No one has asked more questions about the assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump. Few are in as good a position to get the answers.

Yet, nearly 70 days after Trump’s shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, July 13, and a second attempt last Sunday, Missouri Senator Josh Hawley has more questions than answers. This, despite being a vocal member of both the Senate’s Judiciary and Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committees.

Asked about the general response to his 21-page whistleblower report issued Monday, he first cites the distinct sound of crickets coming from key government sources.

“Well, I tell you, it’s been stonewalling from the Secret Service,” Hawley said of the response during an exclusive interview with The Heartlander.

“ I mean, that’s the biggest deal. Two months after the Butler assassination attempt, do you know Secret Service still isn’t cooperating with congressional investigators? They’re not giving us evidence. They’re not giving us documents. They’re not making witnesses available. 

“It’s inexplicable. It’s indefensible. 

“So, what we finally had to do is, this week the Homeland Security Committee adopted my law to force Secret Service to turn over all the evidence related to the assassination attempts. I can’t believe it’s come to this, but here we are. There needs to be some accountability, and they need to give us the truth.”

As early as the first of August, Hawley told The Heartlander the Secret Service’s “covering their rear end” was tantamount to a cover-up.

It’s only gotten more so since then.

U.S. senators kept in the dark

Even so, Hawley appears more interested in learning the truth about the attempts on the former president’s life than most of the legacy media. He’s visited the Butler site personally, gathered multiple scoops from whistleblowers and asked penetrating questions of government officials.

Still, a powerful U.S. senator seems nowhere closer to the truth than 69 days ago.

Perhaps the only hope of Americans ever knowing what was behind the assassination attempts is Hawley’s anonymous whistleblowers from within the government.

The newest revelation Hawley has received is that there were known security vulnerabilities along the golf course where Secret Service agents were supposed to be posted – and where alleged gunman Ryan Routh had nested for some 12 hours somehow detected.

And yet, “It’s not even clear they swept the perimeter before Trump got onto the course,” Hawley notes.

“We need to know what’s going on. Why is it that the shooter was allowed for 12 hours to hang out with a rifle, and then have a clear line of sight at Trump when he’s just a few hundred yards away? Sadly, that would have been an easy shot for somebody who’s a good marksman. It’s a miracle, once again, that somebody wasn’t hurt or killed. And we need some answers.”

That’s just it: no answers appear to be forthcoming.

For instance, how did Routh happen to know Trump would be golfing Sunday when even the Secret Service admits it didn’t know beforehand and had to abruptly stir into action?

“I don’t know the answer to that, and that’s a huge, huge vulnerability and a huge question,” Hawley says. “We need to get an answer to that. And we need to know why he was able to be there for 12 hours. How is it that this guy could be there for 12 hours, right at the fence line of this course – that, by the way, adjoins Trump’s residence? 

“This is not a public course. This is a private course. Trump plays it frequently. There’s a major security presence there, or supposed to be, and yet [Routh] was there for 12 hours, right through the middle of the day, and then again had a clear line of sight toward Trump. 

“It wasn’t until Trump was within a few hundred yards that they finally came over to [where Routh was]. I mean, something’s wrong here. We need to know. Is this a manpower issue? Is this a protocol issue? Is this a leadership issue? All of the above? I don’t know. But we need some answers.”

Did would-be assassins act alone or not?

Perhaps the most important, most nagging, question is: Did these two would-be assassins act alone?

“You know, I don’t know,” Hawley says. “I mean, I noticed that, for Thomas Crooks, that his parents have now hired high-powered defense attorneys, which makes you think that maybe the FBI is looking into them. And I don’t think we know nearly enough about the second guy. 

“All we know about the second guy is he appears to be dead broke, but somehow he manages to travel all over the world and afford all kinds of high-tech equipment and never have to work a day in his life. I mean, that’s weird. So, I think we just don’t know. 

“There’s a lot of unanswered questions, and this is why Secret Service needs to come forward with facts. They need to quit complaining about all the conspiracy theories. All they’ll ever do is say, well, there’s a lot of conspiracy theories. OK, well, then tell us what the truth is. I mean the answer is, come forward with the evidence. And that’s what they’re not doing.”

Will government ever come clean?

The Heartlander asked Hawley’s Missouri U.S. Senate colleague Eric Schmitt whether he is confident the government will come clean on what it knows about the two assassination attempts.

“We’ll see. We’ll see,” Schmitt said. “We’ve not gotten a lot of good answers from the first attempt, which was 8 1/2 weeks ago. And we’re starting to dig for answers for this most recent one. It’s inexcusable.”

While lauding the individual agents who covered Trump after he was shot in the ear, and the agent who discovered the lurking gunman on Sunday, Schmitt questions the security failures that made the two incidents such close calls.

“These kinds of failures are dramatic. I mean, the idea that you wouldn’t have a perimeter that extended beyond 150 yards on a rooftop or that somebody could just set up shop on a par 3 on a golf course with a GoPro camera and try to take out the president United States – there’ve been really serious failures here that need to be rectified, and there has to be accountability.”

But as for whether Schmitt believes the government will be transparent about what happened, his answer of “we’ll see” sounds pretty skeptical.

“Well, I am skeptical. I am skeptical,” Schmitt admits. “Secretary Mayorkas is a master at obfuscating, and Secret Service reports to him. I think whether it’s the FBI or the Secret Service, we just need answers. They need to come clean, because the American people deserve that.

“This is a very dangerous road for us to go down as a country. I don’t care if you’re Republican or you’re a Democrat; political violence is a terrible thing that should be condemned. 

“But we also have to have the right people in place to protect our leaders. We’re not seeing that right now. There needs to be accountability. 

“I’m going to withhold judgment until we get the answers. But I can tell you, people are very frustrated, including myself, that we haven’t gotten more answers from the first assassination attempt.”