The head of Speaker Pelosi’s (D-CA) now-defunct January 6 Select Committee, Representative Bennie Thompson (D-MS), presented legislation in April 2024 that would have stripped former President Trump of his Secret Service protection in the event of a conviction.
An attempt on Trump’s life occurred on Saturday during a rally in Pennsylvania. After the shooting started, Secret Service personnel were on the president in a matter of seconds.
According to reports, the gunman and one onlooker have died.
“Unfortunately, existing law does not foresee how Secret Service protection would affect the criminal prison term of a protectee—even a former President,” Thompson said in an official statement upon presenting the measure. While it’s regrettable that we’ve arrived at this point, it’s possible that this unanticipated scenario could indeed materialize. “So that the American people can be confident that protected status does not translate into preferential treatment—and that individuals who are condemned to jail will in fact spend the time demanded of them—we must thus be prepared and amend the legislation,” he stated.
On the House Homeland Security Committee, which is in charge of ensuring the security of American citizens, Thompson is the senior Democrat.
At the time, Breitbart reported:
Protective status will “terminate for any person on sentencing following conviction for a state or federal offense that is punishable with prison for at least one year,” as stated in the Denying Infinite Security toward Convicted Former Protectees Act.
In a fact sheet for the DISGRACED Former Protectees Act, Thompson argues, “Would it remove the possibility for conflicting lines of authority in prisons and allow judges to weigh the punishment of individuals without having to take in the logistical concerns of criminals with Secret Service protection?”
Congress must address the new exigency that has arisen due to former president Donald J. Trump’s unprecedented 91 felonies in courts across the country. The fact sheet notes that this protection should not interfere with the criminal judicial process or the administration of justice, even though the bill’s text does not mention Trump by name.
Additionally, the information sheet notes that Thompson’s proposed measure will “apply to former President Trump.”
The underlying “clear subtext,” according to Byron York, senior political writer for the Washington Examiner, was that eliminating Trump’s Secret Service would make it “easier for someone to assassinate Trump,” as he noted in a post on X. York composed:
“Representative Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, chaired the January 6 committee, which combined aspects of a reality program with a show trial format, obviously, just with Trump in mind. If Democratic-elected prosecutors and a Biden appointment to the Justice Department find Trump guilty of any of the 88 felonies they have brought against him, Thompson now seeks to remove his protection from the Secret Service. The obvious implication here is that eliminating USSS would facilitate Trump’s assassination, which is presumably the intention of Thompson’s bill, H.R. 8081: The Displaced Former Protectees Act.”
Trump has declared the Thompson-led January 6 Committee to be a political tool and a farce. This year’s transcripts exposed the committee’s suppression and possibly destruction of material that would have supported Trump.
Weeks after Thompson submitted his bill, a Manhattan court found Trump guilty; however, sentencing has been delayed, and the conviction may be reversed following a Supreme Court ruling that may invalidate part of the evidence used in the trial.
