Two days after U.S. Secret Service agents thwarted an apparent second assassination attempt in the past three months on former President Donald Trump, the agency charged with protecting him is facing a slew of new questions.
On Sunday, the bipartisan congressional task force investigating the July 13 shooting that injured Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa., said it had “requested a briefing” from the Secret Service about Sunday’s incident at Trump’s golf club in West Palm Beach, Fla. In a letter, lawmakers said they asked the agency for details on “what happened and how security responded” to the threat posed by Ryan Wesley Routh, 58, the suspect in Sunday’s incident who was able to camp out on the golf course with an AK-style rifle for nearly 12 hours prior to Trump’s arrival.
While Trump was unharmed and the suspect, who came as close as 300 yards from the Republican presidential nominee, never got off a shot, the fact that Routh was able to camp out on the golf course ahead of time is yet another wake-up call for lawmakers.
“President Trump needs the most coverage of anyone. He’s the most attacked. He’s the most threatened, even probably more than when he was in the Oval Office,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said in a Monday interview with Fox News.
Some Democrats are also calling for beefed-up security for the former president. “The facts about a second incident certainly warrant very close attention and scrutiny,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, the chairman of the Senate subcommittee investigating the security failures in Butler. “Certainly a second serious incident, apparently involving an assault weapon, is deeply alarming and appalling,” he added.
Trump, who resumed campaigning in Michigan on Tuesday, said during a livestreamed event on X on Monday that he did “need more people on my [Secret Service] detail.”
President Biden, who approved an increase in the level of security Trump receives following the July assassination attempt, said Monday that the Secret Service “needs more help.”
But exactly how much more security Trump will be given remains a question.
“At this level that he is at right now, he’s not the sitting president,” West Palm Beach Sheriff Ric Bradshaw said Sunday. “If he was, we would have had this entire golf course surrounded. … But because he’s not, security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible,” he added.
Yahoo News spoke with two former Secret Service agents about what Trump’s detail might look like going forward.
What are the general levels of Secret Service protection?
The president and vice president are considered permanent protectees by the Secret Service and have agents permanently assigned to them even after they leave office. Their protection is mandatory.
“The amount of protection that a sitting president gets is fairly consistent. They get the tactical assets,” former Secret Service agent Jason Russell told Yahoo News. “The amount of protection that a former president gets, which is also statutory guaranteed, is really based on threat level.”
Temporary protectees include presidential and vice presidential candidates or nominees and foreign heads of state, according to the U.S. Secret Service website. These protectees are assigned special agents from various field offices.
Trump is protected both as a former president and because he is the Republican presidential nominee.
What was Trump’s Secret Service protection like after the July 13 assassination attempt?
Following the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, the Secret Service increased its assets assigned to protect Trump.
“In the days that followed, President Biden made it clear that he wanted the highest levels of protection for former President Trump and for Vice President Harris,” acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe said Monday. “The Secret Service moved to sustain increases in assets and the level of protections sought.”
We don’t know exactly how many agents are assigned to Trump. But Ronald Kessler, an author who specializes in the Secret Service, told BBC News that an estimated 80 agents could be assigned to him at one time versus around 300 who could be assigned to Biden as the sitting president or Kamala Harris as the sitting vice president.
Were those ‘highest levels’ of security in place on Sunday?
Rowe indicated that the additional tactical assets were in place when Trump played golf on Sunday, and included the following:
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Counter sniper team elements
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Countersurveillance agents
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Counter assault teams partnered with local tactical assets from the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office
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Unmanned aerial system elements
What are the challenges of securing a golf course?
Former Secret Service agent Robert McDonald told Yahoo News that large outdoor venues like a golf course are very difficult to secure.
“We have to be creative in how we secure them. We’re utilizing agents out ahead of the former president playing golf, agents around him while he’s playing golf and agents who hold behind him, so we’re kind of implementing a moving bubble in and around the golf course,” McDonald explained.
“I think upping the detail and those people around him and the technology that’s used has come to a higher level since July 13th,” McDonald added. “A lot of that you’re not going to see on a regular basis, it’s all done behind the curtain and it’s implemented to make sure that he is as safe as possible wherever he goes.”
Rowe said he offered Trump that same reassurance following Sunday’s incident.
“We’ve explained and we’ve worked with the campaign, the president is aware that he has the highest levels of protection that the Secret Service is providing him,” Rowe said.
What are ‘off-the-record movements’ and how do they apply in this case?
The Secret Service detail assigned to Trump considered Sunday’s golf outing an “off-the-record movement,” Rowe told reporters, meaning that it was not planned far in advance.
“Off-the-record movements generally mean that the amount of advanced planning is limited,” Russell told Yahoo News. “It’s maybe just a couple hours ahead or sometimes even less,” he added, noting how candidates may make an impromptu stop at a place like an ice-cream shop.
“The idea is if it’s not on the schedule and you can’t plan for it, then it’s hard for a person to plan an attack. What’s really unique about this situation is while it is technically an off-the-record movement, it’s extremely predictable,” Russell said.
Trump frequently plays golf at his golf course in West Palm Beach, Russell said, sometimes on Sundays when he’s not campaigning. “While it technically would be considered an off-the-record movement, it’s a very predictable off-the-record movement,” he said.
That amount of predictability, despite it being an off-the-record movement, was likely how the suspected gunman was able to plan the attack.
“He was able to kind of wait there in that area to try to launch that attack,” Russell said.
What does the ‘highest level’ of protection look like for Trump now?
On Sunday, Rafael Barros, the special agent in charge of the Secret Service’s Miami field office, offered an assessment of the threat facing Trump as he seeks a second term as president.
“The threat level is high. We have increased the amount of assets that we’ve supported,” Barros said. “We live in danger times.”
With a high threat level, Trump’s security basically matches the level of when he was president, Rowe said Monday.
“For those of you that were here in 2017 when the president was in office, when you look at that [security] footprint now, and you look at it today, there’s not much difference there,” he said.
That includes a beefed-up number of snipers, assault support agents and a larger advance team to secure venues ahead of an event or gathering.
“When you’re doing the advance work, just to be able to leverage those additional assets makes it easier for you to do your security planning,” Russell said.
How is Congress involved?
Ultimately, it’s up to Congress to approve budgets and asset relocation for the Secret Service.
Before the apparent second assassination attempt on Trump, Rowe sent a letter to Congress in which he said the security failures witnessed on July 13 were not caused by a lack of resources. At the same time, however, he said the agency needs more resources to handle the threat levels to people under its protection.
Former agent McDonald hopes that the two incidents can help bring about increased Secret Service funding.
“This is an opportunity for the Secret Service to take two unfortunate events and turn them into a positive by retooling, resetting and using all of the information that they’re getting out of these events to make themselves be a much better agency as they move forward,” he said.
