House Democrat unveiling bill expanding Secret Service perimeter around public events

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-N.Y.) on Tuesday introduced a bill requiring the Secret Service to expand its covered perimeter to take into account the range of high-powered automatic weapons following the assassination attempt on former President Trump.

Torres’s bill requires the agency “to ensure that any security perimeter is co-extensive with the firing range of firearms likely to be used in assassination attempts,” covering a radius of at least 500 yards.

The legislation also requires covering any elevated position within that range.

The bill comes exactly one month after Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Trump from a rooftop about 160 yards away from the stage where the former president was speaking, piercing his ear, wounding two others, and killing one man. 

Torres on Monday also introduced legislation that would strip from the Secret Service the responsibility to investigate financial crimes, part of its original mission when the agency was founded in 1865. 

The financial crimes division would be transferred to the Treasury Department under Torres’s legislation.

Torres the day after the Trump shooting also announced plans alongside Rep. Mike Lawler (R-N.Y.) to require enhanced security for Trump, President Biden, and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr.