Secret Service tells House task force that Trump already has presidential-level protection

The Secret Service on Wednesday insisted to House lawmakers that former President Donald Trump already had effectively the same level of protective assets as a sitting president when a second assassination attempt was thwarted in Florida.

That’s one of the key takeaways lawmakers on a bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempts had after a briefing by Secret Service officials about Sunday’s incident, where agents stopped a man perched in the bushes on the perimeter of Mr. Trump’s golf club with a rifle before he could fire any shots.

After two attempts on Mr. Trump’s life in two months, lawmakers called for him to get the same protection as a sitting president. But Secret Service officials told them the security was ramped up after the July 13 attack in Pennsylvania.

“He actually had a similar level of security that he had when he was the sitting president,” Colorado Rep. Jason Crow, the top Democrat on the task force, told The Washington Times. 

Mr. Crow said they were told that after the July 13 assassination attempt, President Biden ordered the Secret Service to increase security detail for Mr. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, and Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, to the same level as a sitting president gets. 

“It’s our understanding that that has happened and that that was in place this past Sunday during the incident,” he said. 

Rep. Mike Kelly, the Pennsylvania Republican who chairs the task force, said that was his understanding from the briefing as well.

The briefing by Secret Service officials contradicts Palm Beach County Sheriff Ric Bradshaw, who, after Sunday’s incident, said the entire area surrounding the golf course would have been secured if Mr. Trump were a sitting president. Instead, the would-be assassin managed to hold up in the bushes for 12 hours waiting for Mr. Trump, according to the FBI.

“If he was [a sitting president], we would have had the entire golf course surrounded,” Sheriff Bradshaw said. “Well, because he’s not, the security is limited to the areas that the Secret Service deems possible.”

The House is set to vote on a bill later this week that would mandate presidential and vice presidential nominees receive the same level of protection as a sitting president. 

Mr. Kelly said the vote is still worth having even though Mr. Trump has been given that additional protection, which he acknowledged may still not satisfy all the critics. 

“If you hear Secret Service talk … they’re pretty short on people,” he said. “I’m not sure that we can ever cover all the expectations. I think we do the best we can do, but I also think that there are limitations to what you can do.”

Task force members said their main takeaway from the briefing was how different the security posture was for the Butler rally, where the first attempt occurred, compared to Sunday’s incident at Mr. Trump’s golf club. 

“From the Secret Service’s standpoint, they’ve already been through this once, and they were heavily criticized for what they didn’t do,” Mr. Kelly said, adding that the agency has made adjustments.

He also pointed out that the two assassination attempts occurred in vastly different venues. The Butler incident was at a campaign rally with thousands of people, while the Florida incident was on a private golf course. 

“In Butler, Pennsylvania, you had a series of cascading security failures and things that were supposed to happen that didn’t happen,” Mr. Crow said. “In this instance, it appears as though things went as they were supposed to go, that they followed procedures, that the security bubble around the former president actually followed him.”

The task force is planning to expand the scope of its investigation to include the Florida assassination attempt, but that will require a vote of the House to update the resolution that established the panel.

Mr. Kelly and Mr. Crow said they are aiming to hold the task force’s first public hearing next week on the security failures in Butler with witnesses from local law enforcement, but the schedule remains in flux. 

“The initial stages of our investigation has been on local law enforcement,” Mr. Crow said. “Those have been the transcribed interviews we’ve been conducting over the last couple of weeks and the focus of our document requests and productions.”

Mr. Kelly said the goal is also to release an interim report next week providing updates on the task force’s investigation. Mr. Crow was unaware of plans for a report, which House Speaker Mike Johnson had announced publicly in a Fox News interview on Monday. 

The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is also planning to release a preliminary report next week on its investigation into the Butler assassination attempt.