Ex-FBI agent: Secret Service likely didn’t 'have resources' to secure Trump rally as RNC was main focus
Former FBI special agent Clint Watt on Sunday explained the obstacles Secret Service currently faces in its efforts to protect not only President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump as they both pursue reelection, but possibly even "all candidates nationwide."
Speaking with Watt on the latest episode of MSNBC's The Weekend, co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend noted that "interviews with former agents, in an NBC News review of documents and reports revealed that there is an agency struggling to retain agents and keep pace with the threats," adding, "That's what the Secret Service is."
The MSNBC host asked Watt, "So what can be mitigated here? What can be done? Because I think there's two things on the table: One is what happened in Butler (County, Pennsylvania), and who's going to answer for that from the Secret Service perspective, and how can they prevent that from happening again. And then there is a question of what resources does the Secret Service need to adequately do its job? Because they are protecting all of the living former presidents, the current president and vice president and their families. This is an extensive apparatus here on top of the other duties that the Secret Service does."
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The ex-FBI official replied, "In terms of staffing, it does not explain why that building was not in the perimeter or not secured. I think we will find that that's a failure. But across the board, you are looking at the number of current and former presidents, plus all of the candidates around the country in particularly violent times. If you just rewind the last five years, there are more threats likely to any and maybe all candidates, nationwide. That's just going to put an increased demand overall on all line horsemen to protect these individuals doing activities as part of their campaign."
Watt continued, "I think the second part of it is the outdoor versus indoor dynamic. You've already heard a lot of discussion from the Secret Service about how hard it is to secure outdoor locations, and keep the principal protected. And this all came at the time when the RNC was probably the principal focus of the Secret Service, during that time leading up to when President Trump was shot. So, you add all of that together and it is a perfect storm for something to fall down all the way."
He concluded, "And I think that is what we will find out at these hearings is, there are just a lot of priorities and moving pieces and this is a situation where they didn't adequately secure this, and probably didn't have the resources to do it."
Watch the video below or at this link.
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