Part 1
What do you do when the protectee won’t listen to reason?
Tonight, the Washington Post is
reporting that early in his presidency, the Secret Service went to Trump to express concerns about their ability to protect him if he continued to golf at his own courses because of their proximity to public roads. The concern: “If photographers with long-range lenses could get the president in their sights while he golfed, so too could potential gunmen.” According to the Post, Trump responded that his golf courses were safe, and he wanted to keep playing golf on them.
Former presidents have smaller protection details after they leave the White House, which means less surveillance of an extended perimeter. The New York Times is reporting tonight that the detail did not search the entire perimeter of the course before Trump played, and President Biden called for Congress to increase the resources allocated to the Secret Service. But the headline here should be that the Secret Service did its job—the gunman didn’t get closer than 500 feet, about a football field and a half, to Trump. Trump wasn’t harmed; the would-be gunman didn’t get a shot off. That was so despite the fact that Trump’s outing had not been previously planned, which forced Secret Service agents “to work on the fly”—something they are loathe to do for precisely the reasons that materialized on Sunday.
The Post article recounts the story told by former Secret Service agent Joseph Petro, that after an armed man forced his way in and took hostages while President Reagan was playing at Augusta National, Reagan gave up golfing on public courses. He restricted his hobby to a single private course owned by friends. Petro wrote in his book that Reagan “said that he was giving up golf purposely because he was concerned about putting other people at unnecessary risk.”
There is also a larger concern: How did Ryan Wesley Routh, a convicted felon with a long criminal history and a history of mental illness, get his hands on an SKS rifle with a scope? More details about that are likely to come out, because the Justice Department charged Routh earlier today in connection with the incident.
The District Attorney in Palm Beach, Dave Aronberg, told me “We were preparing warrants and a motion for pre-trial detention when the local U.S. Attorney's Office told me that they were going to pursue charges in this case. As with any case, when the feds assert jurisdiction, we defer to them. There are no turf wars in our community with our federal partners, and when it comes to an investigation into an attempted assassination of a former President, they are best equipped to lead it.”
Routh was charged by complaint with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and possession of a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
What do you do when the protectee won’t listen to reason?
joycevance.substack.com