By Steve Neavling
In the wake of the assassination attempt of former President Trump in July, the U.S. House is considering two bills aimed at reforming the Secret Service.
Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., introduced the two bills in response to the shooting at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania that clipped the former president’s ear, killed a bystander, and injured two others.
The Focus on Protection Act seeks to transfer the Secret Service’s financial crime investigations to the Treasury Department, a move that would allow the agency to focus on protecting the president, vice president and others. The Secret Service has been responsible for financial crimes since its inception in 1865.
Under the AR-15 Perimeter Security Enhancement Act, the Secret Service director would be required to ensure that any security perimeter extends at least 500 yards, matching the range of firearms potentially used in an assassination attempt.
The legislation also requires the agency to secure all elevated positions that could be used in an assassination attempt, defined as “any area above the main security perimeter that offers a strategic vantage point for targeting, such as rooftops, balconies, and elevated platforms.”
In a statement, Torres said the legislation is necessary to safeguard against future attacks.
“If the former president had moved ever so slightly, or the shooter had been more precise in his targeting, the former president would’ve been murdered,” he said. “The fact that we were only inches away from a national catastrophe is itself a crisis. We owe it to the American people to identify the security failures that led to the attempted assassination and then avoid repeating those failures in the future.”
