Kennedy’s campaign first submitted a formal request for Secret Service protection on May 24, 2023, citing heightened threats against the candidate. The request included a comprehensive risk assessment compiled by a private security firm. This 67-page report, referenced in a July 28, 2023, tweet by Kennedy himself, detailed specific threats and emphasized the unique vulnerabilities he faced as a member of the Kennedy family. Despite the comprehensive nature of the report and the candidate’s well-documented risk factors, the USSS and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) initially declined to provide protection. That decision had come under scrutiny.

The documents released by the USSS include detailed risk assessments, correspondence between government officials, and internal deliberations. They paint a picture of a candidate whose circumstances were anything but ordinary. Kennedy’s family history of political assassinations—his father, Robert F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1968 while running for president, and his uncle, President John F. Kennedy, was assassinated in 1963—served as a critical factor in his campaign’s request for protection. The records note that Kennedy’s public profile as a Democratic challenger to President Joe Biden further exacerbated the risks, drawing both support and hostility from various factions.

One document highlights specific threats identified by the USSS Protective Intelligence Division. These included explicit threats of violence, harassment from known individuals, and alarming behaviors that suggested potential harm. One letter detailed how a known individual had sent Kennedy numerous threatening emails, including messages stating they would “bury” him and make him “suffer.” Another assessment described how a different individual, who had previously sent nonsensical letters to President Biden, redirected their focus to Kennedy’s campaign events. Despite these documented threats, the USSS initially concluded that Kennedy’s circumstances did not meet the threshold for granting protection under DHS guidelines.

The DHS guidelines for authorizing Secret Service protection are rigorous, requiring candidates to meet several criteria. These include polling at 15% or higher in national polls for 30 consecutive days, actively campaigning on a national level, and facing credible threats. In Kennedy’s case, his polling numbers hovered near the threshold but did not consistently meet the benchmark. Additionally, the DHS guidelines emphasized that protection granted more than a year before a general election should only occur under extraordinary circumstances.

The Decision to Grant Protection

In July 2024, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was finally granted Secret Service protection, but not due to the routine evaluation of his candidacy or an increase in threats alone. Instead, the decision came in the wake of an attempted assassination on former President Donald Trump, an event that dramatically shifted the national security landscape and prompted heightened concerns about the safety of public figures. According to the documents released under FOIA, President Joe Biden himself intervened, requesting Secret Service protection for Kennedy as the political climate grew increasingly volatile.

The below documents were released by the Secret Service on December 9, 2024. It appears that multiple attachments were not included in the FOIA release, despite being specifically requested. An appeal has been filed, and the results of that will be posted here, when available.

Document Archive

FOIA Documents Detail Delays and Decisions in Secret Service Protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. [48 Pages, 5.2MB]

Loading...

Taking too long?

Reload document

| Open in new tab

Download [5.18 MB]

The post FOIA Documents Detail Delays and Decisions in Secret Service Protection for Robert F. Kennedy Jr. first appeared on The Black Vault.

The Electoral College is a process, not a place. The founding fathers established it in the Constitution as a compromise between election of the President by a vote in Congress and election of the President by a popular vote of qualified citizens. The Electoral College process consists of the selection of the electors, the meeting of the electors where they vote for President and Vice President, and the counting of the electoral votes by Congress.

In December of 2016, after the election, I filed FOIA requests to various agencies to see what, if any threats, were investigated.

I will archive all the responses that come in below.

Document Archive

 United States Secret Service: Threats Against Electoral College Members, October 1, 2016 – November 28, 2016 [7 Pages, 1.3MB]

https://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/usss/electoralthreats-2016-usss.pdf

The post Threats Against Electoral College Members, 2016 Election Season first appeared on The Black Vault.

Excerpt: 

According to Noah Webster, secret is defined as, “kept from public knowledge or from the knowledge of certain persons•and service is shown to be, employment, especially public employment. This is exactly what the original Secret Service was: an organization of spies which operated during the Civil War at the direction of  the United States Government under the ultimate control of the Honorable Edwin M. Stanton, Secretary of State and then Secretary of War.

This use of spies during times of confrontation between factions was not a new idea. In fact the idea may have had divine inspiration, as the Bible, Numbers 13:2 says, “Then the Lord spoke to Moses saying, ‘Send out for yourself men so that they may spy out the land of Canaan.” From the time of Moses to Lincoln and to the present day, kings and heads of governments have employed spies, some .well organized and well concealed and some not so well organized and/or controlled.

The original Secret Service appears to have fallen in this “second category for at the conclusion of the Civil War there was concern voiced by members of Congress concerning the role of the Secret Service. General LaFayette Charles Baker was in charge of the War Department Secret Service and was criticized at the  conclusion of the war for lack of control, not reporting to any Bureau, and operating on his own. He responded to his critics by saying that they had no  knowledge of the peculiar and difficult business, (of being a spy and being in charge of an organization of spies). Here again Presidential protection was mentioned in connection with the Secret Service as Baker wrote, ”There was a very ordinary indifference in the mind of Mr. Lincoln in regard to threats of assassination, some of which I communicated to him and on one occasion I carried to Mr. Lincoln two anonymous communications, in which he was threatened with assassination.

It is interesting to note that even though Baker’s Secret Service was not in any way connected with or the forerunner of the Secret Service Division which was to be created in 1865, the man in charge of the Secret Service was concerned with the threats made against a President of the United States.

The Document

 The United States Secret Service:  An Administrative History, 1983 [121 Pages, 60MB]

The post The United States Secret Service:  An Administrative History, 1983 first appeared on The Black Vault.