The decision to change venues for a Donald Trump rally on Saturday shows that a major cash infusion for the Secret Service (USSS) will not solve the deeper problems and limitations the agency must address, former agents told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The Trump campaign was forced to move an outdoor event for thousands of people into the comparatively smaller Prairie du Chien Area Arts Center in Wisconsin Saturday after USSS said it did not have enough resources to ensure the former president’s safety. While long-term problems stemming from a wave of retirements, recruiting struggles and internal nepotism will need to be addressed after the election, former agents said the USSS needs to shift its priorities in the short-term to ensure it can keep Trump safe without compromising his outreach to voters.
“This is going to be a very difficult season until we get to election day,” former USSS agent Tim Miller told the DCNF. “The Secret Service, unfortunately, is playing catch-up due to their lack of ability to protect him properly in the past.”
Congress approved $231 million of additional funding for the USSS in the stopgap government funding bill it passed Sept. 25 after the agency attracted enormous scrutiny following two attempts on Trump’s life, one a very near miss in Butler, Pennsylvania, and the other in West Palm Beach, Florida. Only about 20% of the Secret Service’s cumulative budget since 2014 has been spent on protective operations, the Daily Caller reported on Wednesday.
However, the central problem is not funding or resources, but manpower, agents said.
“You could throw money at the problem all day long, but it’s not going to immediately rectify what you have going on right now,” Michael Matranga, a former USSS agent, told the DCNF. “With this new budget, they’re going to hire 400 new agents. It takes almost a year to get an agent through training, and it’s going to take a couple years to where they can even do a site advance, or, God forbid, a lead advance on their own. So, we’re going to hire 400 new people, and that’s gonna resolve our problem? No, it’s not.”
In the second attempt on Trump’s life, an armed man named Ryan Wesley Routh camped out in the tree line surrounding the Trump International golf course for about 12 hours, waiting for his chance to get a clear shot at the former president. An attentive USSS agent surveying Trump’s path through the course in advance spotted the barrel of Routh’s rifle protruding from the bushes and opened fire on the would-be assassin, forcing him to flee before he was ultimately apprehended.
Given that political violence is ascendant again in the U.S., the agency would be better off to give up its role as an investigator of certain financial crimes and instead focus exclusively on providing top-notch security for its protectees, Matranga told the DCNF.
Former agent Tim Spiess noted the agency is seeing a wave of retirements. “If you lose 10 or 15 agents every month, that’s a lot out of the pool of agents,” he told the DCNF.
MONEY POORLY SPENT: The U.S. Secret Service’s budget has increased by nearly $1 billion since 2014, but only $200 million of that has gone to protective operations, according to the agency’s budget.
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— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) October 2, 2024
Moreover, there is a noticeable culture of nepotism inside the Secret Service that is compounding recruitment and retention problems, according to two former agents. Not unlike other career paths, it is common for agents to get their foot in the door at USSS by leveraging personal connections, former USSS agent Richard Staropoli told the DCNF.
“In the Secret Service, the level of nepotism that’s there, and the hiring of legacy applicants, where somebody’s mom or dad or uncle was on that job, is rampant,” Staropoli said, adding that not all of these individuals are cut out for the rigors of the job. “At some point, you’re overloaded with people that are just dead weight. Where do you put them? And then what happens is, through attrition, these people start to ascend the ranks and start to get promoted, and that’s where the Secret Service is.”
Setting aside long-term problems, multiple former agents believe the agency made the right call to move Trump inside if his safety could not be adequately ensured at the outdoor Wisconsin airport venue, and one agent said to expect similar decisions as the presidential race enters its final weeks.
Trump, for his part, believes that the venue switch and its surrounding circumstances amount to blatant “election interference.”
“The Democrats are interfering with my Campaign by not giving us the proper number of people within Secret Service that are necessary for Security,” Trump wrote in a Monday Truth Social post, referencing the Wisconsin venue shift.
The USSS was spread thin due to the United Nations General Assembly, which greatly increased the number of people receiving protection while it was in session, according to a senior official briefed on the planning but not authorized to speak to the media. Moreover, the agency’s staff and equipment are already under great strain to support the “current operational tempo,” the official told the DCNF.
“Former President Donald Trump is receiving heightened levels of U.S. Secret Service protection and our top priority is mitigating risks to ensure his continued safety at all times,” USSS spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement shared with the DCNF. “Out of concern for operational security, we cannot provide specific details about resources allocated for event security or communications between agency personnel and our protectees.”
While some of the former agents believe the USSS made the right call in Wisconsin, many of them noted there are still steps the agency can take immediately to compensate for some of the long-standing problems it faces.
The USSS could, for instance, request agents from other federal law enforcement agencies, former agent Anthony Cangelosi told the DCNF. Given that it’s just a few weeks out from the election, those agencies should be willing to give up personnel, he noted.
“This would be a national priority,” Cangelosi said.
Field offices may need to send a higher percentage of their agents, Spiess said. It may also be necessary to utilize more local law enforcement officials, though USSS must work closely with them to make sure they “understand what the process is when they encounter a problem.”
However, drawing on local law enforcement or other non-USSS entities to alleviate the manpower problem is not without risk, as the first attempt on Trump’s life in Butler demonstrated. For example, there were major communication breakdowns between Secret Service agents and local police units that helped allow Thomas Crooks to take multiple shots at Trump with a rifle from a distance of about 165 yards.
“Sometimes you’ve got to think out of the box with this stuff, especially in drastic times like we have, and I’m just not sure if they’re doing that,” Spiess said.
Spiess, who staffed some of former President Barack Obama’s speaking engagements, said they “still managed” even though the threat level was similarly high.
“These things that exist now, it’s not like they’re brand new or they’ve never appeared before,” he said. “It’s just how they prioritize and react and adjust to the situation.”
(Featured Image Media Credit: Screenshot/Fox News)
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