JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – As the finger-pointing intensifies over who’s to blame for the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, News4JAX got some insight into the role the Secret Service plays during campaign events, like Saturday’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Bobby Fultz, a Retired Secret Service Special Agent who was based in Jacksonville, served with the agency for 20 years.
News4JAX asked him about whose responsibility it was to secure that scene.
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“Whether it be the former president, the candidate, which he’s both, or a current president or vice president, or even a foreign dignitary, the Secret Service are ultimately in charge of the security for that whole event,” he said. “That would entail using local, state and other federal agencies to assist in these things because it’s manpower intensive. And it depends on how many people, how many sites, all the movements. You’ve got the motorcade, you have the site, you have the airport, different agents in different locations, there’s just a lot of people involved, and I can’t really go into specifics because every site, every event is different.”
News4JAX also asked Fultz the big question everyone wants to know: how was the shooter able to get up on that building that was so close to where the former president was standing?
“It’s a good question everybody has, but right now, it wouldn’t be right for me to speculate on all that,” he said. “Because there’s a long ongoing investigation and it’s going to go into deep dive details on every step of everything that happened there from every second, and they will put it all together and down the road, all the facts will come out. All the facts definitely will come out on who was where, who was supposed to be where at what point, how did he get in, that kind of stuff. Right now, I mean, when an advance is done, you have the team that’s assigned directly to the details. So if Trump has his permanent detail, shift agents, and so forth, and a group will come and they will do an advance ahead of time, wherever he’s going, agents from that local area will assist.”
He also walked News4JAX through the video of the attempted assassination of former president Trump, describing what was happening behind the scenes as the Secret Service agents were getting him off stage and into an awaiting vehicle.
You can watch the entire interview with Bobby Fultz in the video player above and on News4JAX+.