President Trump has sparked new controversy in his first week in office with his decision to remove national security details from several celebrities with whom he has fallen out.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Brian Hook and others were taken away by government-provided security teams this week.
Fauci led the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for nearly 40 years, including during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Mr. Bolton was President Trump's national security adviser and Mr. Pompeo was Mr. Trump's secretary of state. Mr. Hook was a key aide to Mr. Pompeo.
All four have lost support from President Trump, and Bolton in particular is now a fierce critic of the president.
Fauci wrote a book in 2024 that was not a full-scale criticism of President Trump, but about their controversial relationship and what doctors saw as the president's careless “ignorance of facts.” ” was mentioned.
Pompeo considered running against Trump in the 2024 Republican primary, but ultimately decided against it.
The bottom line is that President Trump's actions raise suspicions that he is acting out of a desire for revenge.
These concerns are further amplified by the president's shrugged response to the potential consequences of his decisions.
President Trump told reporters in North Carolina on Friday that he would not feel responsible for harming the people he unsecured.
President Trump also said, “Just because you work for the government, you don't get to keep a security detail for the rest of your life.”
And he claimed: “They all made a lot of money. They can even hire their own security guards.”
At least Fauci has deployed private security personnel after being stripped of his government details by President Trump, multiple media outlets reported.
The president's critics say he is making dishonest claims.
Indeed, people who work in government, even at senior levels, cannot expect lifelong security. The president and his family are the only former elected officials to have a Secret Service security detail as a matter of course.
However, other security teams are established to respond to specific threats or to protect against more common but credible dangers to specific individuals.
Fauci, for example, has long been a target of people with ties to the anti-vaccination movement, the populist right, and the COVID-19 conspiracy theorist community.
In 2020, when the country was in the midst of a pandemic, Fauci grimly said, “It's amazing that I'm getting death threats against me and my family and my family.” . [people] I'm harassing my daughters so much that I have to keep them safe. ”
In August 2022, 57-year-old Thomas Patrick Connally Jr. sentenced to imprisonment for 3 years or more He is in jail for threatening Fauci and his family and targeting other health officials.
Prosecutors said Connally's actions included emails threatening to “drag Fauci and his family into the streets, beat them to death, and set them on fire.”
Last year, the FBI's field office in Miami issued a warning to Iranian man Majid Dasjani Farahani. The agency claimed that the person was a Tehran intelligence officer and was wanted for questioning “in connection with the recruitment of individuals for various operations within the state.” The United States will include lethal targeting of current and former U.S. government officials. ”
The FBI claims that the Iranian regime wanted to carry out such an operation in retaliation for the killing of Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in 2020, during President Trump's first term. did.
At the time the FBI issued its warning, it was widely reported that Pompeo, then secretary of state, was one of the people Iran wanted to kill.
As for Bolton, an Iranian man was indicted in absentia on suspicion of attempting to arrange murder in 2022.
The prosecution argued that Shahram Poursafi, a fugitive outside the United States, offered an anonymous person acting as a government informant $300,000 to kill the former national security adviser.
In a statement posted on social media on Tuesday, Bolton declared he was “disappointed but not surprised” by President Trump's decision to end Secret Service protection. Bolton also pointed out that former President Biden had provided for the continuation of the national security detail during his time in office, even though the former president strongly criticized his policies.
“The American people can decide for themselves which president made the right decision.” Bolton concluded:.
Some national security experts have publicly expressed concerns about President Trump's move.
“The president put Ambassador Bolton and Mr. Pompeo in grave danger,” former Secret Service official John Wakulow told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Thursday.
But a newly emboldened Trump will not reverse this decision.
The new president and his most ardent MAGA allies remain wise to the resistance they appear to have received internally during his first term from executives in the foreign policy community and members of the intelligence community. .
Perhaps, barring a worst-case scenario unfolding in the future, the furor over the stripping of security details will be replaced by a new Trump controversy.
But the lesson will not be lost on anyone around Trump who may be tempted to go public with their dissent during his second term.
The Memo is a reported column by Niall Stanage.
