Having Secret Service leaders “covering their backside” is tantamount to a cover-up in the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, argues Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley.

“It’s been almost 20 days,” Hawley notes in an exclusive interview with The Heartlander, after an epic grilling of acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe this week. “What is going on? It’s insane. And what it looks like what’s going on is a lot of leadership covering their backside, covering their rear end.”

Asked where the line is between “covering their rear end” and a cover-up, Hawley said there is no functional difference.

“Well, they’re really the same thing, as far as the public is concerned,” he says. “I don’t care why they’re doing it. I think the reason they’re doing it is they don’t want to lose their jobs, and leadership wants to stay in leadership and they want to protect their agency. But listen, a cover-up is a cover-up. I mean, I don’t care why they’re slow-walking it. I don’t care why they’re doing it. They need to stop. And they need to start holding people accountable for it. 

“And I come back to the fact that the American people deserve the actual facts here. They deserve to know exactly what’s going on with this investigation. And the FBI is at fault here, too. The FBI is doing their own investigation, but they’re not making hardly any of it public. They’re waiting and waiting and stalling and hoarding the information. 

“When I went to Butler [Pennsylvania] myself, went to the ground site myself to see it, the FBI tried to kick me off. They didn’t want other people there looking at it. I mean, are you serious? This is crazy stuff. And right now, FBI and Secret Service have a lot of explaining to do.”

‘This cannot go on’

Why do they seem so reluctant to do that explaining?

“They can’t admit that they’re wrong. They hate to admit failure, and they almost never do,” Hawley says. 

“You could see it in the hearing; the Secret Service director was trying to blame local law enforcement. ‘It’s their fault. They didn’t see it. They should have done something.’ 

“My question is, who was in charge of local law enforcement? They were: Secret Service was. This was a Secret Service event. This wasn’t like some joint event where they kind of agree each to take their one little portion and then work out among themselves. No, no. Secret Service was in charge from beginning to end. If there’s a failure, it’s on them. 

“Pointing the finger at local law enforcement doesn’t do anything. That just says Secret Service didn’t use them in the right way. So, I tell you what: There needs to be some actual accountability here, or nothing will change. 

“The key point here is that this cannot go on. We have got to make these rallies secure. People can’t be going to these rallies and getting shot. Presidents can’t be getting shot in the head. We’ve got to change, and the Secret Service has got to own up to that.”

Some have actually complained that Hawley’s grilling of Rowe went too far, that he was too rough on the acting director.

Was he?

‘He’s failing his own agents’

“No. He deserved to be put on the spot, and his answers were absolutely jaw-dropping,” Hawley argues. “What he said was, ‘Yeah, the Secret Service made a whole bunch of mistakes. But we’re not going to tell you who made them. And we’re not going to do anything about it.’ 

“I mean, how is that even an acceptable response? It’s not an acceptable response. People should be fired. The site agent who performed the survey leading up to that event was in charge on the day; that person failed catastrophically. They should be gone. 

“The folks who put local law enforcement in charge of admission, they apparently weren’t equipped for the folks who failed to coordinate between local law enforcement and Secret Service – such that that shooter was allowed to run around on a building, in video we’ve now seen. Everybody can see it. Nobody does anything about it till he starts shooting.  

“Those people ought to all be fired. And yet the Secret Service director has done nothing. 

“All I can say is, he is not only failing the country, he’s failing the Secret Service. I mean, he’s failing his own agents who are putting their lives on the line. They need better backup from their leadership. They’re not getting it, and that’s why whistleblower after whistleblower is coming forward from within the Secret Service, saying, ‘You’ve got to help us, we need new leadership.’”

What are the keys to getting to the bottom of this? 

“Well, I think public accountability is the absolute key, and the Secret Service has got to be honest,” Hawley says. “They’ve got to be honest about what they’re doing. 

“When I asked the director why it was [that] no law enforcement of any kind was on that roof that day where the shooter was, he said he didn’t know. You want to know why he doesn’t know? Because they haven’t interviewed any local law enforcement. They farmed that job out to local law enforcement. They apparently didn’t communicate with local law enforcement at all. So, folks on the ground, the cops on the ground, weren’t sure what they were supposed to be doing. And since that time, they haven’t debriefed them. 

“It’s been almost 20 days. What is going on? It’s insane. And what it looks like what’s going on is a lot of leadership covering their backside, covering their rear end. They don’t want to be held accountable. What they should be doing is fixing this problem and holding accountable the people who were responsible.”

Even as federal bureaucrats stonewall not just the public but the people elected to represent them, Google, social media and AI platforms have all been caught censoring information and images of the assassination attempt. At least one AI platform even called it a fiction.

“Ridiculous. Ridiculous,” Hawley says of the censorship. “But also typical. They do this every election cycle. They did it in 2016 when they boosted Hillary and promoted all of the Russia hoax garbage. They did it in 2020, of course, famously – infamously – with the laptop and more. Now they’re doing it again. 

“These guys, these are monopolists. They control the information that we see. Just a few companies – Google, Meta — they control the flow of information. And they’ve proven over and over they will use that control to try to shape the outcome of our elections, to try to interfere with the voting process. 

“That’s what they’re doing now. And I tell you what, it should not be permitted. It should not be legal.”