Number of rookie Secret Service agents rose as veteran members dwindled in years leading up to Trump shooting
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Agency has said it needs more resources. Beginning in 2015, agents with less than five years of experience rose from about 15 percent to 40 percent of the elite security agency, while staff with 11 to 20 years of experience declined from more than 50 percent of the Secret Service to making up about 25 percent.
One of those junior agents was tasked with leading security planning around the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally in July when gunman Matthew Crooks nearly killed Donald Trump, grazing the then-candidate’s ear with a bullet. The agent joined the Secret Service just four years before the shooting, and had only been on the president’s protective detail since 2023.
The Secret Service’s management of security at the Pennsylvania rally, where Crooks was able to fire on Trump from a nearby rooftop with a clear view of the event stage, has come under heavy scrutiny. Crooks was spotted behaving suspiciously nearly an hour and a half before he fired on Trump, but agents failed to liase with police and stop the attack.
The recent scrutiny builds on calls for increased training, hiring, and funding at the agency dating back a decade, after a series of security failures during the Obama administration. A Secret Service official told the Post that the agency had made numerous changes since those days, but needed more funding than the modest five percent increase in its budget from 2017 to 2024.
“Resource constraints hindered our ability to fully implement all of the panel’s recommendations,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the paper, calling on more resources “so we can finally move the Secret Service to a more sustainable training model.”.
