Rep. Ritchie Torres, New York Democrat, on Tuesday introduced a pair of bills that would shift the role of the Secret Service in an attempt to better protect presidents and other political leaders from assassination attempts.
The lawmaker’s push comes a month after Thomas Matthew Crooks’ failed assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, which killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore, opened up the Secret Service to heavy scrutiny for security failures.
Mr. Torres’ bills transfer financial crime investigation authority and powers from the Secret Service to the Treasury Department, and require that the Secret Service set a 500-yard minimum perimeter at public events in order to prevent a repeat of Mr. Trump’s rally in Pennsylvania.
The bills do not have any co-sponsors so far, according to Mr. Torres’ office.
Anthony Guglielmi, spokesperson for the Secret Service, said that the agency does not comment on pending legislation. The Washington Times has reached out to the Treasury Department for comment.
The lawmaker’s “Focus on Protection Act” would orient the Secret Service to a “core mission of protecting the President, Vice President, their families, visiting heads of state, and Presidential candidates, thereby enhancing national security,” according to the bill’s text.
“It seems to me that it should be exclusively focused on presidential protection, and we need legislation that moves financial law enforcement from the Secret Service to the Treasury Department — precisely where it belongs,” Mr. Torres said in a statement.
“We should ask ourselves a simple question: do you want the Director of the Secret Service thinking about the protection of a president 100% of the time, or only 50% of the time? I prefer 100% of the time,” he said.
That bill would shift the power to investigate counterfeiting, financial fraud and cybercrime against the country’s financial systems to the Treasury. It would also send the Secret Service personnel that investigate financial crimes and all of the “assets, contracts, property, and records associated” with financial crime investigations to the Treasury Department.
In his measure, Mr. Torres argued that transferring the investigative power would be a good fit because the Treasury Department has the “expertise and resources” to take up the responsibility from the Secret Service.
While Mr. Torres’ bill is in direct response to the assassination attempt against Mr. Trump, it also is another chapter in a decadeslong fight over the Secret Service’s bureaucratic position.
For the Secret Service’s first 140 years, it operated under the Treasury Department because its original focus was investigating counterfeiting and other financial crimes.
It acquired the role of protecting presidents and presidential candidates in 1901, but continued to perform that and other official-protection tasks under Treasury auspices for more than a century.
The Secret Service was moved in 2003 to the newly formed Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Since then, lawmakers have tried and failed to return the Secret Service to its original home.
His other bill, called the “AR-15 Perimeter Security Enhancement Act,” would require the Secret Service to expand its security perimeter at public events to no less than 500 yards, and to secure “all elevated positions within the firing range of firearms likely to be used in assassination attempts.”
The Secret Service did not include the buildings adjacent to the Butler fairgrounds in the official security perimeter for Mr. Trump’s rally last month, which allowed the shooter to get atop the roof of one of the buildings and fire off eight rounds at Mr. Trump with his AR-15 rifle.
The shooter came within an inch of killing Mr. Trump, “only” nicking his ear. Several former service members have said on TV shows and social media in recent weeks that a decently trained sniper in that situation would have succeeded.
Requiring the Secret Service to set up a security perimeter no less than 500 yards around an event intends to nullify the effective range of AR-15s and other weapons listed in the bill including high-powered bolt-action rifles and pistols, to “accurately target and inflict damage.”
“Why was the security perimeter substantially smaller than the firing range of an AR-15, a common weapon that would be used in an assassination or in a mass shooting? Why were the rooftops and elevated positions within the firing range of an AR-15 not secured by the Secret Service,” Mr. Torres said. “Those are two conspicuous failures.”
The Secret Service’s security perimeters at a given event are not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Mr. Guglielmi noted to The Times that security perimeters “really depends on the site and the geography landscape.”
Mark Oliva, spokesperson for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told The Times that an AR-15 could be accurate up 550 yards against a human-sized target and that the accuracy of the weapons listed in Mr. Torres’ bill is as much related to the skill of the shooter.
He said expanding a security perimeter beyond the 500-yard minimum suggested in the legislation could negate the effectiveness of certain rifles, but that the security breakdown in Pennsylvania involved more than just distance.
“I don’t think that expanding the [security] bubble is addressing the failures of the Secret Service,” Mr. Oliva said.
• Alex Miller can be reached at amiller@washingtontimes.com.
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