Secret Service faces more scrutiny after 2nd apparent attempt on Trump's life

The Secret Service is once again facing fallout and scrutiny after the second apparent attempt on former President Trump’s life in just over two months. Amna Nawaz discussed the latest developments with Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post and author of “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.”

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Amna Nawaz: The White House says that President Biden spoke with Trump and conveyed his relief that the former president is safe.

Let’s look a little deeper now at the challenges facing the Secret Service.

Late today, acting Director Ronald Rowe again vowed to take a hard look at the agency’s strategy and procedures after the latest threat to former President Trump.

Ronald Rowe: The Secret Service’s protective methodologies work, and they are sound, and we saw that yesterday. But the way we are positioned right now in this dynamic threat environment, it has given me guidance to say, you know what, we need to look at what our protective methodology is. We need to get out of a reactive model and get to a readiness model.

Amna Nawaz: For more now, we’re joined by Carol Leonnig, investigative reporter with “The Washington Post,” and the author of “Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service.”

Carol, good to see you.

Let’s just start with what we learned from the acting director there this afternoon. The suspect here did not have a line of sight to former President Trump, never fired his weapon. So what are you hearing from your Secret Service sources?

Do they consider this a success?

Carol Leonnig, The Washington Post: They do consider it a success in one respect, Amna, and that is that this gunman never got a shot off at the agents or at President — former President Trump, and that’s a lot better than what happened on July 13.

In other words, they had a heavy contingent of agents with Trump while he was golfing on Sunday, people that were on the lookout for problems in the fairways and in the brushes and in the woods ahead of him, a hole ahead of him, and people, agents behind him, making sure there was nobody lurking behind Trump as he golfed.

And that extra presence ended up being extremely successful, in that an agent who was assigned to Trump’s protection was a few hundred yards ahead of him before he was golfing and was able to spot this gunman and a barrel poking through the fence line.

But what I’m also hearing is that Director Rowe is very concerned about the safety of Donald Trump going in through this election. Two times now in nine weeks, he has been the subject or the target of a gunman with a long rifle and a semiautomatic, and that is really disturbing.

There are big questions about whether or not the service can protect him on an enormous field that is called the golf course, especially when it is porous, unsecured, and not on a military base, as some of the places where President Obama and President Reagan used to golf.

Amna Nawaz: Carol, as you heard my colleague Laura report there, the Palm Beach County sheriff noted, if Trump were a sitting president, the security presence would be different. You noted the success in this particular case, that no shots fired, he remained unharmed, but has former President Trump’s detail changed at all since the last assassination attempt? And should it change moving forward?

Carol Leonnig: It absolutely has changed since July 13.

I’m told that he had a contingent with him on Sunday that was — at least a Secret Service contingent with him that was equivalent to the protection level for a president.

What’s different, of course, is that they didn’t close off streets, the public streets that sort of border this golf course in West Palm Beach, and that might have been done, or that might have been temporarily done for some fairways that he was playing through that are very close to these roadways.

A gunman, if he had been more successful, would have been tens of feet or dozens of feet from Trump if he had not been spotted ahead of time. And if he had been president, those roadways may not have had the same kind of access to the gunman who actually sort of camped out there, as far as we can tell, for 12 hours before Donald Trump arrived.

Amna Nawaz: You have long reported on what you have learned from your sources about the resources issue, the personnel and staffing issues within the Secret Service.

You heard the acting director there talk about wanting more resources from Congress, but also moving from a reactive to a readiness model. What does that mean and what would it take?

Carol Leonnig: So, first off, I just want to underscore how dramatic it is what acting Director Rowe said. There has been no director of the Secret Service who has suggested there was anything that needed fixing in the protective model or suggested that the Secret Service was more reactive than proactive.

In the 10 years since I covered a series of huge security lapses and gaffes, no Secret Service director has said anything but, my guys did a great job against terrible odds, some paraphrase of that shape. It is a very, very big deal what acting Director Rowe said today, that he wants to review how the protective model works and rethink it and where it may not be working well.

He’s also the first director to say publicly — and he didn’t say as much about this today, but he has said this in other settings that I have been hearing about privately. He’s the first director in those 10 years to say, we are going to need a lot more money. We are going to — we cannot — as he said it today, we cannot continue to do more with less.

And that’s an acknowledgement that just isn’t part of the Secret Service’s DNA. They’re always of the mind — and I have met many directors. They’re always of the mind, hey, boss, we got this, we got your back, everything’s fine.

This is the first time I’m hearing a director say either of these two things.

Amna Nawaz: Carol, in the 30 seconds or so I have left, how worried are the Secret Service sources you talk to about continued attempts against either former President Trump’s life or any of the other candidates?

Carol Leonnig: Extremely worried.

After July 13, there was a great concern about copycats, somebody trying to repeat what Matthew Crooks did in Butler, Pennsylvania. The fact that this has happened again only ratchets up the anxiety level. It only makes them convinced that it could happen tomorrow or next week.

Amna Nawaz: Carol Leonnig of The Washington Post joining us tonight.

Carol, thank you so much. Good to speak with you.

Carol Leonnig: You too.