 "Donald Trump shooting: Who is responsible for the security of the former US president?")
A horrific day unfolded in US politics on Saturday when a 20-year-old gunman opened fire during a Donald Trump rally in Butler Pennsylvania. While the former US president escaped narrowly with a graze to his right ear, another bystander was killed and two others were critically injured.
Secret Service personnel, who’s in charge of Trump’s security, quickly rushed him off the stage and neutralised the gunman, now identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks .
The incident , however, has raised questions about how an armed gunman — he was carrying an AR-15 rifle — was able to get close enough to shoot and injure former President Donald Trump. Many security experts are questioning if this is a monumental failure of the Secret Service.
But who exactly is the Secret Service? And how do they guard the president of the United States of America?
History of Secret Service
The Secret Service is one of the nation’s oldest federal investigative law enforcement agencies and protects former presidents and their spouses.
It was founded in 1865 by Abraham Lincoln, ironically hours before his assassination. It was created to combat counterfeiting of US currency after the Civil War. It then began protecting presidents in 1901 after the assassination of President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York.
The protection for sitting presidents, which remains today and can’t be rejected, also extends to their spouses and immediate family.
It was in 1958 that the Former Presidents Act was passed which then provided for a lifetime of protection for former presidents, their spouses and their children, up to the age of 15. (Protection of a spouse would terminate in the event of remarriage).
Impact Shorts
More ShortsHowever, there have been tweaks to the rules pertaining who is entitled to Secret Service protection. For instance, even though the adult children of presidents are supposed to lose their protective detail when the president leaves office, both Bill Clinton and George W Bush have signed directives authorising the Secret Service to provide a period of extended protection for their children, according to CBS News.
In 1994, during the Bill Clinton administration, Congress amended the law to limit lifetime protection for former presidents to just 10 years, saying that there was a belief that continued protection was unnecessary and that former presidents were unlikely targets. However, in 2012, the Former Presidents Protection Act, signed by Barack Obama, restored lifetime Secret Service protection for former presidents.
Interestingly, Richard Nixon relinquished his Secret Service protection in 1985, the only president to do so.
Secret Service’s protection
It’s the Service’s job to protect the US president, along with former presidents, their families, and other high-level political figures, including visiting heads of state and presidential candidates.
Tim Miller, a former Secret Service agent, told CBC News that the level of security is “all based on whatever the Secret Service, through its intelligence and co-ordination capabilities, determines is appropriate for the protecting”.
As for the number of agents assigned to a former president, that really depends on potential threats and how long they’ve been out of office. For instance, Ronald Kessler, author of In the President’s Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect, has said that when George W Bush left office, the threat level was such that he had around 75 officers protecting him and his wife Laura to cover shifts around the clock.
As per the Secret Service website, the protection also includes preventing an incident before it occurs. For this, they rely on meticulous advance work and threat assessments to identify potential risks to protectees.
Kessler adds that the security is 24 hours a day. “So you need three shifts and days off. And so that adds up in terms of agents.”
Omarosa Manigault Newman, who was part of the Trump administration, was quoted as telling 9News that Secret Service agents are trained for such “worst case scenarios”.
Former White House director of events Laura Schwartz, who worked for Clinton, said the Secret Service war-gamed scenarios regularly. “Once a year, the Secret Service takes the president and first lady, some select family members and staff members, and we go to a secret service facility in Maryland, hidden in the suburbs,” she told Today. “And they have a fake hotel, they have a fake amphitheatre, all concrete, and they run us through scenarios.
Difference in Trump’s security
As former US president, Donald Trump is entitled to Secret Service protection. However, Miller notes that as he is running for president, his security detail would be a bit different. “[That] would add some different dynamics because he’ll be going from site to site to site to site," he said.
“You look at George W Bush, he went to the ranch, his dad went to Kennebunkport, and they lived relatively obscure lives from that point,” Miller told CBC News. “That’s not the case with former President Trump.”
A New York Post report citing sources within Trump’s campaign said that the former president travels with a Secret Service detail that is just a fraction of the size of sitting presidents. Moreover, his campaign had asked for additional protection, but their request has fallen on deaf ears.
They argued that if a sitting president was speaking at the event, the Secret Service would have more agents on the scene monitoring low points and high points — like the one where the gunman had positioned himself.
However, as per the Department of Homeland Security, there are various factors taken into consideration to decide what level of protection is provided to presidential candidates. For instance, neither Ted Cruz nor Mike Huckabee, winners of the Republican Iowa caucuses in 2016 and 2008, respectively, received Secret Service protection during their election cycles. Similarly, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders, who won the first two 2020 Democratic nominating contests, Iowa and New Hampshire, had no Secret Service protection.
After the shooting, the House Oversight Committee has said that it will open an investigation into the shooting.
James Comer said that he has already reached out Secret Service and called for hearing on what appeared to be an assassination attempt against Trump on July 22.
With inputs from agencies
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