Donald Trump is taking Putin's warnings about his safety seriously as Politico reported Monday he plans on keeping his private security and intelligence team once he takes office.
Russian state-run television has claimed Trump faces a coup or assassination attempt planned by major American corporations.
Trump, who values loyalty over other factors, will retain the security team run by Keith Schiller, a retired New York City cop and Navy veteran who started working for Trump back in 1999. Trump's transition team have refused to say who is paying for the private security team.
According to a former Secret Service agent, a private security presence increases the liability of the Secret Service, causing greater confusion and risk in the executive’s protection. Take, for example, what happened during a rally in March:
In March, when a 32-year-old man jumped a barricade and rushed toward the stage as Trump was speaking at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Secret Service agents immediately descended on Trump from opposite sides of the dais, encircling him in a human shield as a handful of other agents tackled the man before he could leap onto the stage. About a second after the first two agents reached Trump, Schiller leapt onto the stage and moved to position himself between the scrum and his boss.. . .
In law enforcement circles, Schiller’s reaction was panned as too slow and was the subject of disapproving conversation among agents, according to a law enforcement source briefed on the conversations. The source said one Secret Service agent described Keith Schiller as the “JV trying to keep up in a varsity game.”
Specifically, the source saidhat Schiller came from a position on the dais that the agents would have used to evacuate Trump if that were to have been necessary. “If that happened, they would have run right into Keith. He was about three seconds too late,” the source said.
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