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The US Secret Service on Friday said the country was in a “hyperdynamic threat environment”, as it admitted “complacency” during the first of two apparent assassination attempts against Donald Trump in recent months.
The agency, which is charged with protecting presidential candidates, identified communication flaws in its handling of Trump’s security at a rally in July in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman shot at the Republican candidate and killed a spectator.
The scrutiny on the Secret Service intensified this week after agents halted an apparent second assassination attempt on Sunday in Florida.
“In today’s hyperdynamic threat environment, the mission of the Secret Service is clear: we cannot afford to fail,” Secret Service acting director Ronald Rowe said. The “threat is not going to evaporate anytime soon”.
Rowe said that since the shooting in Pennsylvania, presidential candidates have been receiving the same level of Secret Service protection as US President Joe Biden.
The apparent second assassination attempt on Trump this week “demonstrates that the threat environment in which the secret service operates is tremendous and under constant threat, and we’ve been in this heightened and increasingly dynamic threat environment since July 13”, the date of the Butler rally, Rowe added.
Trump’s ear was injured by gunfire while he was addressing supporters at the open-air event in western Pennsylvania. The former president was rushed offstage by agents shortly after the shooting.
Rowe acknowledged there had been “communication deficiencies” between law enforcement officials on the ground.
“There was complacency” among some members of the agency’s advance team that “led to a breach of security protocols”, he said, as he unveiled the findings of an internal review. These included not giving “clear guidance or direction to our local law enforcement partners”. The agency relies on local police to help shore up security when people it is protecting travel.
Rowe said an “overreliance” on sharing critical information on mobile devices, rather than the agency’s radio network, resulted in “information being siloed”.
The acting director’s comments come just days after Trump was the apparent target of another alleged assassin while the ex-president was golfing at his own club in West Palm Beach on September 15.
Secret Service agents spotted the rifle of the alleged gunman, Ryan Wesley Routh, before he could shoot, and opened fire. Routh fled the shrubbery bordering the golf course, but was detained on a highway shortly after. An FBI-led investigation is ongoing.
The Secret Service has bolstered protection of people it is guarding, but Rowe called for more resources for the agency, including personnel, to get the service from “a state of reaction to a state of readiness”.
Biden has signalled his support for getting Congress to allocate more funding for the Secret Service.