- Trump's Secret Service detail could be forced to testify against him in future legal proceedings.
- He's facing possible criminal charges and civil peril now that he's lost his presidential immunity.
- Former agents are worried Trump's security detail could be drawn into legal proceedings.
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Former President Donald Trump is entitled to lifetime protection by a Secret Service detail, but those same agents could also be hauled into court to testify against him under oath.
It's a prospect that might have seemed outlandish, even until recently, but appears increasingly real as Trump is expected to face a raft of criminal and civil challenges in federal and state courts now that he's lost his presidential immunity.
Legal scrutiny of the former president is intensifying now that the New York attorney general's office is conducting a criminal probe into the Trump Organization. Trump berated New York prosecutors in a statement issued Wednesday, saying that members and associates of the organization had been "viciously attacked, harassed, and threatened, in order to say anything bad about the 45th President of the United States."
Trump has not been publicly charged with any crimes. But the continuing investigations into his finances and his efforts to challenge the outcome of the 2020 presidential election could potentially draw in members of his security detail.
There's clear precedent for Secret Service officials to be compelled to testify against sitting presidents, and legal experts and former agents say Trump's protective detail could also be subject to subpoenas.
"There's no doubt that the Secret Service could be subpoenaed," said Michael Gerhardt, a constitutional law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law in Chapel Hill.
There's no legal privilege that would prevent agents from sharing information about potential criminal behavior or the abuse of power that they might have witnessed while doing their job.
"There are so many ways in which we're in uncharted territory right now," said Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law expert at the University of Texas School of Law.
Lessons from the Monica Lewinsky scandal
The idea of agents being forced to testify against someone they protect is repulsive to many current and former Secret Service officials.
Some of them watched in horror as investigators forced their former colleague Larry Cockell to testify to a grand jury during the investigation into then-President Bill Clinton's affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Secret Service agents are privy to some of the most intimate details of the lives of presidents and their families, who in turn trust them with their privacy and safety.
"That is a very, very slippery slope to go down as far as the Secret Service is concerned," said former Secret Service agent Joe Funk, a 21-year veteran of the Secret Service who served on the details of presidents George H. W. Bush and Clinton.
Independent counsel Kenneth Starr in 1998 subpoenaed Cockell, who was the head of Clinton's security detail, to testify about the relationship with Lewinsky. Three other Secret Service agents also testified about Clinton before a grand jury in the legal battle surrounding their testimony that reached the US Supreme Court.
At the time, the Clinton administration and the Secret Service railed against the orders compelling agents to testify under oath. They argued that putting them on the witness stand would mean presidents would seek distance from their security details and compromise their own safety.
But the courts rejected their argument that Secret Service agents deserve special confidentiality privileges.
"In order for us to do our job, we need to be close to the president in some capacity," Funk said. "And the president — and rightfully so — is going to be very concerned about that proximity in vehicles, especially if agents are privy to conversations" they might later be forced to testify on.
He added, "I just hope the Secret Service isn't drawn into this again."
Even ethics watchdogs and other Trump critics who have been deeply troubled by his behavior say they're wary of forcing Secret Service agents to testify against the presidents they've safeguarded, even after they've left office.
There's no telling "what kind of illegal or unethical activity the Trump family has engaged in" in the presence of Secret Service agents, Donald Sherman, deputy director of the nonpartisan watchdog group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told Insider.
But compelling Secret Service agents to testify against any former president — Trump included — is "incredibly risky and shouldn't be considered or pursued without the utmost caution and consideration of the potential benefits," Sherman said.
"We shouldn't let the Trump family's gross abuse of power lead us down a road that undermines the Secret Service's role and function, which is critical to our democracy," Sherman added. "You're creating a risk that presidents or their family will duck or voluntarily shoo Secret Service protection that's there for a reason."
Trump could ditch his security detail
If Trump is worried about legal exposure, he'll have the option of rejecting his federal security detail. The law provides former presidents access to protection for life, but it doesn't require it.
There's precedent for that, too. Former President Richard Nixon declined Secret Service protection in 1985, more than a decade after he left office.
Nixon said at the time that he was doing so to save taxpayers money and that he'd hire his own security team instead.
"He was sensitive to periodic news coverage about how much it cost to support former presidents," said John Taylor, who was Nixon's chief of staff from 1984 until 1990. "By making this gesture, Mr. Nixon hoped to call attention to the relatively greater security expense while also scoring some points for public-spiritedness."
The annual cost of Nixon's Secret Service protection was about $3 million, Taylor told Insider. Between 1985 and Nixon's death in 1994, he was protected by a retired Secret Service agent and then off-duty and retired local law enforcement officials.
Privacy vs. protection
Trump isn't the only one in his family entitled to Secret Service protection now that he's left office.
His wife, Melania Trump, is eligible for lifelong protection unless she divorces Trump and remarries. Their 15-year-old son, Barron, can get the protection until he turns 16.
Trump's older children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Tiffany Trump — were automatically entitled to Secret Service protection only while their father was president.
Just before he left the White House, Trump also extended Secret Service protection to his adult children and three top administration officials, The Washington Post reported.
Taxpayers spent about $140,000 for the Secret Service to protect Trump's adult children in the month after Trump left the White House, The Guardian reported, citing records obtained by the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics. And the State Department spent at least $12,950 for a Secret Service detail that accompanied Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner during a stay at the Ritz-Carlton Abu Dhabi in May, the Daily Beast reported.
Trump's family has had a complicated relationship with the agency charged with protecting them.
In the early weeks of Trump's tenure, his two adult sons racked up nearly $250,000 in taxpayer-funded Secret Service costs, according to government records obtained by the group Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
The costs included a trip by both sons to a Trump-branded golf club in Dubai, as well as travel by Eric Trump to the Dominican Republic for business purposes.
But beginning in late 2017, Donald Trump Jr., the president's elder son, soured on the Secret Service and voluntarily ditched the protection to which he was entitled. While Donald Trump Jr. lost some of the best protection the nation offers, he gained a level of privacy impossible when highly trained agents in sunglasses and suits are monitoring your every move.
In September 2017, Donald Trump Jr. traveled on a big-game hunting trip to Canada's Yukon territory, sans Secret Service. Perhaps no one would have known but for a New York Times Magazine reporter, who chronicled how easy it was — once arriving in the subarctic territorial capital of Whitehorse — to approach and interact with Donald Trump Jr.
After a while, however, the first son again accepted Secret Service protection again, including on an eight-day trip in 2019 to Mongolia. It cost taxpayers almost $77,000, according to federal records obtained by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.
Ex-presidents' government-funded security is drastically scaled back from what it is when they're in the White House, according to former agents.
Senior Secret Service officials determine which agents remain in Washington on the presidential detail, and which ones go with the outgoing commander-in-chief and his family.
Current and former presidents can make requests about which agents protect them, said Funk, the former agent. They like to stick with agents with whom they're familiar, he said. "People don't like changes."
This article was originally published on January 12, 2021, and since updated to reflect new developments.
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