When Does Someone Receive Secret Service Protection?

 Al Ritter

After the latest snub of Secret Service protection to Robert Kennedy Jr. I was curious as to who gets it and when. Do any of the Republican candidates have protection and when are they entitled to receive it?

What I found sort of shocked me. Now I know that every former President after Barack Obama has it for life but their families may be a different story.

The Secret Service was originally under control of the Treasury Department and a lot of their roles were intertwined with forgery and counterfeit money. In the last decades the Secret Service was handed over to the Department of Homeland Security.

I found this explanation in the article shown below and I thought that I would share it with my readers. Here are the highlights of the story.

The Secret Service provides protection to individuals in eight very specific circumstances, and they are these:  

• The president, the vice president, (or other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President), the president-elect and vice president-elect 
• Their immediate families  
• Former presidents, their spouses, except when the spouse re-marries 
• Children of former presidents until age 16 
• Visiting heads of foreign states or governments and their spouses traveling with them, other distinguished foreign visitors to the United States, and official representatives of the United States performing special missions abroad 
• Other individuals as designated per Executive Order of the President  
• National Special Security Events, when designated as such by the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security 
• Major presidential and vice presidential candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election 

Now the requirements for candidates has yet different requirements and are as follows.

• As defined in statute, the term "major presidential and vice presidential candidates" means those individuals identified as such by the Secretary of Homeland Security after consultation with an advisory committee. 

So that’s one way it happens. Here’s the other... In 1968 Congress acted to provide an automatic definition of what “major” is to take the subjectivity out of the process for most who do ultimately receive Secret Service Protection. It’s been amended over the years on a couple of occasions and currently reads: 

• Are pursuing the nomination of a qualified party, one whose presidential candidate received at least 10% of the popular vote in the prior election. 
• Are qualified for public matching funds of at least $100,000, and have raised at least $10 million in additional contributions. 
• Have received by April 1 of the election year an average of 5 percent in individual candidate preferences in the most recent national opinion polls by ABC, CBS, NBC, and CNN, or have received at least 10 percent of the votes cast for all candidates in two same-day or consecutive primaries or caucuses. 

So as of today, there are only two presidential candidates who have Secret Service protection. The current and the former president. And as of today, based on established criteria, there are only two additional candidates who are on track to potentially qualify once we are within 120 days of next year’s election, or April 1st, and that’s RFK Jr. among Democrats and Ron DeSantis among Republicans. As of today, FDLE remains the security force which protects our governor and his family, wherever they go. Again, it’s always possible President Biden could sign an executive order mandating protection for additional candidates, or on an earlier timeframe based upon perceived security concerns, it’s also possible Homeland Security could make the call – however that’s rare. The only time this has happened since the enactment of the Congressional Act in 1968 was in 2007. Based on intelligence chatter that there could be credible threats to Barack Obama, officials provided him with Secret Service detail over a year and a half ahead of the 2008 Presidential Election. So that's who has protection, and who may have protection and when that’s most likely to occur if they do.

Many thanks to Brian Mudd from IHeartmedia for his research, here is a link to his article:

https://wjno.iheart.com/featured/brian-mudd/content/2023-06-12-qa-when-does-a-presidential-candidate-receive-secret-service-protection/