Democrat scrambles amid calls to boot him from committee investigating Trump assassination attempt
A Mississippi congressman proposed a bill that would revoke Donald Trump’s Secret Service detail. Now that Republicans are calling for his removal from the committee investigating the assassination attempt, the Democrat is downplaying how the bill would threaten the former president’s safety.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., introduced the Denying Infinite Security and Government Resources Allocated toward Convicted and Extremely Dishonorable (DISGRACED) Former Protectees Act in April, which would revoke Secret Service protection for those sentenced following conviction for a federal or state felony with a prison term.
After Trump was shot at a campaign rally on July 13 in Pennsylvania, Thompson said that even if the bill passed, it would not affect Trump.
“My bill would not have affected the Secret Service’s presence during this tragic event. It aims to clarify lines of authority when a protectee is sentenced to prison and is in the custody of another law enforcement agency,” the congressman said in a statement to the Mississippi Free Press. “That does not apply to the former president.”
Thompson’s less-than-200-word bill states that if the convicted felon’s offense is “punishable for a term of imprisonment of at least one year,” regardless of the actual sentence, the person’s Secret Service protection is terminated.
In May, a New York jury found Trump guilty of 34 felony counts. The former president was convicted for allegedly falsifying business records in violation of New York Penal Law §175.10, the penalty for which can be up to four years in jail.
Trump is yet to be sentenced, and it is unlikely he will receive jail time. But because the law he allegedly violated is punishable by imprisonment for at least one year, regardless of his sentence, he would lose his Secret Service detail after sentencing.
If Thompson’s bill passes, Trump would be denied a Secret Service detail for life, even if he is reelected president in November.
Thompson’s press secretary did not respond to The Daily Signal’s question about whether the Democrat intended to mislead the public about how his bill would affect Trump.
Politico legal reporter Kyle Cheney said in a now-deleted tweet that the bill “would only have applied to the Secret Service detail of someone who is *incarcerated* …”
Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, set the record straight, informing Cheney that “the termination of Secret Service protection in Mr. Thompson’s bill does not require incarceration.”
Cheney corrected himself, admitting that Thompson’s claims were misleading: “Though Thompson has *said* the bill is meant to terminate USSS [U.S. Secret Service] protection for incarcerated felons, the language of the bill goes further than that.”
“In April, Rep. Bennie Thompson launched an effort with other radical progressive Democrats to deny Secret Service protection to President Trump—legislation that he continues to defend even after the attempted assassination on July 13,” the Freedom Caucus said in a statement.
“We therefore urge the removal of Rep. Thompson as the ranking member of the House Committee on Homeland Security,” the caucus continued. “Similarly, his actions should invalidate Rep. Thompson from serving on the task force to investigate the attempted assassination of President Trump. Americans cannot trust that he will be an unbiased arbiter of the facts in the effort to get to the bottom of the greatest failure of the Secret Service in more than three decades.”
[Editor’s note: This story originally was published by The Daily Signal.]
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