POLITICS + GOVERNMENT
Live Mic: Former Secret Service agents talk about protecting Joe Biden
Mar 24, 2020, 3:38 PM
SALT LAKE CITY — Former Vice President Joe Biden will be receiving full security protection from the Secret Service after two protesters jumped on stage with the candidate earlier this month at a Super Tuesday rally in Los Angeles.
The vice president’s wife, Jill Biden, put herself between a protester and the candidate. And campaign aide Symone Sanders grabbed one of the protesters on the stage.
“There was easy access to get to him, so we took the opportunity,” Ashley Froud, an activist with the anti-dairy group Direct Action Everywhere, told The Hill.
“My wife’s something else, isn’t she?” Joe Biden said in an interview on NBC’s “Today.”
Secret Service protection for Joe Biden
The campaign recently made an official request for Joe Biden to get Secret Service protection as he cemented his status as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Dennis Crandall, who spent 30 years with the U.S. Secret Service from 1970 to 2000, joined Lee Lonsberry on his show Live Mic to talk about protecting candidates in the presidential race.
As an agent, Crandall protected then-candidate George H.W. Bush in 1980. Bush served as the 41st president from 1989 to 1993.
How agents help
In what situations do candidates like Joe Biden require the protection of the Secret Service? Lee asked his guest.
Crandall said Biden has easily qualified for Secret Service protection with the momentum of his campaign, the primary victories and the delegates he’s gained; as does Bernie Sanders, he noted.
“Joe Biden, with the demonstrators recently that you mentioned…has finally reached out and said let’s put the Secret Service in place, and there is a detail now working with Biden,” Crandall said
“These are ad hoc details, made up every four years. They draw from agents in the field,” he added. “They have supervisors who have protective experience.
“They give some of the new agents some experience. From those candidate details, they pick agents for the larger details,” Crandall said. “We put a detail together appropriate for that level of threat, so that’s the way it works,” he said.
Live Mic with Lee Lonsberry can be heard weekdays from 12:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on KSL NewsRadio. Users can find the show on the KSL NewsRadio website and app
