Secret Service OIG Report Just Revealed the Jarring Truth About How an Agent Got Intel on the Butler Shooter

Biden's Secret Service failed miserably at protecting Donald Trump at the Butler rally.

Now a federal watchdog just confirmed it was even worse than we knew.

A new federal report just revealed how badly Biden left Trump exposed — and the people responsible have never been held accountable.

What the Government Just Admitted

The OIG audit is damning in its specificity.

During the July 13, 2024 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, a Secret Service employee received a photo of Thomas Matthew Crooks on a personal cell phone – not a government-issued device – because the official phone had a known glitch that prevented it from retexting images.

The agency tasked with protecting the President of the United States couldn't equip its agents with phones that could forward a picture.

The OIG reviewed more than 4.8 million calls and texts from Secret Service government devices between October 2022 and May 2025.

They found more than 15,000 instances where agents made and received calls from personal phones during protective events.

Not 15,000 over eight years.

Fifteen thousand times during protective operations alone.

The Threat That Was Already There

At the time of the Butler rally, U.S. intelligence had active information about an assassination plot against President Trump.

The IRGC was allegedly working to kill him.

Three cyber actors were indicted that same year for hacking into accounts of current and former U.S. officials.

An operative convicted earlier this year admitted he arrived on American soil specifically to arrange the murder of U.S. government officials.

And Secret Service agents protecting the President were walking around with personal phones – devices that could be jailbroken, loaded with malware, or used to track their real-time location – because the Biden administration gave them government phones incapable of sending a group text.

The OIG report notes the risk plainly: a hacked personal phone gives adversaries access to "mission-related data, including contacts, user history, geolocation, and photos" – exactly the intelligence package a foreign kill team needs to plan an attack against a protectee.

This wasn't theoretical.

A Mexican drug cartel did exactly this to an FBI official in Mexico City – using surveillance data to identify and murder potential informants.

The OIG cited it as a direct parallel to the Secret Service's vulnerability.

The Bureaucratic Betrayal

Senator Chuck Grassley's GAO-backed investigation found that senior Secret Service officials received classified intelligence about a threat to Trump's life ten days before Butler – and never passed it down the chain.

The agency had no formal process for sharing classified threat information when the danger wasn't considered "imminent."

Biden's Secret Service denied at least ten requests from Trump's protective detail for additional resources – counter-drone systems, counter-assault teams, extra snipers.

While foreign and domestic threats were actively plotting to kill him.

While agents were forced onto personal phones because government devices had been functionally crippled since 2021.

Agents told OIG auditors about government phones that had gone years without a data wipe across dozens of international trips – including visits to high-risk countries.

One agent estimated his phone had been cleaned just four times across fifteen overseas missions.

The agency didn't even begin installing basic mobile threat defense software on government phones until August 2025 – over a year after the bullet grazed Trump's ear.

The OIG made five recommendations.

The Secret Service concurred with all five – which is Washington-speak for "we already knew about this and did nothing."

Biden Handed Threats a Roadmap to Trump's Location

Democrats spent years screaming that Trump was a threat to national security.

While their administration was sending America's most important protective agency into the field with broken phones, zero classified threat-sharing protocols, and no policy for securing devices used in hostile foreign countries.

The IRGC used digital targeting to locate and kill enemies of the regime worldwide.

And Biden's Secret Service was handing foreign intelligence services a roadmap to the President of the United States – on personal iPhones, running unvetted apps, never wiped, in the hands of agents who had no choice.

Trump survived Butler because of luck and the angle of a rifle barrel.

Not because the people sworn to protect him were properly equipped.

Sources:

• Amy Furr, "OIG: Secret Service's Failure to Secure Devices Heightened Risk for Leaders," Breitbart News, June 27, 2026.
• K. Sophie Will, "Secret Service Put Protectees, Employees at Risk with Mobile Device Security Blunders," FedScoop, June 26, 2026.
• Greg Sirico, "Secret Service Driven to Personal Phones by Heavy Limits," GovInfoSecurity, June 25, 2026.
• "Secret Service's Deficient Mobile Device Management Increased the Risk to Protectees and Sensitive Information," OIG-26-09, DHS Office of Inspector General, June 2026.
• "Grassley Report Concludes Secret Service Failure to Share Threat Information Allowed for Preventable Tragedy in Butler," U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, July 12, 2025.
• "Iranian Intelligence Agent Convicted of Terrorism and Murder for Hire," U.S. Department of Justice, March 7, 2026.