The acting director of the U.S. Secret Service said the agency needs to undergo a complete overhaul of how it protects presidents — a remarkable admission following a second apparent attempt on the life of former President Donald Trump within two months.
“Coming out of Butler, I have ordered a paradigm shift,” Ronald Rowe said at a news conference Monday, referring to the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. “The Secret Service's protective methodologies work and they are sound, and we saw that yesterday.”
But, he added, “we need to get out of a reactive model, and get to a readiness model.”
Rowe did not go into detail about his vision for the nearly 160-year-old agency. His comments come at a pivotal moment for the Secret Service.
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The agency has been under heavy scrutiny since a gunman managed to fire several rounds at Trump at the rally in Pennsylvania, striking his ear, in what was the Secret Service's biggest security failure since President Ronald Reagan was shot and wounded in 1981. One person was killed at the July 13 rally, and two others were injured.
The incident on Sunday, which the FBI called an apparent attempted assassination of Trump, unfolded at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida, after a Secret Service agent spotted a rifle poking out of the bushes outside the course, according to officials. The suspect, Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, had been in the vicinity for nearly 12 hours, according to a criminal complaint.
Routh was taken into custody later Sunday and charged with federal gun crimes.
The Trump campaign asked the Secret Service for increased security on Monday morning, two sources familiar with the request told NBC News. It's not clear how the Secret Service has responded to that request.
When asked about it, Rowe sidestepped the question.
“I’ve had a conversation with the former president,” he said. “The president is aware that he has the highest levels of protection that the Secret Service provides.”
“We constantly evaluate based on threat,” he added. “If we need to ratchet it up additionally, we will.”
The Secret Service has dramatically increased Trump’s security since the shooting on July 13, according to two sources familiar with the agency’s response. The increased security includes more people and more technology.
One source said the Secret Service is doing all it can to protect Trump while also preparing for the United Nations General Assembly next week and protecting President Joe Biden, Sen. J.D. Vance, Vice President Kamala Harris, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and others. That source said that additional resources would require additional funding from Congress.
Rowe conceded as much at the news conference.
“The Secret Service operates under a paradox of zero fail mission but also that we have done more with less for decades,” he said. “And this goes back many, many decades. What I can tell you is we have immediate needs right now.”
Protecting the former president at an outdoor venue like a golf course poses particular challenges, especially when Trump makes an impromptu decision to play a few holes. But multiple former FBI agents questioned how a man was able to take a position so close to the former president and stay hidden there for so long.
"That to me is really unsettling," said Evy Poumpouras, a former Secret Service agent who protected multiple presidents, including Barack Obama and George W. Bush, during her 12 years with the agency.
"How did he get there, take that position for 12 hours and nobody saw that? Nobody did a perimeter sweep?" she added in an interview on MSNBC.
The Secret Service is chronically understaffed: The arm of the agency that protects presidents, vice presidents and their families is nearly 10% smaller than it was a decade ago. Yet while the requests for extra personnel and equipment from Trump’s agents have been repeatedly declined over the past two years, no resource requests were denied for the Pennsylvania rally where Trump was shot, a Secret Service official told NBC News in July.
The problem does not appear to be a financial issue: government filings show the Secret Service’s budget nearly doubled over the last decade while staffing agencywide rose by nearly 25%.
Anthony Cangelosi, a former Secret Service agent who has worked on protective details for presidential candidates, including Sen. John Kerry in 2004, said it was “pretty clear at this point that we need extra personnel for President Trump.”
“If this had been President Biden and he was golfing on the golf course, there would be a several-block security buffer around that golf course,” he said on Monday. “Yes, former presidents don’t get that same level of protection, but that level of protection adjusts based on known threat level.”
“Why, at this point, seven weeks out from an election, a major presidential candidate doesn’t have additional security personnel to secure the perimeter of his golf course?” Cangelosi added. “That’s the question that should be asked at this point.”
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