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Incidents like Sunday’s assassination attempt on President Donald Trump show that the Secret Service is becoming increasingly understaffed, making it harder for the agency to respond adequately to potential dangers, two former Secret Service employees told Business Insider.
At a press conference on Monday discussing the incident, the acting director of the Secret Service called for “tough conversations with Congress.”
The former president was unharmed on Sunday when the Secret Service discovered a gunman hiding among the trees surrounding Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach and opened fire. The suspect fled the scene unharmed, but was identified and detained by police shortly after the incident thanks to a description provided by a witness.
On July 14, Trump had one close call after being injured during a campaign rally when a suspect on a rooftop overlooking the rally fired a rifle into the crowd, killing one rally attendee and wounding two. A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the suspect in the July incident.
Kenneth Valentine, a former Secret Service special agent who served under three presidents, told Business Insider that security was stepped up around the former president after the July incident and that the Secret Service faced intense scrutiny for failing to prevent the shooting. Valentine said Sunday’s near miss was too close for agents to be on high alert.
“Did they not have the time, or the assets or the resources, to clear that tree beforehand and notify the police?” Valentine said. “To me, it seems like it was a great business.”
Continuing to handle financial operations
Valentine and Jeffrey James, a 22-year veteran of the Secret Service, told BI that the agency has struggled with staffing and adequate resources since it came under the Department of Homeland Security in 2003.
Founded in 1865, the agency was previously under the Treasury Department and was tasked with fighting counterfeit goods. Though the Secret Service no longer reports to the Treasury Department, its agents maintain investigative responsibilities regarding credit card fraud and cybercrime.
“I believe the Secret Service should give up all of that and become the executive protection arm of the Department of Homeland Security,” James said. “If it were up to me, I would ask them to eliminate all investigations except for investigations of threats against people under Secret Service protection.”
Instead, Valentine and James said they believe agents are overstretched, working extraordinary overtime and experiencing incredibly high turnover in the field, and that the Secret Service can’t keep up.
“In my career, we’ve never had a full team,” James said, “we were always playing from behind, so we were always behind.”
James said in his experience, many agents left the Secret Service before retirement, which is normal in any field if they decide the job isn’t for them, “but because we were a very small agency, it really took a toll on us.”
“Someone who drives the presidential limousine was driving for so many hours a day that if they were driving a Walmart truck, they would be told to park the truck and not drive,” James said, adding that the agents had been driving for so long that it was no longer safe for them or their passengers.
Message from the President
Valentine said if you talk to senior leaders, they’ll tell you the agency has been hiring at a faster rate than all previous years combined.
“And that’s, well, it certainly is, but tell me about your turnover rate,” Valentine said.
Police officers have a Sisyphean job, working long hours, including weekends and holidays, sacrificing personal time and risking their lives to protect the country’s most prominent people. Salaries start at just under $70,000 a year, according to a 2021 survey. Salary level.
When reached for comment, a Secret Service representative pointed Business Insider to comments made by Acting Director of the Secret Service Ronald Lowe at a press conference on Monday following the second security incident involving President Trump. In his remarks, Lowe suggested that Secret Service leadership is aware of employee burnout.
“We have immediate needs. We have future needs,” Rowe said of the countersniper training the department is petitioning Congress for approval. “We also need to make sure we can retain the personnel we have. And that means we need to have the funding to be able to hire more personnel.”
Rowe added: “You can’t just give us money and say, ‘We’re going to make sure everybody works overtime,’ because right now Secret Service agents are working below minimum wage.”
According to the agency statisticsThe Secret Service employs approximately 3,600 special agents, including 1,600 uniformed officers and about 2,000 administrative and support personnel. Total BudgetAssigned to the Secret Service in 2024 $3.27 billion — An increase of less than $400,000 from 2022 onwards.
Secret Service officials are “rising to this moment,” Rowe said, but added, “We have to do it every day. We can’t afford to fail. And we’re going to have some tough conversations with Congress to get there, and we’re going to get there.”