A Secret Service Story

The Secret Service has come under attack for its laxity, especially in connection with the first Trump assassination attempt. Some have speculated that the Service, or some of its members, are deliberately exposing Trump to danger. I heard an anecdote yesterday that suggests the problem is incompetence, not political bias.

It came from Minnesota State Senator Jeff Howe. I do a weekly segment, each Thursday, on Al Travis’s radio show, which is broadcast across Greater Minnesota. Jeff Howe usually precedes me. Yesterday, on Al’s show, Howe related the following story, which happened last Friday.

A former Tim Walz commissioner died, and his funeral was held in remote northern Minnesota. Howe knew the decedent well, had worked with him in the Minnesota National Guard, and attended the funeral. There was a visitation starting at 9:00, with the funeral at 11:00. Howe thought that Governor Walz really ought to attend the funeral of a former commissioner, but didn’t expect that he would, given the remoteness of the location and Walz’s unpopularity in rural Minnesota.

Howe attended the visitation, and at around 10:30, he and 75 to 100 others entered the church to await the start of the funeral. His prediction was wrong: Tim Walz did show up, a little later, accompanied by the Secret Service. Howe observed that once they arrived, the Secret Service agents began wanding those who entered the church. But they never did anything about the 75 to 100 who were already inside the church when they showed up. No effort whatsoever was made to assure security with respect to those people.

This was particularly striking to Senator Howe because he was carrying at the time. Given the location, it is likely that others who attended the funeral, and were already inside the church when the Secret Service arrived, were also armed.

This is the kind of absurd failure of security that typified the Secret Service’s actions in Butler, Pennsylvania: the most obvious security precautions were not taken. This time, the protectee was a Democrat.

It seems to me that, on the evidence of the last few months, Secret Service agents are in some cases–many cases, it looks like–just going through the motions. This agency, like a number of federal agencies, needs a thorough shakeup.

You can listen to Senator Howe on the Al Travis show on Facebook, here. The Secret Service story starts at around 3:43.

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