USSS makes pitch for more resources while Congress seeks to hold them responsible
By Annie Grayer and Zachary Cohen, CNN
(CNN) — Acting USSS Director Ronald Rowe has made a concerted effort to put himself front and center after Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt at Donald Trump’s Florida golf course, as he makes his pitch, both publicly and privately, for Congress to provide his agency with more resources.
But lawmakers are still contending with whether the Secret Service is underfunded or simply mismanaged, and many have questions about what meaningful security improvements can be made 48 days before the presidential election to an organization under whose watch two apparent assassination attempts have occurred against a former president roughly 60 days apart.
Connecticut Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy, chair of the Senate appropriations subcommittee of DHS, said his panel has asked the Secret Service to “get creative” in its requests for additional resources, adding that “they can’t hire new Secret Service agents to make a difference between now and the inauguration.”
Murphy said that Senate appropriators have asked the agency to look at additional overtime costs as one option, and that the Secret Service has “come to us with some good ideas,” citing technology like drones.
One possibility being discussed, according to sources, is to include additional funding to the government funding extension, which needs to pass by September 30. Senate appropriators and the Biden administration are in talks about how much money to add to the upcoming stopgap bill for USSS, telling CNN it could be “hundreds of millions of dollars” to plus-up their budget, or it could be language allowing the agency to spend its existing money faster.
There is an uneasiness, however, about providing more money to an agency, whose budget has increased in the past decade, that has not been fully held accountable or shown that the issues that led to both apparent assassination attempts have been fixed.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that discussions about funding for the agency are still ongoing, telling reporters, “We’re looking at that. I think it’s a matter of manpower allocation and we don’t just want to throw more money at a broken system.”
Florida GOP Rep. Michael Waltz, a member of the bipartisan House task force investigating the apparent assassination attempts, told CNN, “You don’t get to have these type of spectacular, once in a generation failures and then say, ‘Well, I need more money.’”
How Rowe navigates that tension, coupled with how he responds to the onslaught of requests from Capitol Hill, will largely define his tenure as acting director, a role he assumed less than two months ago after his former boss was forced to resign for her handling of the first Trump assassination attempt.
While members of the bipartisan task force say the Secret Service has so far been relatively cooperative, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who is leading the Senate’s investigation into the first assassination attempt of Trump in July said he is “on the verge of outrage” and Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri told reporters that the agencies are “stonewall(ing) lawmakers” in the wake of the second apparent attempt.
As conversations about allocating more funding remain ongoing, there is also an acknowledgement that the way the Secret Service communicates both internally and with external partners needs a major overhaul, with key questions still remaining unanswered.
The House task force created to investigate the assassination attempt against Trump at his July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman was able to fire eight rounds at the former president, is working behind the scenes to expand its probe to also include Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt.
The bipartisan group is working with the speaker’s office to broaden its narrow jurisdiction to include both apparent attempts, lawmakers say. And the panel has already requested a full briefing with the Department of Justice and FBI by the end of this week on top of continuing their ongoing investigation into the first assassination attempt against Trump.
As lawmakers press for accountability and answers, many remain in disbelief that the nation’s top protective agency has now found itself in this position twice.
“Two fails in 60 days. If the Secret Service thought there was a microscope on them before, then this obviously is going to double that,” said Florida Democratic Rep. Jared Moskowitz, who serves on the task force.
“Little did any of us think that while serving on a task force that no one thought would ever have to be created that we would be dealing with a second attempt 60 days later,” he added.
Rowe is aware of the stakes, particularly with the looming presidential election that could determine whether he has a chance to remain in the role longer term.
Rep. Madeleine Dean, who serves on the House task force, told CNN she was impressed by Rowe’s directness when he met with lawmakers on Friday and made a direct pitch for Congress to provide the agency with more resources.
“I felt very impressed by his command of the issues and his candor,” the Pennsylvania Democrat said. “Being honest to say, we own this.”
“He is currently running a really good PR campaign but, at the same time, whitewashing his own culpability in the problems that persist today,” a former Secret Service official familiar with the agency’s current internal dynamics told CNN.
“He’s engaging in crisis manipulation,” the former Secret Service official added, noting that while Rowe has spent the last 10 years at the service in positions where he was at least in the room for strategy conversations, if not making decisions, that were negative to the service and led to the staffing challenges it currently faces.
How Rowe is trying to show USSS has learned
Rowe has by no means escaped the ire of congressional lawmakers, but there are already signs that the acting director is applying certain lessons from the fallout of his predecessor, Kimberly Cheatle, who was director of the Secret Service at the time of the July rally, and subsequently resigned after bipartisan blowback for failing to provide any substantive answers about what happened during a hearing on Capitol Hill.
Rowe has seemingly attempted to make himself visible in the wake of Sunday’s apparent assassination attempt, deploying immediately to West Palm Beach where he met with the former president in person and met with law enforcement officials on the ground.
Rowe’s first public appearance following the second incident was a press conference on Monday with law enforcement partners where he praised the response by the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners but also acknowledged the need for a “paradigm shift” at the agency.
The public show of force led by Rowe stands in stark contrast to the finger-pointing that occurred in the immediate aftermath of Trump’s July 13 rally, when the Secret Service appeared to initially blame local law enforcement for the security breakdown that occurred that day.
Local law enforcement partners who also addressed the media Monday reiterated that they were able to work with the Secret Service to stop the potential shooter before he fired a round at the former president – actions, they said, even earned praise from Trump himself.
“The president called me last night, President Trump, he thanked me for everything that we did along with the Secret Service. He knows we work great together. And he feels safe,” Sheriff Ric Bradshaw of Palm Beach County sheriff’s office told reporters.
“That’s important because he is, and what we did yesterday proves that the system can work because the suspect didn’t even get close to getting a round off, and we apprehended him and brought them to justice,” he added.
Monday’s press conference also struck a radically different tone than Cheatle’s first public appearance days after the Butler rally shooting.
During an hourslong July hearing on Capitol Hill, Cheatle sat alone as House lawmakers pressed her repeatedly for details about the shooting at Trump’s Butler rally and, one by one, expressed frustration with over her refusal to provide clear answers about the security failure that day – ultimately leading to a rare bipartisan agreement that she should resign from her post.
Since replacing Cheatle, Rowe has faced consistent pressure from lawmakers on both sides of the aisle to address the security failures from July 13 and calls for accountability within the service itself.
Rowe vowed to lawmakers on the bipartisan House task force last week that he would testify publicly at a later date.
During his own testimony on Capitol Hill in July, Rowe told Senate lawmakers he visited the scene of the first assassination attempt as one of his first actions as acting director “to better understand how our protection failed” and pledged transparency as the investigation into those security failures moved forward.
“Sunshine is the best disinfectant, and we intend to provide information to Congress as it carries out its oversight function,” he said at the time.
At the same time, Rowe has received public support from Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who on Tuesday praised the Secret Service’s response to the apparent attempted assassination of Trump over the weekend, saying the agency “did its job” and “eliminated a threat.”
“I most certainly do,” Mayorkas said when asked by a reporter if he agrees with the acting Secret Service director that the agency did an “exemplary” job in protecting Trump over the weekend. Mayorkas spoke at Politico’s AI & Tech Summit in Washington, DC.
While Rowe defended the Secret Service’s response to Sunday’s incident, he also reiterated his commitment to working with Congress to address the need for additional resources and the security gaps exposed by both assassination attempts.
Moskowitz told CNN, “I think we have to give him time. He is coming in and cleaning up somebody else’s mess. So it’s unfair to judge him.”
Waltz told CNN, “It has definitely improved since Cheatle’s resignation,” pointing to Rowe’s immediate trip to the site of the second apparent assassination attempt and promise to be forthcoming.
“But where I’d say that is also mixed is we have yet to see any accountability,” Waltz added.
While Rowe appears to be saying the right things in public and during closed-door briefings, it remains unclear if he has a plan to actually address the institutional problems raised by lawmakers – particularly given the looming uncertainty around the agency’s future budget.
Rowe told Trump Monday that substantial security enhancements needed to be made if he wanted to continue playing golf safely at his private clubs, three people familiar with the meeting told CNN.
The election outcome could result in wholesale changes atop the Secret Service’s leadership structure and Rowe is attempting to make himself as visible as possible in hopes he can remain in the job, the former Secret Service official said.
The former official pointed out that Rowe positioned himself directly behind Trump and President Joe Biden at the recent 9/11 memorial in New York, a position typically occupied by the head of operations on the former president’s detail.
“That is a really dangerous spot … where you’re basically in a kill zone,” the former official said. “But it’s also a position that’s close to Donald Trump and close to President Biden. He’s in every picture.”
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to accurately reflect the titles of US Sens. Richard Blumenthal, Chris Murphy and Josh Hawley.
CNN’s Manu Raju, Morgan Rimmer, Haley Talbot and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.
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