A U.S. Secret Service agent mans his post before former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a press conference at Trump National Golf Club Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. on Sept. 13.ROBYN BECK/AFP/Getty Images
The second apparent attempt on Donald Trump’s life in as many months is reviving long-standing calls to increase the budget of the Secret Service, the agency responsible for protecting sitting and former U.S. presidents, their families, and visiting world leaders.
But there are significant obstacles both to increasing spending and ensuring that it results in better protection for the former president in the less than seven weeks before the Nov. 5 election.
Details of the latest alleged assassination attempt, meanwhile, reveal both apparent gaps in the Secret Service’s procedures and the sheer difficulty of protecting Mr. Trump during one of his favourite activities.
Earlier this week, Ronald Rowe, the Secret Service’s acting director, said the Republican presidential nominee’s Sunday trip to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., was an “off-the-record movement” not planned ahead of time, suggesting agents did not search the course in advance. “He wasn’t supposed to have gone there in the first place.”
This would explain why bodyguards did not spot the alleged gunman, Ryan Routh, who police say hid in the bushes on the course’s periphery for nearly 12 hours, until Mr. Trump was in the middle of his game. When the Secret Service opened fire, he fled without firing a shot. Mr. Routh was tracked down and arrested 70 kilometres away.
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
I-95
Detail
Trump International
Golf Club
Fla.
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS;
OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
I-95
Detail
Trump International
Golf Club
Fla.
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS;
OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
Trump assassination attempt in Florida
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was safe after what the FBI said appeared to be an assassination attempt on Sunday while he was golfing on his course in West Palm Beach, Fla. The suspect was apprehended about 65 km away.
Palm Beach Int’l Airport
Fla.
Detail
I-95
Mar-a-Lago
Trump's Florida
residence
Trump International
Golf Club
1 km
Trump was playing
hole 5
5
S. Congress Ave.
4
6
7
8
Summit Blvd.
THE GLOBE AND MAIL, SOURCE: REUTERS; OPENSTREETMAP; GRAPHIC NEWS; GOOGLE EARTH
Mr. Rowe, who became acting director when his predecessor resigned over the July attempt on Mr. Trump’s life, said his agency has a history of lacking resources: “We have done more with less for decades,” he told a media briefing.
Bill Gage, a former Secret Service agent, said funding was so squeezed at one point in the 2000s that the agency’s then-head flew in economy class on commercial flights while the FBI director had a private plane.
Election season puts even more of a strain on the department, he said. The Secret Service must manage security for the Republican and Democratic nominating conventions and other major events, in addition to following candidates on the campaign trail and doing its usual job of protecting the president and other officials.
Suspect in apparent Trump assassination attempt has long history of trouble with the law
“You combine all of that together with an agency that’s chronically understaffed and, at some point, something’s got to give,” Mr. Gage said in an interview. “In a perfect world, they’d say, ‘Trump’s going golfing, we’re going to put 500 agents on the course.’ But that’s not the reality.”
Also complicating matters is that the Secret Service has a double mandate, he said. In addition to executive protection, it is also in charge of conducting investigations into some types of financial crimes, a holdover from the agency’s original purpose in the 1860s of fighting counterfeiting.
Both Democratic and Republican congressional legislators said this week they were prepared to increase the Secret Service’s budget as part of a government funding bill currently under negotiation.
“Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Secret Service and all law enforcement have the resources they need,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on the floor.
Republican Senator Susan Collins added: “Nobody’s going to want to deny the Secret Service the funding that it needs as long as it justifies it.”
U.S. Secret Service ‘needs more help’ after second Trump gunman, Biden says
The funding package, however, is still mired in horse-trading. Even if Congress sets the money aside, it might be administratively difficult for the agency to spend it in time to make a difference before the election.
Ronald Layton, a former Secret Service manager, said that budgeting within the agency works in three-year cycles, which might be why Mr. Trump did not have more protection. Such financial planning affects staffing and equipment, from guns to drones.
“The Secret Service in 2021 had to project three years into the future for resourcing and staffing needs,” he said in an interview. “There is no way in the world they would have been able to project the threat picture we’re seeing now.”
Funds aside, Mr. Layton said, the Secret Service will have to rethink how it handles off-the-record movements, or OTRs.
“The idea from a security posture is that, if the protectee goes at the last second, the bad guy doesn’t know you’re going to be there, and that offers some protection,” he said. “But the OTR in this particular event was not really random because Trump plays golf at his course all the time.”
Indeed, Mr. Routh’s alleged daylong stakeout of the golf course suggests that he may have simply guessed that Mr. Trump, whose Mar-a-Lago estate is nearby, was likely to spend time on Sunday at his club. The former president has long spent weekends at the many golf courses he owns, many of which are visible from nearby streets.
Much of the problem is also the inherent difficulty in protecting such a large outdoor space adjacent to public streets as Mr. Trump’s golf courses are, said Mr. Gage: it’s not realistic to shut down city blocks for three hours every time Mr. Trump wants to play a round.
“We live in a free democracy. We’re not a surveillance state like Russia or China,” he said. “People imagine there’s a mile-wide perimeter, agents with scanner glasses with access to a DNA database of everyone in the area, co-ordinating with missile-carrying drones, but it’s just not like that. Protecting a president is not like the movies.”