GOP, Secret Service clash as calls to up Trump's protection face complications

The multilayered nature of presidential and candidate security is complicating calls for former President Trump to have the same level of protection as a sitting president, prompting a Republican clash with Secret Service, who says Trump’s security is already at the highest level.

The sitting president has the support of a vast infrastructure that includes the military to support the Secret Service posture. Candidates, meanwhile, have their Secret Service protection supplemented by local law enforcement.

Still, Republicans are making it a point to demand more security for Trump after a second apparent assassination attempt last weekend.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said he called the White House this week to demand that President Biden “supply for President Trump the same degree of protection that a sitting president has.”  

“He's a former president. I believe he's going to be the next president, and right now, he's a candidate under the greatest threat of any candidate in modern political history,” Johnson said Wednesday.

Other Republicans have echoed that sentiment.

“The Secret Service can and should do more to protect President Trump,” House Majority Whip Tom Emmer (R-Minn.) said Wednesday.

Biden increased Trump’s Secret Service protection after the first attempt on his life two months ago, when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire at a rally in Butler, Pa. — nicking Trump’s ear, wounding two others, and killing a rally attendee.

“President Biden made it clear that he wanted the highest levels of protection for former President Trump and for Vice President Harris. Secret Service moved to sustain increases in assets and the level of protection … and those things were in place yesterday,” acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe told reporters Monday.

“The President is aware that he has the highest levels of protection that Secret Service is providing him. …There's a lot of tactical assets in place, things that have been put in place as a result of what happened 60 days ago. Those elements are working,” he added.

Trump has the same countersurveillance and countersniper teams afforded to sitting presidents, along with protective intelligence and drone teams. Still, the president travels with other non-Secret Service assets, including those related to the Department of Defense and the National Security Council.

The House task force formed to investigate the first assassination attempt on Trump, and which Johnson said will also investigate the most recent threat, received a briefing Wednesday from the Secret Service about the Sunday incident. 

Task force ranking member Jason Crow (D-Colo.) said the Secret Service protection was “commensurate with presidential level security, and actually the same package of security that he actually would have had and did have when he was the sitting president, as well."

Chair Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) agreed, saying, “I came away today feeling that Secret Service on this past Sunday were treating it the same way as when President Trump was a sitting president."

But Crow noted the inherent differences between a candidate and a president.

"There are additional resources and assets that travel with the president of the United States ... because the president is the commander in chief," Crow said. "This is technology, this is communication stuff, this is additional assets that constitutionally go with the commander in chief.”

Still, some lawmakers want to see more.

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), a member of the task force, lamented that more was not done tactically before Trump went to his Florida golf course on Sunday — even if he technically is on the highest level of Secret Service security.

“I understand that there's some military assets that only can guard and be used by the president,” Fallon said Thursday on Fox News. “But you could have swept the perimeter with dogs. And they usually do that if he had been the sitting president. So that's not something that only the president can have. It's dogs. It's not like it's not a stealth fighter. And they didn't do that.”

Secret Service spotted suspect Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, hiding among trees and sticking a rifle through the fence at a golf course where Trump was playing. A team was doing an area screening several holes ahead of Trump when an agent fired shots at Routh, who fled the scene and was later arrested by local authorities.

Rowe said Routh never laid eyes on Trump or fired any shots of his own.

The Secret Service told Trump that it would need to bolster his security for future golf outings, and that his golf games can be difficult to secure given the wide open spaces that are sometimes adjacent to public roads.

Despite their calls, Republicans have expressed skepticism about using the upcoming government spending bill to bolster Secret Service funding.

Instead, lawmakers have proposed other measures requiring parity between presidential security and that for candidates.

The House will vote Friday on a bill from Reps. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) and Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) that requires the Secret Service to “apply the same standards” for determining how many agents should be used to protect the president, vice president, and those running for those offices.

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) introduced a similar bill Thursday that also requires presidential-level protection for the same group, along with their spouses. But it also adds that Secret Service should provide “any necessary protective measure.”

The Secret Service would not comment on the legislation.

But the bills would seem to clash with the agency’s position that it is already providing the highest levels of protection to both Trump and Harris.

Lawler on Wednesday didn’t directly address the Secret Service’s concern that the legislation fails to take into account the broader apparatus for protecting the White House and other aspects of a president’s day-to-day life. 

But he stressed there is a government responsibility to protect candidates to ensure the election is decided by “votes at a ballot box, not by an assassin's bullet.” 

“The objective is for them to come back very quickly with an assessment on what they need. But we have 48 days until an election, and they better act quick, and they better make sure that both Vice President Harris and President Trump are protected in full. This really shouldn't even be that complicated a discussion,” he said.

“They have a responsibility to ensure the safety and the well being of these candidates, period. And you've had two assassination attempts in three months. If that doesn't shock the country to its conscience, I don't know what the hell will.”