Social media users are circulating a post claiming that President Donald Trump has revoked Secret Service protection for former President Barack Obama and his family.
The post was first shared by a satirical Facebook account, America’s Last Line of Defense. The account describes itself as a “network of trollery and propaganda for cash,” though the post itself has no satire labeling. “Trump ends Secret Service protection for the Obama family,” the text in the post stated, adding an alleged quote from Trump on the decision: “He’s been out for years. The free ride is over.”
Trump has not ended Secret Service protection for Obama or his family. Protection for former presidents, as provided by law, extends to their “immediate family,” including their spouse (unless they remarried) and children up to the age of 16.
That doesn’t mean Trump couldn’t revoke such protection. While federal law authorizes the security detail, it doesn’t require them. The relevant section of the law states that “Under the direction of the Secretary of Homeland Security, the United States Secret Service is authorized to protect” former presidents and vice presidents and their families.
Keith Whittington, a professor at Yale Law School, explained that the “statutory language is permissive rather than directive.” So, the decision would lie with Trump’s new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) secretary, former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who was confirmed by the Senate in a 59-34 vote Saturday.
“[The text of the law] does specify the Secretary of Homeland Security as the relevant officer to make those decisions, so the president could presumably instruct the secretary on what he wants done,” Whittington told The Dispatch Fact Check, “but ultimately DHS would have to be the one to make the call.”
In 1958, the Former Presidents Act was passed by Congress and signed by then-President Dwight Eisenhower, authorizing the Treasury Department to provide lifetime Secret Service protection to all living former presidents and their immediate families. The act also established pension payments for former presidents. The Secret Service, initially established by former President Abraham Lincoln to crack down on counterfeit currency before transitioning to the president’s security service after the 1901 assassination of former President William McKinley, has for most of its existence been under the authority of the Treasury Department. However, when Congress and former President George W. Bush in 2002 created the Department of Homeland Security, the Secret Service was among the federal agencies moved under its jurisdiction. In 1994, Congress passed legislation limiting protection for former presidents to only 10 years after leaving office, beginning with the successor of then-President Bill Clinton, who signed the bill into law. (He was succeeded by Bush.) However, Congress changed course again in 2012, passing a bill that returned Secret Service details to former presidents for life.
Although no changes have been made to Obama’s Secret Service detail, Trump in his first week back in office revoked security details for several former federal officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former National Security Adviser John Bolton, both of whom served in Trump’s first administration. Bolton, who had Secret Service protection, and Pompeo, who had a security detail provided by the State Department, have been targeted by Iran for playing a role in Trump’s decision to target Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force. The U.S. killed Suleimani in a drone strike in Iraq in January 2020. In 2022, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against Shahram Poursafi, a member of the IRGC, for plotting to murder Bolton. Poursafi remains at large, and there is a $20 million reward available in return for information leading to his arrest.
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