The series of events in early July illustrates the extraordinary challenges facing the Secret Service as it attempts to protect Trump.
Just before Donald Trump held a rally in Doral, Fla., on July 9, Secret Service officials delivered his campaign a message: The former president and his advisers would notice additional security because the U.S. government had credible intelligence of threats against him.Days later, a Pakistani national was arrested during an FBI sting after allegedly taking part in a murder-for-hire plot on behalf of Iran targeting a politician or government official on U.S. soil.
Trump aides say they had sometimes been forced to cancel or reschedule events when aides felt the venues were not going to be sufficiently secure. They described repeatedly being denied pleas for more snipers, bomb-sniffing dogs, magnetometers and specialty teams to protect Trump, often because agency higher-ups said extra resources were not available. Trump and his campaign have a close relationship with his security detail.
“We were totally shocked we could just walk in the bar and sit down right next to him,” a person who played there in 2023 said. “We didn’t go through mags, we didn’t do anything. We just finished our round and walked right over and sat next to him in the clubhouse and had lunch. You could just walk over to his table. It was pretty surprising to all of us.
“Over the years, the U.S. Secret Service has continuously invested in security enhancements at former president Trump’s residences, including those in Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, and Bedminster, New Jersey,” the agency said in a statement. “For operational security reasons, the Secret Service does not discuss the specific costs used to conduct our protective responsibilities.”
“There was a general concern that living in basically a hotel is not something the Secret Service ever had to deal with before,” said John Bolton, his former national security adviser. “It’s unnatural to what they have dealt with for presidents over the years.” Secret Service officials were privately frustrated because they spent millions of dollars preparing to protect Trump Tower in New York after he became president, but then he rarely went there.
Bill Gage, a former Secret Service agent who worked on presidential protection during the Obama and George W. Bush administrations, said some presidents and former presidents are unusually difficult to protect because of their insistence on being in the public eye on a frequent basis, as Trump does.
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