President Biden has dropped months of resistance and agreed to grant Secret Service safety to impartial presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. following the assassination try in opposition to former President Donald Trump.
Homeland Safety Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas introduced the transfer on the common White Home press briefing Monday after Trump was grazed with a bullet at a Saturday rally.
“In mild of this weekend’s occasions, the president has directed me to work with the Secret Service to supply safety to Robert Kennedy Jr,” Mayorkas mentioned.
Hours earlier, former President Donald Trump demanded that Kennedy obtain Secret Service safety, calling it the “proper factor to do.”
“In mild of what is going on in the world immediately, I imagine it’s crucial that Robert F. Kennedy Jr. obtain Secret Service protection — instantly,” the 78-year-old former president wrote on Reality Social.
“Given the historical past of the Kennedy Household, that is the plain proper factor to do!” he added.
Trump’s demand got here two days after he was left bloodied by a sniper’s bullet that struck his ear throughout a rally in Butler, Pa.
The gunman, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, killed one rally-goer and left two others critically wounded earlier than he was shot and killed by authorities.
Kennedy Jr, whose father and uncle were assassinated within the Nineteen Sixties, has made repeated requests for Secret Service safety since launching his bid for the White Home – first as a Democrat and later as an impartial – however he has been denied by the Biden administration.
A “protective intelligence assessment” performed by the Secret Service and obtained by Judicial Watch, a authorities watchdog group, final September confirmed that the company decided Kennedy Jr., was at an elevated “danger for antagonistic consideration” however nonetheless denied him a protecting safety element.
The Secret Service is allowed to guard main presidential and vice presidential candidates, recognized as such by the secretary of Homeland Safety, inside 120 days of a presidential election.
Calls have grown for Kennedy Jr., to obtain Secret Service safety within the aftermath of Saturday’s Trump rally taking pictures.
Reps. Mike Lawler (R-NY) and Ritchie Torres (D-NY) introduced Sunday that they plan to introduce bipartisan laws that would offer “enhanced Secret Service safety” to Kennedy Jr., Trump and President Biden.
“Something much less could be a disservice to our democracy,” they mentioned in a statement.
Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has additionally urged Biden to grant Kennedy Jr.’s request for cover.
“I encourage [Biden] to instantly present secret service safety for [Kennedy Jr.]” Polis wrote on X Saturday.
The impartial candidate’s uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963, and his father, then-presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, was fatally shot in 1968.
