WaPo (“Trump revokes Secret Service detail for Harris that Biden had extended“):
President Donald Trump has revoked the Secret Service detail for former vice president Kamala Harris that President Joe Biden had previously extended, according to multiple people familiar with the decision and a copy of a letter terminating the detail.
The decision comes about a month before Harris, Trump’s Democratic opponent in the 2024 election, is scheduled to embark on a national book tour that will be her first extended public exposure since leaving office.
Federal law gives vice presidents six months of Secret Service protection after they leave office, though Biden, before his presidency ended, had extended her detail for another year, according to a person familiar with the decision, who spoke about it on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly.
Given that Harris was Trump’s opponent in the last election, this certainly seems petty. More importantly, in our hyper-partisan age, it seems downright dangerous.
It’s odd to me that former VPs are only entitled to six months of protection. By contrast, former First Ladies are entitled to lifetime protection, unless they remarry after their husband’s passing. That seems out of balance.
That Harris is going on a book tour, though, does not strike me as an extenuating factor. We’re not generally in the business of providing security at taxpayer expense for controversial authors hawking tell-all books.
