The ranking member for the House task force assembled to review the assassination attempts on President-elect Trump’s life said the Secret Service isn’t “developing” the skills or training for their employees.
“The structure, the personnel, the staffing of the Secret Service, hasn't changed in years, at the same time as we are now asking them to do things that they didn't do a decade ago,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) told CBS News’s Margaret Brennan in an interview that aired Sunday, which also featured the task force’s chair, Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.).
“And they are — they are fulfilling an operational tempo that requires them to be deployed three weeks out of a month, constantly doing events, skipping firearms training, skipping leadership development training,” he added. “We are not developing their skills and their training. And I think you see the results of that.”
On Thursday, Kelly and Crow's task force had its final meeting, during which the acting Secret Service director was grilled, and the vote to release a final report soon occurred.
In the wake of Trump facing assassination attempts amid his 2024 presidential campaign, the Secret Service has received intense scrutiny for its handling of the situation. The current acting Secret Service director, Ronald Rowe, stepped into the role after his predecessor resigned when lawmakers criticized her for a lack of transparency.
“When we talk about a failure of mission, you know, in Butler or any place else, that doesn't mean that, you know, 80, 90 percent of the — of the Secret Service agents aren't phenomenal and dedicated professionals,” Crow told Brennan. “But there is a systematic problem here.”
Kelly said during the “Face the Nation” interview that the Secret Service being put under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “took away their identity and their exclusivity.”
“They don’t have the leadership they need … when they morphed them into Homeland Security back in 2001 … whenever it was, they took away their identity and their exclusivity,” Kelly said.
Formerly part of the Department of the Treasury, the Secret Service became part of the DHS in 2003.
The Hill has reached out to the DHS and Secret Service for comment.
