Secret Service failed to update protection policies for decades, report finds

The U.S. Secret Service failed to update a range of protection policies for foreign trips and emergency situations involving the president and vice president despite recent attacks and threats, a government watchdog said in a report released Thursday.

The report comes as the agency has been under intense scrutiny in recent years, particularly after several assassination attempts on President Donald Trump and a series of security threats that potentially endangered other key protectees.

The Government Accountability Office found that, contrary to the agency's required updates to protection policy within four years of issuance, more than a third of its policies were not updated within that time frame. Those guidelines establish procedures for emergency situations as well as basic protocols for site security, motorcades and foreign visits.

Some policies had been left unchanged for over 20 years, including guidelines for vice presidential foreign trips and foreign leader visits to the United States, the nonpartisan watchdog found.

The report also found that the Secret Service had not documented its rationale when determining that security incidents did not warrant policy updates, potentially precluding the agency from anticipating future threats.

"Secret Service officials told GAO that doing so would be important because it shows an incident was fully reviewed," the report said. "In the absence of this information, it is sometimes unclear why the Secret Service maintained the status quo."

Earlier this year, a shooter entered the Washington Hilton, where Trump and members of the press were attending the White House Correspondents' Dinner, forcing the evacuation of the president and Cabinet members. About a week later, the Secret Service exchanged gunfire with a man near the White House in an area where a motorcade with Vice President JD Vance had passed through shortly before.

Trump was also the target of two assassination attempts in 2024 at his golf club in Florida and a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

The Secret Service encountered three separate incidents involving drones before the attempt on Trump's life at the campaign rally, where the shooter flew a drone over the crowd to receive aerial footage and position himself to target the then-candidate.

The three previous incidents involving drones included one that came near a motorcade of former President Barack Obama in 2015, and others that flew over crowds at a rally for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) in 2016 and former President Joe Biden's inauguration in 2021.

If Secret Service officials had documented the rationale for not updating protection policy after these incidents, the GAO report said, that information could have highlighted "the emerging trend of drone involvement in security incidents prior to a drone being used in the 2024 assassination attempt."

Nate Herring, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, said in a statement that the agency completed an overhaul of its protective advance policy — which involves scouting a site before an event — after the assassination attempt in Butler, which injured three people and killed one.

He added that the agency is in the process of implementing the GAO report's recommendations to update other protection policies and document its rationale when deciding a security incident does not warrant a policy change.

"Since 2024, the U.S. Secret Service has implemented significant institutional reforms and policy revisions in response to attacks and threats of violence against Secret Service protectees," he said, adding that the agency "concurs" with the GAO's recommendations.

The Secret Service has a workforce of more than 7,000 personnel, including approximately 3,600 special agents, and allocates approximately 40 to 50 percent of its budget to protection of individuals, including the president, vice president, their families and visiting foreign leaders.