The chief spokesperson of the United States Secret Service has confirmed that the agency repeatedly denied Republican frontrunner and former President Donald Trump additional protection since he left office, which appears to have played a role in Trump's attempted assassination.
The New York Times ran a report about the Secret Service's mistreatment of Trump, who was reportedly shot in the ear at a campaign stop in Butler, Penn., on July 13, ever since he left office in early 2021.
According to Secret Service Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi, his agency turned down several requests by Trump's people for additional federal security assets. Unlike other presidents, Trump has apparently been given very little security protection since leaving office.
Guglielmi argues that these denied requests have nothing to do with what happened in Butler, the implication being that the Secret Service did not do anything wrong in its detail of Trump's Butler rally.
An unnamed Trump campaign staffer also complained to the Times that there were allegedly an insufficient number of metal detectors and specially trained dogs at Trump's campaign rallies, this being a longstanding problem ever since Trump left office.
Secret Service agents are tasked with protecting both the incumbent president and vice president along with former presidents, officials in the line of succession, and major presidential and vice-presidential candidates and their immediate families.
(Related: Joe Biden's Department of Justice [DOJ] is planning to drop its prosecutions of Trump following the assassination attempt in Butler.)
Cheatle says Secret Service agents weren't placed on rooftop because it was "sloped"
Guglielmi said that Secret Service is limited in its capacity to provide resources and is sometimes forced to utilize "state or local partners to provide specialized functions."
"There's an untrue assertion that a member of the former president's team requested additional resources and that those were rebuffed," Guglielmi added.
Some Republicans are calling on Secret Service director Kim Cheatle to step down from her post following the incident in Butler, which they say would not have happened had Secret Service been doing its job properly.
The GOP-run House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena compelling Cheatle to testify on Capitol Hill. Cheatle already told ABC News concerning the absence of Secret Service snipers on the rooftop where Crooks took his position that "we wouldn't want to put somebody up on a sloped roof," which is why she instead had her team secure the building "from inside."
Republican lawmakers and security experts are not buying what Cheatle is saying about all this. They want an investigation and answers, which is where things are headed next.
"The first letters of Secret Service make a peculiar acronym," one commenter wrote, referring to the SS of Nazi Germany. "There was once another sinister agency with the same acronym. The Soviet Union put them out of commission."
"Why did the Secret Service NOT utilize local, county, and state law enforcement to cover areas?" asked another about why Secret Service did not even attend the joint security meeting that was held the morning of the rally. "Why was there NOT a common channel of communication?"
Others wrote that the "SS" and the CIA "want Trump dead," just like they do Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
"The Secret Service looks foolish and sloppy," said another.
"It's obvious that the CIA and other government agencies have been involved in the assassinations of JFK, RFK, MLK, Malcolm X, the latest attempt on Trump, and any other people deemed as threats to the deep state," wrote someone else about how bad this all looks.
To keep up with the latest Trump news, visit Trump.news.
Sources for this article include:
Please contact us for more information.