A pair of new bills aim to reshape the Secret Service 

The fallout from last month’s assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump continued to unfold on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, with a pair of new bills proposing major reforms for the Secret Service. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres, D-N.Y., introduced the Focus on Protection and AR-15 Perimeter Security Enhancement acts in response to the events of the July 13 incident at a Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump rally that caused the death of one bystander, critically injured two others and resulted in the death of shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks.   

The Focus on Protection Act would transfer the Secret Service’s authority to investigate financial crimes to the Treasury Department, potentially ending a mission that has been core to the agency since its inception in 1865, to allow it to focus its resources on providing protective services to the president, vice president and others.

The AR-15 Perimeter Security Enhancement Act would require the Secret Service director to ensure any security perimeter contains a radius of no less than 500 yards and “is co-extensive with the firing range of firearms likely to be used in an assassination attempt.”

The legislation also calls on the agency to secure all elevated positions where a potential assassination attempt could be made, defined as “any location that is above the primary security perimeter and provides a strategic advantage for targeting, including rooftops, balconies and elevated platforms.”

Torres said in a statement that legislation was necessary to prevent another potential disaster like the one seen in Pennsylvania. 

“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.”

The Secret Service has received intense scrutiny in the wake of the assassination attempt, especially from Congress. USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on July 23 after pressure from House Oversight and Accountability Committee leaders. 

A week later, House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., and Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, announced a 13-member bipartisan task force to investigate the incident. 

But Torres also noted that the Secret Service has strapped for resources lately that stretch its ability to meet its expansive mission. 

Agency leaders have acknowledged resource challenges dating back to 2013 federal budget cuts, though budgets have improved in recent years, alongside ongoing hiring difficulties.

For those reasons, Torres said it was necessary to shrink the size of the agency mission that the Secret Service was responsible for, thus ending its financial crimes investigation capabilities. 

"The Secret Service is responsible not only for presidential protection, but also for financial law enforcement, which is a vestige of the 19th century,” he said. “It seems to me that it should be exclusively focused on presidential protection, and we need legislation that moves financial law enforcement from the Secret Service to the Treasury Department — precisely where it belongs.”

Anthony Guglielmi, USSS chief of communications, said in an email to Government Executive that the agency doesn’t discuss proposed legislation, but did add that its investigative and protective missions “are deeply intertwined.”

“Our agents learn skills that are essential to our protective operations, such as threat detection, analysis and critical systems security, while working on criminal investigations. Similarly, the U.S. Secret Service’s domestic and international field offices are not only used as a network for conducting criminal investigations, but also facilitating protective visits and tracking down threats against our protectees,” he said. “The U.S. Secret Service’s investigative mission makes our protective operations stronger, and our agents are most successful when they are able to gain experience and learn from both missions.”

The Focus on Protection Act has been referred to the House Judiciary, Financial Services and Appropriations committees, while the AR-15 Perimeter Security Enhancement Act has been referred to the Judiciary Committee.