Sen. Josh Hawley released whistleblower allegations Monday that the lead agent in charge of the scene at the first assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump in July was known to be a “low-caliber agent.”

The Missouri Republican also said the Secret Service didn’t have an intelligence unit team deployed to Mr. Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, which fueled poor communications between federal authorities and state and local law enforcement.

And Mr. Hawley said agents failed to secure the hospital where Mr. Trump was rushed after being struck in the ear by a bullet.

The allegations follow previous information Mr. Hawley has developed, including that the Secret Service didn’t do a regular threat assessment of the site, rebuffed local police offers to use drones to keep eyes on the scene, and didn’t deploy personnel to the rooftop used by the gunman “because of hot weather.”

“The resulting findings are highly damaging to the credibility of the Secret Service and DHS. They reveal a compounding pattern of negligence, sloppiness, and gross incompetence that goes back years, all of which culminated in an assassination attempt that came inches from succeeding,” Mr. Hawley’s investigators said in their report.

It was released a day after a second assassination attempt on Mr. Trump.

Authorities say a gunman managed to get onto the golf course in Florida where Mr. Trump was playing. Secret Service agents saw a rifle poke through bushes and they fired, sending the...

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