The Secret Service does more than protect the president — and presidential candidates

Agency's failure to prevent the attack on Donald Trump is drawing scrutiny. It shields officials and families, but also probes financial crimes.

In the aftermath of Saturday’s assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, attention is turning to the Secret Service and whether the agency should have done more to protect the Republican candidate.

Over the weekend, members of Congress introduced legislation to expand Secret Service protection for presidential candidates. The agency’s leadership said they will cooperate with congressional investigations of the shooting, in which a bullet struck Trump’s ear and a man attending Trump’s rally lost his life.

The Secret Service actually has something of a dual mandate, said Richard Forno, assistant director of the Center for Cybersecurity at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“Protecting the president is certainly their highest-profile job,” Forno said. And in addition to the president, vice president and their families, the service also protects former presidents, their families, high-ranking government officials and foreign dignitaries.

“But the Secret Service also has a long history in going after financial crimes, bank fraud, counterfeiting, credit card fraud, some cybersecurity-related things related to fraud,” Forno said.

Since there are more of those crimes nowadays, Forno said, the costs of those investigations have been going up, along with the size of the Secret Service’s budget.

Thomas Hyslip used to work for the Secret Service and now teaches in the department of criminology at the University of South Florida.

“In the last four years, the protective budget went up 20% and the investigation budget went up 12%,” Hyslip said. “A lot of that has to do with the increased threat level, large families and then the amount of travel.”

Hyslip said presidents and their families travel a lot more than they used to. Of the almost $3 billion President Joe Biden has requested for the 2025 Secret Service budget, Hyslip said about $1.3 billion would go to protection, and around $800 million for investigations.

Last year, the agency got what it requested and more. But Hyslip said he anticipates all these congressional investigations may prompt a fresh look into what the Secret Service is doing, versus what it should be doing.

“Should the Secret Service continue this dual mission role, or can their investigative missions go to a different agency and let the Secret Service focus exclusively on protection?” Hyslip said.

The House Oversight Committee has asked the head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, to testify at a special hearing next week.