Give Kennedy Secret Service Protection. Now!

The Weaponization of the Secret Service Puts Bobby Kennedy’s Life at Risk

By Blake Fleetwood, columnist, The Kennedy Beacon

President Biden’s decision to deny protection to Robert Kennedy Jr. is clearly based on political considerations and weaponizes the Secret Service. Biden’s motive is clear and mean-spirited. It is not based on historical precedent, the threats and dangers Kennedy faces, existing laws, or the slightest compassion for a political family that has suffered so grievously.

If the worst happens, Joe Biden will be personally accountable. America will never forgive you!

Historically, a president can order Secret Service protection for a candidate on his own. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas can also order Secret Service protection on his own.

The law states that the president and the secretary of homeland security have “broad discretion” in granting protection, and they have repeatedly done so. 

Upon assuming the role of attorney general in 1960, Senator Robert F. Kennedy’s first act when assembling his staff was to tell them that the office was not to be used for political purposes. “We are not a banana republic,” he said. “Our office is too important to ever be politicized.”

Secret Service records recently revealed the agency’s conclusions that Kennedy is at “elevated risk for adverse attention,” and after reviewing credible armed threats against Kennedy, the agency assembled a group of eight teams ready to step in quickly after they get the go-ahead. 

Cheryl Hines, lead actress in the popular series Curb Your Enthusiasm and Kennedy’s wife, accused Biden of “playing politics with her and her and her husband’s safety.”

“Yesterday, an intruder climbed the fence at my home and was arrested,” Kennedy tweeted a few months ago. “After being released from police custody later in the day, he immediately returned to my home and was arrested again.”

In September, a heavily armed man impersonating a US marshal and the CIA, with loaded concealed firearms and an accomplice, was arrested after infiltrating a private event. The Kennedy Beacon continues to cover the strange story of Adrian Paul Aispuro, while other media outlets have practically ignored it.

Who is Adrian Paul Aispuro and is Anyone Behind Him?

No wonder Hines is scared and worried. The Kennedy name is a lightning rod, a bright target, for disturbed and demented individuals who seek salvation by doing the most evil thing.

Judicial Watch, a conservative foundation, filed a Freedom of Information request and lawsuit to determine why Kennedy’s multiple requests were not answered. They got back a trove of hidden emails. “These documents confirm the bureaucratic and political runaround the Biden administration went through to ultimately deny Robert F. Kennedy Jr. the requested Secret Service protection,” said Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch. “The Biden administration’s refusal to provide Secret Service protection to Mr. Kennedy is dangerous and vindictive.”

According to the reports, higher-ups ordered Secret Service not to talk to Kennedy’s private security.

Biden’s choice to deny Kennedy protection reflects his own desperate fears and insecurities. He knows that Kennedy’s popularity and radical, transformative message have the potential to endanger his own reelection.

Seventy percent of voters do not want Biden or Trump. According to a January 9, 2024, Gallup poll, Kennedy’s favorability rating is 52%, higher than Biden’s (41%) and Trump’s (42%). And according to an earlier Gallup poll, 63% of US adults currently think that the major parties do “such a poor job” of representing the American people that “a third major party is needed.” This is a 7% increase from a year ago.

Biden wants to drain Kennedy’s campaign funds by forcing him to pay huge sums for private protection. Security costs the campaign 30 cents out of each dollar raised. Kennedy has already spent millions to protect himself, his family, and his supporters.

Secret Service protection will elevate Kennedy’s stature and give him a certain presidential aura among the media and voters as a credible contender. 

The Kennedy campaign made its fourth formal request in January, citing a 67-page report of repeated death threats, nutjob letters, two heavily armed intruders to a campaign event, an invader in Kennedy’s Cape Cod house, and another man who invaded Kennedy’s home twice in one day when Kennedy and his wife, Cheryl Hines, were at home. 

Kennedy is preparing a fifth protection request this month.

For 55 years, every presidential administration has granted early protection to major candidates who requested it. The Biden administration is the sole outlier.

If another Kennedy is killed while campaigning for president, it will be a long-lasting, traumatic stain on the American psyche that will scar the soul of our democracy for decades to come. Unfortunately, we live in violent, polarized times. The United States has surpassed 400 mass shootings in 2023, a record-breaking year in gun violence.

The perils to any Kennedy running for office are self-evident.

An assassination attempt would dredge up memories of 1968 all over again, when Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. were shot and killed, and George Wallace was gunned down and paralyzed, taking him out of the presidential race.

The puzzling thing is that Biden has spent his decades swathing himself in the Kennedy mythos. Biden traces his interest in politics to John F. Kennedy. He was a long-time friend of Senator Ted Kennedy and has a bust of Senator Robert F. Kennedy exhibited prominently in the Oval Office. He employs four members of the Kennedy family as ambassadors and special assistants. In fact, he admired Senator Robert F. Kennedy so much that he lifted some lines from an RFK speech without attribution in 1988. It is often said that Biden imagines himself as the Irish Catholic reincarnation of the Kennedys. Is it now possible that Biden resents Robert Kennedy Jr. for taking away that long-held dream? 

President Biden, normally a compassionate man, knows that the Kennedy family has paid an unendurable, heartbreaking price for decades of enlightened public service.

What could Biden ever say to Ethel Kennedy, Bobby’s mother, if he were assassinated? Her husband and her brother-in-law were brutally murdered while serving their country. Two of her sons are already dead, perhaps from lingering trauma suffered from coping with their father’s so public assassination.

What could Biden ever say to Hines? What can he say to Kennedy’s six children and to bystanders who might get shot and killed as collateral damage? In Ecuador recently, a presidential candidate was assassinated, and nine bystanders were injured. 

The Biden administration and mainstream media have used various pretexts to justify their denial of protection for RFK Jr. The Advisory Committee noted in its last rejection that federal protection should only be granted one year before the election. 

But now, eight months before the election, nothing has changed.

Serious presidential candidates have routinely received early government protection. Bobby’s uncle, Senator Ted Kennedy, received government protection in September 1979, 414 days before the November 1980 election. He was running against sitting president Jimmy Carter, who hated Ted Kennedy and deeply resented his attacks on him.

But to his credit, considering the tragic history, Carter knew it was his obligation and duty to protect Ted Kennedy and not weaponize the Secret Service. 

Other examples of early Secret Service protection:

• Senator Barack Obama received protection 18 months, 551 days, before election day 2012, at the request of Senator Dick Durbin.

• Donald Trump and Ben Carson got protection in November 2015, a year before the election.

• Herman Cain got protection almost a year before the 2012 election.

• Senators John Kerry and John Edwards each received protection in February 2004, nine months before the election.

• Bob Dole was offered protection in March 1996, eight months before the election.

• Pat Buchanan got protection in February 1996, nine months, 250 days, before the election.

• Bill Clinton received protection in February 1992 after the New Hampshire primary, eight months before the general election.

• Pat Robertson got it in December 1987, about 11 months before the election, before any of the 1988 primaries.

• Jesse Jackson got protection in November, a year before the 1988 election.

• Walter Mondale got protection nine months before the 1984 election.

• Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich, and Mitt Romney all received protection in February and March 2012, about 10 months before Election Day

• Senator Walter Mondale got protection in January 1984, 10 months before the election.

• Ronald Reagan got protection in January 1980, 10 months before the election.

It is roughly 160 days before the general election, and Kennedy has still not gotten the protection he and his family deserve. Nikki Haley, who is challenging Donald Trump, asked for Secret Service protection early this month because of increasing threats to her and her family. Kennedy tweeted “Good luck” and hoped she would succeed. 

Republican Senator Ted Cruz is outraged at the treatment that Kennedy has gotten, asking, “How do you address the fact that previous major presidential candidates, such as Donald Trump, Dr. Ben Carlson, Barack Obama, and Senator Ted Kennedy, received Secret Service protection well over 120 days before the general election?”

Senator Cruz also said, “I ask you to act swiftly to provide this major presidential candidate the protection that his exceptional circumstances so clearly warrant.”

The perils to Kennedy arise not only because of his name but also because of the mainstream media’s relentless demonization of him. 

He has bravely challenged and provoked some of the most powerful forces in our country, especially concerning the military-industrial complex, the CIA, and endless foreign wars that so enrich defense contractors.

He wants to end the corporate capture of Washington by big business and lobbyists – for Big Oil, Big Pharma, the chemical industry, and other large corporations – which has resulted in a permanent oligarchy that has destroyed the middle class.

Biden’s spiteful, inhuman decision must be reversed before it is too late. 

Blake Fleetwood was a reporter for The New York Times and has written for The New York Times Magazine, New York Magazine, The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Village Voice, The Atlantic, and Washington Monthly on a number of issues. Blake can be reached at jfleetwood@aol.com.