ATLANTA — A Secret Service veteran says because of his elevated media presence and other factors, former President Donald Trump requires the heaviest Secret Service protection of any former president.
Ray Moore told Channel 2′s Mark Winne that as a retired special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office for the U.S. Secret Service who helped protect every president or former president going back to Richard Nixon, he knows preparations for protecting a president and his predecessor for the debate have been going on for months.
He says protecting occupants of the White House can even involve visits to the “big house.”
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“If somebody in the state of Georgia, South Carolina, somebody in driving distance or flying distance has made a threat against the president or the candidate, yesterday and today they’re probably getting knocks on their doors from secret service agents and their partners,” Moore said. “Even people that are in prison. They’re getting visits to make sure they haven’t reached out to anybody on their behalf.”
Moore says partners like GEMA Director Chris Stallings and Georgia Public Safety Commissioner Col. Billy Hitchens are indispensable to the Secret Service.
“We’ve reached out statewide to bring in people that have specialized needs that we think we might need during this debate for security here,” Hitchens said. “We’ve reached out statewide to make sure we don’t deplete our resources in certain places.”
“We went to the governor and explained what the needs would be and so we have the ability to access whatever resources that we need,” Stallings said.
“Donald Trump has an elevated media profile which brings about elevated attention to him from people that love him and from people that may not love him,” Moore said. “So it elevates his protective umbrella.”
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When it comes to protecting President Biden, Moore says, “Well yes, he’s still pretty agile. He wants to do things, he wants to interface with the public, so therefore it requires agents sometimes to be spontaneous.”
Hitchens told Winne that state troopers and other state officers are helping get official parties where they need to be safely.
They’re trying to keep the interstate highways flowing and that there are a lot of his folks in reserve for whatever need may arise, including if Atlanta police, for instance, calls for assistance with civil disorder.
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