The U.S. Secret Service, after denying it for days, admitted on Saturday that it refused requests for additional security sought by Donald Trump for two years prior to the attempted assassination on July 13.
Last Sunday, the spokesman for the Secret Service took to X/Twitter to deny the allegations being made that Trump had been starved of federal security.
“We did not divert resources from FPOTUS Trump & protection models don’t work that way. As far as ‘field office teams’ these are the candidate nominee operations teams that are added during election years for the heavy travel tempo,” wrote Anthony Guglielmi last Sunday, in response to something written by a RealClearPolitics White House correspondent Susan Crabtree.
“There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former president’s team requested additional resources and that those were rebuffed,” he wrote on X later.
On Monday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro N. Mayorkas also said the accusation that he had issued the denials was “a baseless and irresponsible statement and it is one that is unequivocally false.”
But by Saturday, July 20, the official tune had changed. Guglielmi now admits, in a report first published in the New York Times, the Secret Service turned down requests for additional federal security for Trump.
According to the newspaper, which is historically hostile to Trump, two officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly confirmed that the Trump campaign had been seeking additional resources for the better part of the time that Trump had been out of office.
The denied requests for additional resources were not, however, specifically for the rally in Butler.
According to other officials, the Secret Service had actually added security for Trump at Butler due to intelligence it had received about an Iranian plot to assassinate Trump.
Questions still remain about why the rooftop that was clearly a possible danger to Trump was left unguarded and why the gunman, who was identified as suspicious, was not contained before he took his shots. Director of the Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle will face those questions and others during a hearing called by Rep. James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, on Monday.
The Secret Service also released a defensive statement about the use of women in its protection details, even after extensive video from Butler, Penn. showed the women assigned to Trump did not perform to expectations.
“In the days following the attempted assassination of former President Trump, some people have made public statements questioning the presence of women in law enforcement, including in the United States Secret Service,” the agency wrote in a statement on its website.
“These assertions are baseless and insulting,” said the official statement.
“Every single day, in communities big and small across our great country, women are serving in federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and campus law enforcement. They are highly trained and skilled professionals, who risk their lives on the front lines for the safety and security of others. They are brave and selfless patriots who deserve our gratitude and respect,” the agency continued.
“We in the United States Department of Homeland Security — the largest law enforcement organization in the federal government — will, with great pride, focus, and devotion to mission, continue to recruit, retain, and elevate women in our law enforcement ranks. Our Department will be the better for it, and our country more secure,” the Secret Service said, without providing data to support its assertion that women Secret Service agents are being placed in jobs because of merit, rather than because of “diversity, equity, inclusion” goals that the agency has prioritized under President Biden.
The hearing on the Butler, Pennsylvania assassination attempt takes place at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Monday, and can be watched at this link or here:
On Saturday, Mr. Guglielmi acknowledged that the Secret Service had turned down some requests for additional federal security assets for Mr. Trump’s detail. Two people briefed on the matter, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that the Trump campaign had been seeking additional resources for the better part of the time that Mr. Trump had been out of office. The denied requests for additional resources were not specifically for the rally in Butler, Mr. Guglielmi said.
U.S. officials previously said the Secret Service had enhanced security for the former president before the Butler rally because it had received information from U.S. intelligence agencies about a potential Iranian assassination plot against Mr. Trump.
While I do think women can, and do, do well in military and law enforcement, I do NOT think that a person shorter in stature than the person being protected should be on body detail. That would obviously be shorter men as well as shorter women. The whole point of the protection detail for a president or former president is TO TAKE A BULLET FOR THEM IF NEEDED to protect them. Someone shorter than the presidential candidates obviously cannot completely cover the protectee as evidenced in the post assassination attempt pictures. There were glaring “holes” which left President Trump vulnerable had there been another shooter wanting to kill him there.
This gets better by the moment. Now the Iranians are out to get him. And he has Dudley do right for a security team. I pray his own security team is better than our government supplied one.
This is coming from a government department and the same group who could not find the owner of a bag of coke.
Remember the feds lie to the pubic taxpayer regularly.
Don’t trust or believe what the feds are saying.
Since the beginning of humanity, it has been a blindingly obvious fact the average man is more capable of performing physically-demanding activities than the average woman. This obvious fact is not changed by the Secret Service calling it a “baseless and insulting” assertion. Moreover, the Secret Service has foolishly discredited itself by uttering that lie to the public. One of the hallmarks of a culture in rapid decline is everyone lying to each other to conform to false dogma.
Biden was installed to hide the methodical destruction of America behind a false curtain of incompetence.
This same thing is happening in the corporate world, think Boeing.
My concerns weren’t about women in general, they were about specific agents on that particular detail, who happened to be women. I believe that is the consensus of most people. Everyone knows incredibly competent women in law enforcement- I don’t believe, as some have asserted, that gender was the basis of the criticism.
Frustrated, Your concerns should be about “women in general.” After all, women in general synonymously means the average woman. The simple fact is, the average woman cannot compete equally in physicality with the average man. Arguing against that simple fact by citing statistical outliers is a diversion into logical fallacy. The concept of women police patrol officers fails due to the above facts. Departments often compensate by paring women with male officers to reduce risk to the women. Meanwhile, our culture is collapsing because young women are trying to emulate men rather than having children and raising families.
Should Suzanne stop writing here?
After all, she’s “just” a woman.
You are welcome to your opinions, but you underestimate over 50% of the world at your peril.
They want him dead, but don’t want to get their own hands dirty!!!
Exactly!
A mix of politics and rank incompetence.
Why did Democrats deny sufficient armed protection to their political enemies?
Ummmmm….because it would make it more difficult for Democrats to murder him?
What do I win?
That pinhead, Mayorkas, is behind all these denials.
The US has virulent international enemies fundamentally opposed to our form of government, constitution and way of life while camped out in stateless DC. President Trump is the most vehement supporter of our form of republic government and constitution. Of course the puppets of foreign influence would rather avoid dealing with the most excellent Donald J. Trump ever again. They lost a lot the last time.
Comments are closed.