House January 6 committee interviewing Secret Service agents in Trump’s motorcade on day of attack. The agents are under oath. | Getty White House wants to know if Trump was warned about the attack
The White House on Thursday demanded answers from U.S. Secret Service agents who participated in President Donald Trump’s motorcade on the morning of the attack outside of Charlottesville, Virginia, that killed one woman and injured 19 others.
White House officials said they had reached out to the agents about concerns they’d raised about security in the motorcade, which they said left the White House after the president had made a speech in South Carolina on the deadly events in Charlottesville.
“We are concerned about the actions and lack of action of the Secret Service agents who were driving the motorcade,” White House press secretary Sean Spicer said in a statement, adding that the agents are “under oath.” “They need to be held to accountability and their actions need to be reviewed.”
The Secret Service had not responded to an email for comment, but spokesman Ed Donovan said Thursday that the agency had been “fully cooperative” with Trump’s White House, but declined to elaborate on the agency’s role in Trump’s motorcade.
The agency “has every reason to believe that the Secret Service in the United States is in the best possible hands,” Donovan told POLITICO. “We are grateful to them for their service to the president and the country.”
The White House also sought to distance itself from the actions of the three agents who participated in the president’s motorcade before the June 12 weekend attack in Charlottesville, where 32-year-old James Alex Fields Jr. drove his car into a crowd of counterprotesters who had gathered to protest Trump’s planned removal of a Confederate statue from a public square. The drivers were identified by the president’s personal security detail as Timothy L. Brant, Kevin M. Bogar and Joseph D