The director of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, stated on Sunday that the ongoing political division in the country has created a “constantly” evolving threat environment ahead of the upcoming Republican and Democratic national conventions. Despite this, she assured that there is no credible threat to either event as of now.
Republicans are set to gather for the RNC in Milwaukee next week, where former President Donald Trump is expected to become the party’s official nominee. Democrats will convene in Chicago in mid-August, but the political landscape has shifted significantly following President Joe Biden’s recent debate performance against Trump.
Cheatle mentioned that the Secret Service has been preparing for both events for a year and a half. “I think that the environment that we’re dealing with today is certainly different than it was four years ago. I’m sure we’ll see an evolution in the next four years as well,” Cheatle told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos. She added that extreme political polarization has definitely influenced this shift. “But it is definitely something that we take into consideration.”
When asked if there were any specific or credible threats ahead of the conventions, Cheatle responded that there was nothing “out there right now.” “We are tracking all threat streams and we certainly work with our partners at the FBI and other intelligence agencies that supply that information to us,” she said.
Some groups are planning to protest in Chicago to express their discontent with the Biden administration’s policies amid the Israel-Hamas war. Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker stated that such events would be allowed to proceed as long as there was no threat to convention-goers.
CNN reported that the Milwaukee Police Department and other federal agencies had prepared a threat assessment ahead of the RNC. The assessment found that the event could be an “attractive” target for extremists aiming to sow discord ahead of the November election. However, the document also noted that there was no credible threat ahead of the convention and was more of a summary of potential tactics that could be used by bad actors.
Lara Trump, the co-chair of the Republican National Committee (RNC) and former President Trump’s daughter-in-law, promised on Friday to prosecute anyone who cheats in an election, threatening, “we will track you down.” “This year is the year we do it,” Lara Trump said at Turning Point USA’s Detroit convention. “We are also sending a loud and clear message out there to anyone who thinks about cheating in an election: We will find you, we will track you down and we will prosecute you to the full extent of the law.”
Lara Trump and other RNC officials have launched a massive effort to mobilize thousands of “election integrity” watchdogs to monitor every step of the election process and create hotlines for poll watchers to report perceived problems and escalate those problems through legal action. This initiative has raised concerns that it could lead to the harassment of election workers.
“What we need to ensure is integrity in our electoral process,” Lara Trump said at the event hosted in a critical county in Michigan. “We can never go back and repeat 2020, but we can learn the lessons from 2020.” Her father-in-law, Trump, has continued to refuse to accept the results of the 2020 presidential election, and he and his allies have spread false claims of voter fraud, resulting in immediate legal battles after the election.
Trump allies have already indicated that he might not accept the results of this year’s election if he loses to President Biden. Lara Trump also refuses to accept her father-in-law’s 2020 loss. In an April interview with CNN shortly after accepting the RNC position, she claimed Democrats committed “massive fraud” in the 2020 election.
After Trump overhauled the RNC, selecting Lara Trump and Chair Michael Whatley, the Party has taken a new direction. They are urging voters to utilize early voting and mail-in ballots, something they vehemently opposed during the 2020 campaign. Trump’s team, working with the RNC, launched a voter education effort about early-voting methods in each state, urging Republicans to vote early to avoid inconsistencies and unexpected obstacles. The former president said in a video that supporters should make a plan and “vote any way possible.”
Source: ABC News, CNN, Politico, The Associated Press
