Trump Assassination Investigation Creates Possible Secret Service Reorganization

WASHINGTON -- A U.S. House task force charged with investigating the July 13 assassination attempt against Donald Trump found a need for dramatic reforms to the U.S. Secret Service in an interim report released last week.

The report said the Secret Service's bureaucracy and complacency led it to overlook dangers that could have prevented the assassination attempt.

“The tragic and shocking events of July 13 were preventable and should not have happened,” the House task force’s report said.

An earlier report released this month suggested the possibility of decoupling the Secret Service from its dual role of investigating financial and cyber crimes while also protecting government officials.

The investigations -- such as for counterfeiting and fraud -- have stretched its resources too thin, according to the report. Instead, the Secret Service should focus only on protecting people.

If the suggestion is followed, it would be the biggest change in the Secret Service's history since Abraham Lincoln signed the authorization for it on the day he was shot in 1865.

Reports of Secret Service failures emerged from congressional hearings before the interim report last week. The more surprising issue was an accompanying report prepared by the Department of Homeland Security.

Its first recommendation for reform suggests “a re-focus on the Secret Service’s protective mission, to include an organizational restructuring placing the Office of Investigations and other operational support elements beneath the Office of Protective Operations.”

The Office of Protective Operations protects American political leaders and their families, foreign diplomats, key facilities and national events.

The Office of Investigations investigates threats to the same officials and sites but also monitors counterfeiting, financial scams and cyber threats.

The “re-focus” discussed in the Homeland Security Department report would downplay or eliminate the Secret Service emphasis on financial and cyber threats.

To keep high-level officials from harm, “the Service must ensure that its operations, training, budgeting, personnel, and all other critical organizational inputs are hyperfocused on its protective mission,” the report says.

“All assets should be allocated to that mission before any other tasks—including law enforcement responsibility for financial frauds, for example, or perhaps law enforcement duties entirely—are undertaken,” the report says.

Other services provided by the Secret Service should be made “subordinate” to protecting persons the report calls the “protectees.”

“As an additional means to increase the Service’s prioritization of its protective mission above all else, the Service shall implement a reorganization so that certain of its offices shall report directly to the Office of Protective Operations, which shall be elevated above them in the Service’s organizational structure,” the report says.

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