nor did the Supreme Court issue one. Nor did he support Project 2025. The immigration bill that Trump opposed would allow 5,000 migrants to cross into the United States a day before shutting down the border or allow about 2 million entries a year into the United States, which is about the same as now. 

Other than promising lower prices, Harris did not outline any real plan for dealing with inflation or the economy. Earlier in the day, her campaign said she backed all the Biden tax increases in the budget and then some, which would be the largest tax increase in history, eliminating the capital gains tax, taxing unrealized gains, and moving top federal rates to about 45% with combined rates in big states nearing 60%.  

These massive increases could essentially kill innovation and capital markets, discouraging investments of all types and tanking 401(k)s. 

Harris avoided the issue of energy altogether and left open whether she continues to support the green new deal. She stayed away from divisive social issues, though she clearly rallied women around reproductive freedom.  

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"Coach" Tim Walz turned out to be more of a liability than an asset as questions about his military record and how far left he really is have emerged to underscore that she likely would have been better off with Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, but vice presidents rarely matter that much. 

Trump called into Fox News after the speech, ignoring the rule in politics that you don’t answer artillery with a pop gun, and it underscored the challenge he is facing to get through. 

Just a few weeks ago, the Democrats were facing a death spiral, and Trump was consolidating support nationally. The Democrats have turned it around and installed a new team, new messaging and revived their chances.  

The challenges for the Trump campaign are to define differences in issues and leadership that matter to voters in their everyday lives when it comes to war and peace, inflation, taxes, crime and immigration and to pin Harris as equally responsible for four unhappy years.  

Almost two-thirds of the voters believe the country has been headed in the wrong direction, and oppose open borders, want tougher laws on crime, and believe the administration was responsible for the inflation that is in effect a huge tax increase on all Americans. Nevertheless, the Harris bandwagon rolls on. 

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