The Secret Service acknowledged Saturday that it had turned back some requests to increase security around former President Trump.
The Secret Service has acknowledged it denied some requests by the Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump campaign for increased security at his events in the years before the assassination attempt on him at a recent rally.
In the immediate aftermath of the July 13 attack, the law enforcement agency had denied rejecting such requests. But the Secret Service acknowledged late Saturday, a week after the attempt on Trump’s life, that it had turned back some requests to increase security around the former president.
The reversal is likely to be a key focus of a congressional hearing Monday where Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is expected to appear before lawmakers who have been expressing anger over security lapses that allowed a 20-year-old gunman to climb atop the roof of a nearby building at Trump’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and fire his weapon.
Trump was wounded in the right ear, one rallygoer was killed and two others were injured. Secret Service gunmen killed the shooter.
The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security lapses by the agency that has drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.
“The Secret Service has a vast, dynamic, and intricate mission. Every day we work in a dynamic threat environment to ensure our protectees are safe and secure across multiple events, travel, and other challenging environments,” the agency’s chief spokesperson, Anthony Guglielmi, said in a statement released late Saturday to The . The newspaper was first to report on the agency’s reversal, which it said was based on detailed questions submitted to the agency.
