Remember when the Democrats thought whistleblowers were heroic and patriotic? That was just a few years ago when Donald Trump’s ox was being gored by the likes of dirty rats such as Eric Ciaramella.

Lately, though, the Democrats have been looking askance at whistleblowers because they’ve tended to expose both the corruption and the malevolence of the Biden-Harris administration, especially within its Department of Justice.

On Monday, though, we got a sense of the incompetence of this administration — specifically within the Secret Service. In a 22-page report issued by Senator Josh Hawley, the Missouri Republican reveals whistleblower revelations about the July 13 assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, that are “highly damaging to the credibility of the Secret Service and DHS.” As Hawley puts it, the report reveals “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.”

It’s certainly a sign of the times that government whistleblowers keep beating a path to the offices of House and Senate Republicans. As Hawley noted on Fox News yesterday, “One of the whistleblower revelations is that most of the agents in Butler that day in July were not Secret Service, and they weren’t trained. They had never done protective work before. Their only training was a webinar, a Zoom call. Hawley also called it "totally unacceptable” that both the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security are “slow-walking if not stonewalling congressional investigations.”

Speaking of stonewalling, it’s not just Hawley who’s leveling this charge. There’s even a whiff of bipartisanship to it. Take Connecticut Democrat Senator Richard Blumenthal, for example. “I am reaching a point of total outrage,” he said, “because the response from the Department of Homeland Security has been totally lacking. In fact, I think it’s tantamount to stonewalling in many respects.” Blumenthal added that DHS “has to be more forthcoming not only to me but to the American people, and it has to do it quickly.”

I’m not holding my breath. Three days after the attempted assassination, we finally heard from FBI Director Chris Wray. But only briefly and not at all helpfully. Wray was delivering the keynote address this morning at the all-important Aspen Cyber Summit when he departed very briefly from his remarks on cybersecurity:

For the second time in just over two months, we’ve witnessed what appears to be an attempt to attack our democracy and our democratic process. And I’m relieved that former President Trump is safe, and I want the American people to know that the men and women of the FBI are working tirelessly to get to the bottom of what happened. Our work is very much ongoing, and we’re just a few days into the investigation, so we’re limited in what we can say. At this point, what I can say is that we’ve dedicated the full force of the FBI to this investigation. … Together, we’re working around the clock to investigate this.

Notice, though, that a particular word was entirely missing from Wray’s remarks. Notice that he never uttered the word “assassination.” This tells us all we need to know about the lack of urgency — indeed, the outright foot-dragging — with which Wray’s bureau is approaching these attempts on Donald Trump’s life.

Among the deeply disturbing findings of Hawley’s report on what he calls “the most stunning breakdown in presidential security since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and attempted assassination of President Ronald Reagan” are the following facts:

• The lead agent responsible for the entire Butler visit, including the rally, failed a key examination during their federal law enforcement training to become a Secret Service agent.
  
• Secret Service intelligence units — teams of Secret Service agents paired with state and local law enforcement to handle reports of suspicious persons — were absent from the Butler rally.
  
• The hospital site where former President Trump received treatment after the shooting was poorly secured, and the hospital site agent could not answer basic questions about site security.

In addition, the Secret Service’s Counter Surveillance Division failed to perform a typical evaluation of the Butler site and wasn’t even present there on July 13. Further, the Secret Service declined to deploy drones at Butler despite multiple offers from a local law enforcement partner.

Imagine that: The 19-year-old would-be assassin used a drone at Butler, but the government agency assigned to protect a former and perhaps future president did not.

At the conclusion of Hawley’s report, he commends the “courageous whistleblowers” for telling us what really happened that day. But he adds, grimly, that these agencies won’t reform themselves. “They will continue to stonewall and obfuscate,” Hawley says, noting that it’s up to Congress and the president “to clean house at these failing agencies at the earliest possible opportunity.”

Fat chance of that. But elections — past, present, and future — have consequences.