Trump’s Funding Freeze Does Not Include Presidential Protection
Funds for me but not for thee
The Trump administration’s various suspensions and freezes on federal funding do not apply to presidential security, according to a Friday memo I obtained.
The memo, prepared by the General Services Administration, which oversees the federal infrastructure, is just one of a number that exempts the protection of President Trump and Vice President Vance, according to intelligence sources I spoke with.
Titled “acquisition pause,” the January 24 GSA memo cites a short list of exceptions, beginning with: “Actions to support the President, Vice-President and the Secret Service in ensuring security [at] any dollar.”
Though the document itself does not go into further detail, there is marked concern about the president and vice president’s safety. As one former senior intelligence official revealed to me, the Secret Service has significantly increased Trump and Vance’s protective detail, well beyond the 300 or so Secret Service agents and support personnel typically assigned to the president and vice president.
The number includes the so-called “close-in” agents that are Trump and Vance’s bodyguards, but there are also a considerable number of uniformed guards, counter-sniper, counter-assault, and counter-surveillance teams, as well as people in charge of logistics and administration.
Trump was, of course, the target of two assassination attempts — including one which the Secret Service failed to prevent, prompting the resignation of its Director — so concerns about his security are reasonable. But what isn’t clear is if more funding actually makes him safer. Only about half of the Secret Service’s 8,000 personnel are assigned to protection operations, with many assigned to all sorts of protectees who aren’t the president: foreign dignitaries, heads of state, the White House Press Secretary and the U.S. Trade Representative, for some reason.
The other half of Secret Service personnel are spread across a sprawling mission ranging from investigating unemployment fraud to providing security for the Olympics, as I’ve previously written about. Since writing that story, an independent panel and a House of Representatives task force have called on the Secret Service to refocus more of its mission on protective work.
The Secret Service doesn’t divulge how much its spends specifically for presidential protection, but about one-third of its $3 billion plus budget goes towards overall protection operations. (The Secret Service’s budget has more than doubled in the past decade.)
Secret Service funding seems to go up every time it fails. The agency’s budget ballooned after a man climbed over the White House fence and made it to the front doors in 2014 during the Obama administration. Since then, it has received about 25 percent more funding to get to its current $3 billion. After the Trump assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service got an additional $231 million from Congress.
Even as some members of Congress call for removing the agency’s financial crimes investigations, the steady flow of cash never seems to let up. Not even when Trump is in charge. But then, the White House has made it clear to the federal agencies that any restrictions on spending should not include any services that are provided to the president himself.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
Of course not. The other people can suffer, but I'm Yertle the Turtle, king of all I survey.
Watch out for that mud landing, Yertle. Nothing lasts forever
The hypocrisy observed in this post is unfortunately par for the course in Washington, and enjoys entirely too many bipartisan reflections.
Consider the Democratic Party's leadership in the House, which has long denied even a public debate over healthcare policy while Members of Congress enjoy some of the best healthcare available. It pains me personally, having dedicated years to trying to force a long overdue debate that never happened. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/i/151523320/how-far-weve-fallen
The party's longstanding corruption is much of why it fared so poorly in November's election. Of course, the active complicity of leading Democrats who put Trump back in office didn't help. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/7-ways-democrats-made-donald-trump
Ultimately, observing the shameless hypocrisy of the White House might risk the same pattern, by insinuating that Democrats aren't guilty of the same patterns. The most glaring example that comes to mind is Biden's presidential pardon of his son, Hunter, while any number of more worthy subjects were never granted pardons. Democrats are no less corrupt—or beholden to white supremacy—than Republicans. https://shahidbuttar.substack.com/p/local-corruption-enabling-corporate
I wish these circumstances were different, but they demand observation however inconvenient they may be. And I share these reflections not as an armchair quarterback, but only after having run for Congress myself in three election cycles, winning a top-two primary to face a quintessential dynasty Democrat, and then securing over 80,000 votes in the 2020 general election despite enduring the most racist experience of my life at the hands of her supporters—in the bluest city in America, at that.