Agency officials reject House speaker’s claims about President Trump’s address
Following Wednesday’s calls for President Donald Trump to delay his televised State of the Union national address by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, citing “security” reasons, several reports have surfaced that reject the senior Democrat’s claims.
Multiple reports – from CNN, NBC, and Fox News – indicate that officials from the U.S. Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security both poured cold water on Pelosi’s stated reason for asking President Trump to postpone his annual address.
In her statement, Pelosi claimed that she was calling for the address to be delayed because it’s “a security decision which is completely out of my hands.”
According to Fox News’s John Roberts, however, a DHS official told him that no one from Pelosi’s office called the Secret Service before she wrote the letter blaming security issues.
According to Breitbart, on Wednesday, Pelosi wrote to the president to rescind her Jan. 3 invitation for him to address Congress on January 29, in keeping with tradition.
Pelosi blamed a lack of available security due to the ongoing partial government shutdown:
“This requires hundreds of people working on the logistics and security of it.
“Most of those people are either furloughed or victims of the shutdown.
“The president’s shutdown. But that isn’t the point.
“The point is security. … [It’s] a security decision which is completely out of my hands.”
Aside from Fox News, both NBC and CNN — hardly pro-Trump outlets — have rejected Pelosi’s explanation.
Secret Service is fully ready to offer full protection during the #SOTU, a sr. law enforcement official tells @petewilliamsnbc.
“It’s a no-fail mission,” the official says.
Though USSS personnel are not being paid, the intelligence & protection functions are fully staffed. (1/2)— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) January 16, 2019
“We’ve been planning for this for months, as we always do. It didn’t start up 29 days ago,” the official said. (2/2)
— Peter Alexander (@PeterAlexander) January 16, 2019
A senior DHS official tells me that Speaker Pelosi’s claim regarding security concerns surrounding the State of the Union during a shutdown has “zero” credibility… “It is a serious event but one we can handle.”
— Elizabeth Landers (@ElizLanders) January 16, 2019
Fox News’s John Roberts says a DHS official told him that no one from Pelosi’s office called the Secret Service to ask if they had concerns about SOTU before she sent that letter. #StateoftheUnion #GovernmentShutdown
— Cortney O’Brien (@obrienc2) January 16, 2019
At the time Pelosi issued her original invitation to the president, the shutdown was already 13 days old, having begun on Dec. 22.