WATCH: Dan Bongino EXPLODES At Hearing On Trump Shooting, Blows Lid Off Of Entire Probe

Former Secret Service agent turned conservative commentator Dan Bongino tore into his former agency during a recent congressional hearing where he faulted leadership for failing to heed previous warnings that a lack of technology and institutional fortitude was putting the lives of presidents and presidential candidates at risk.

The hearing, convened by a bipartisan committee of U.S. House members probing the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, hopes to shed light on how a deranged 20-year-old gunman was able to position himself on a roof just hundreds of yards away from where Trump was speaking at a July 13th rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Investigations by lawmakers and the FBI have determined a number of shortcomings, some of which involve the Secret Service’s obstinance to adopt modern techniques to combat threatening individuals. “The joke in the Secret Service, which is sadly no longer funny when I was there, and it wasn’t funny then either, is they rely on yesterday’s technology tomorrow,” Bongino stated during a five-minute testimony.

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“Everything from computer systems that waste agents’ times filling out time and attendance records they were doing” and “implementing slings – a technology as old as the wheel – about… five or six years into my time in the Secret Service,” he continued, a delay he called “embarrassing.” In addition, “the weaponry was old. Everything was old. These are things I would’ve talked about sooner if they didn’t create a security crisis.” Another lapse was the lack of a drone at the rally to monitor crowd interactions and scan for suspicious individuals. “Now you’re seeing what happens when you don’t have a drone up at a site you could’ve bought for $39.99 on Amazon,” he quipped.

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Robert Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director who assumed office after the resignation of former director Kimberly Cheatle, has told the committee that he oversees an agency that is expected to do “more with less.” That isn’t a realistic expectation, Bongino explained. “There isn’t more with less, there is less with less. The Secret Service more-with-less approach only works if you produce more.” Comparing his former agency to a television producer that now sells yesterday’s products for a fraction of the price today, Bongino said the Service “was given more money, and produced less.” Over the past 10 years, the agency’s budget has ballooned from $2.34 billion in 2014 to $3.62 billion in 2024, according to small government advocate Downsizing Government. “A 20-year-old criminal outsmarted them on a drone technology piece of device. You’re telling me that’s more with less? That’s disgusting,” Bongino seethed at lawmakers. “That’s less with more.”

Bongino said a third and final area of agency shortcomings is the prioritization of agents’ missions on the job. “Their agents are talented, smart people. They can figure out how to do protection without running down cheap $20 counterfeit notes at 7-Eleven on a Friday night while the president is getting shot in the head.”

Bongino, a former New York police officer, served in the Secret Service from 1999 to 2011 before running three unsuccessful campaigns for Congress. Since then, he has elevated himself through an online platform where he tackles some of the federal government’s most pressing security issues as well as news of the day from a conservative point of view. After additional footage of the Butler rally emerged online, Bongino asked his audience how Secret Service counter-snipers might have been able to miss an obvious threat to the president’s right. “This is a cell phone camera! This is not a zoom, high, telephoto, freaking lens used to film a Marvel movie! It’s a cellphone! You can see the guy clear as day! How did they miss this?!” Bongino said two weeks after the shooting. He claimed that the agency is asking Americans to “believe the implausible” about just how impossible it was to try and stop Crooks from firing the first round.

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