EXCLUSIVE and BREAKING: The Secret Service assigned to protect former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla., failed to prevent a juvenile from illegally entering the compound in late December last year, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.
The juvenile was able to remain undetected inside the Mar-a-Lago estate for nearly an hour, and apparently responding to a dare, jumped into the pool outside the entrance to Trump’s residence.
One source said the intruder did a “cannon-ball” into the pool, but another could only confirm that the young person jumped into the pool.
The entire compound is alarmed and secured, but because Mar-a-Lago is an active club, its security has proven particularly difficult for the Secret Service.
RealClearPolitics first contacted the Secret Service with an inquiry about the Mar-a-Lago breach today at noon. A Secret Service spokesperson told RealClearPolitics that the agency will provide a response as soon as possible. (I will add that statement to this story once that response is provided.)
Dan Bongino, a popular conservative commentator, during a forum on the assassination attempt at the Heritage Foundation earlier this week, said a “direct source” told him the Secret Service denied a request by Trump for “enhanced” protection at Mar-a-Lago because the Secret Service cannot protect “a nightclub.”
But Bongino, a former Secret Service special agent, disputed the assertion that Mar-a-Lago cannot be secured because it includes a club, arguing that the agency is charged with protecting whoever runs for president, despite whatever complications their residences present.
👉👉No one on the team of special agents assigned to protect Trump and his homes was disciplined over the December breach, these sources assert, even though agency leaders have disciplined detail supervisors after other serious security breaches.
One case in point -- after a drunken intruder entered Biden National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan’s residence in the middle of the night last year, the Secret Service removed two Presidential Protective Division supervisors from that detail.
Sullivan and then-Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, who was hand-selected for the post by first lady Jill Biden, were reportedly incensed over the incident.
Sources in the Secret Service community are raising the Mar-a-Lago breach as further evidence that the detail and its supervisors assigned to protect Trump are given preferential treatment and are not bearing the same responsibility for the layers of security failures leading up to the July 13 assassination attempt against Trump that wounded the former president in the ear and killed retired fireman Corey Comperatore in front of his family. The detail and its two leaders are very close to and well-liked by Trump and the former president’s extended family.
Trump has repeatedly praised the detail for their efforts to protect him on stage at Butler after he was wounded in the ear. But other Secret Service agents and security experts, including Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater, a private military company that has provided security service for the U.S. government and other clients, argue that Trump should not have been able to rise up and pump his fist after being shot in the ear – that the agents on stage should have formed a blanket over him on the ground and kept him lying down.
There are four members of the Secret Service’s Pittsburgh Field Office and only one member of the special agents assigned to protect Trump, a team known as the “Trump detail,” whom agency top officials ordered to work from home while Congress and the Secret Service conducts investigations into the failures that took place on July 13. The FBI on Wednesday told reporters that the scope of its investigation is focused on shooter Thomas Crooks, not on the Secret Service’s failures.
The Secret Service has dramatically stepped up security for Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate in the wake of the assassination attempt.
A Secret Service spokesperson told Newsweek earlier this week, “Over the year, the U.S. Secret Service has continuously invested in security enhancements at former President Donald Trump’s residences, including those in Mar-a-Lago, Trump Tower, and Bedminster, New Jersey.”
The spokesperson pointed to testimony that acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe testified before the Senate in late July that the agency had spent $4 million protecting Trump at his properties. It’s unclear what security assets that figure includes.
In late July, a city alert said some road closures around the residence, hotel, and club would be closed around the clock until the November election “at a minimum.”
“On Saturday, July 20, 2024, due to enhanced security measures involving Mar a Lago and U.S. Secret Service-protected persons, South Ocean Boulevard will be closed to through traffic starting at approximately 4 p.m.,” Palm Beach said in the alert on its website Thursday.
“This closure will be in effect 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, until the November general election at a minimum. It will involve the area from Woodbridge Road to South Ocean Boulevard at the traffic circle where Southern Boulevard and South Ocean Boulevard connect,” the alert continued.
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