Most of the security personnel working Donald Trump’s event last Saturday, when the former president was nearly assassinated, were not Secret Service agents but, instead, were "unprepared and inexperienced" department agents who were "unfamiliar with standard protocols," whistleblowers told Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.).

"Whistleblower allegations suggest the majority of DHS officials were not in fact USSS agents but instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations," Hawley wrote in a letter Friday to Homeland Security secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding answers to the allegations.

The USSS has faced increased scrutiny since the former president was shot on stage by 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was positioned about 400 feet from Trump’s podium on a rooftop with a direct line of sight to the candidate. Rally-goers saw Crooks, armed, on the roof before he took the shot and warned authorities of his presence. Three snipers were in the building he was atop. After Trump was hit, his security detail jumped to cover him, and counter-snipers fatally shot Cooks.

Whistleblowers told Hawley "the July 13 rally was considered to be a ‘loose’ security event," citing that "detection canines were not used … in the usual manner," unauthorized individuals were able to gain backstage access, and "department personnel did not appropriately police the security buffer around the podium."

The Missouri senator fired off seven questions to Mayorkas concerning the...

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