After two assassination attempts, Trump would like his security detail beefed up
By Kate Kelly, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Eileen Sullivan
Washington: Former president Donald Trump’s campaign has requested a series of additional security measures, including military assets, in conversations with the White House and the Secret Service because of continuing threats to his safety, according to four people briefed on the matter.
The conversations came amid suggestions from some Trump aides that they felt hamstrung from having Trump campaign the way they would like to because of the security threats, including his ability to travel where he wants and appear outside at rallies.
Donald Trump’s security detail scans the crowd at his rally in Reno, Nevada. Credit: AP
In exchanges with White House chief of staff Jeff Zients and the acting Secret Service director, Ronald L Rowe Jr, in the past two weeks, Susie Wiles, Trump’s top campaign adviser, said Trump had been forced to move, reschedule or cancel key events because of limits on the service’s available resources, according to the people.
The campaign’s requests for more security, one of the people said, included sophisticated, classified military assets that are used only for sitting presidents: the pre-placement of bullet-resistant glass in the main battleground states where he would be campaigning most frequently; and an expansion of temporary flight restrictions over Trump’s residences and campaign sites.
The Trump team in effect is looking for him to be protected at the same level that President Joe Biden is. Trump’s team has been told that he is being given the highest level of protection available, though no candidate or former president receives what a sitting president does.
Trump has been the target of two would-be assassins in the past four months, as well as an alleged murder-for-hire plot involving someone with ties to Iran. The campaign has been briefed by the intelligence community about active interest from Iran in harming Trump.
On Wednesday, Republican congressman Michael Waltz, a member of the House’s task force investigating the assassination attempts on Trump, wrote a letter urging Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin and other senior administration officials to provide military transport planes to Trump.
Waltz, a former Green Beret, wrote that although such aircraft were in high demand, “protecting the life of a former president and major third-party presidential nominee merits their use for the less than one month remaining until the presidential election”.
A senior official in the Defence Department said it “continues to provide enhanced support to the US Secret Service for the protection of the 2024 presidential and vice presidential campaign candidate”. A Secret Service spokesperson noted that the Pentagon was already providing military cargo planes to help move heavy equipment required by the Trump campaign.
In her own push for additional security resources, Wiles cited several episodes that showed the need for more help, a person familiar with the matter said.
They included one event in Wisconsin, where the campaign had encountered a shortage of Secret Service agents because they were busy handling the UN General Assembly in New York.
The Trump campaign in WisconsinCredit: AP
Another was a second event in Wisconsin that could not be held in the original venue because the bullet-deflecting glass that is now being used to protect Trump was too heavy to safely place inside the structure, an issue that had forced the former president to relocate his event to a smaller venue and refashion it into a news briefing rather than a public rally.
In the conversations and messages with White House officials and Rowe, Wiles noted that more security assets would be needed if the former president were to be able to finish the campaign season in the way that he wanted to, these people said.
Asked about the calls to the White House, its communications director, Ben LaBolt, said, “President Biden has directed the Secret Service to provide the highest level of protection for former President Trump.”
And asked by reporters later about the request for Trump to use military aircraft, Biden said he had told his administration to give Trump everything he needed for security “as if he were a sitting president”.
“Give him all he needs,” Biden said. “If it fits within that category, that’s fine. But if it doesn’t, he shouldn’t.”
A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Evan Vucci’s photo of Donald Trump after the shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania.Credit: AP
The Secret Service’s resource constraints have been a growing issue as the agency has coped with an exodus of agents.
Given the agency’s finite number of trained agents and specialists, magnetometers, bomb-detecting dogs and other equipment, turning down candidates who request additional resources is not uncommon during busy periods like the final stretch of a presidential campaign.
In a statement, the Secret Service said that “since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13, the US Secret Service has made comprehensive enhancements to our communications capabilities, resourcing and protective operations. Today, the former president is receiving the highest levels of protection”.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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