Why Is the Biden Administration Denying Secret Service Protection to RFK Jr.?

Las Vegas — The lighthearted and free-spirited Freedom Fest — a gathering of 2,000 libertarian-minded activists — taking place here took a serious turn last Friday. Metal detectors were set up. Private security guards in camouflage uniforms carrying semiautomatic weapons appeared leading a no-nonsense German shepherd guard dog.

The reason was that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the independent presidential candidate, who, according to last week’s Pew Research poll, has reached 15 percent support nationwide, was speaking to Freedom Fest attendees that afternoon.

A Kennedy aide told me that the campaign has already spent $3 million on private security that accompanies Kennedy everywhere he goes. I asked why RFK didn’t have Secret Service protection despite his family history (his uncle, John F. Kennedy, and his father, Robert F. Kennedy, were assassinated).

I got a stunning answer. The Biden Department of Homeland Security has six times rejected requests from the Kennedy campaign to provide such protection. Ironically, it was RFK’s death in 1968 that led the Secret Service to expand its protective coverage to leading presidential candidates. Some Kennedy advisers believe that Biden is worried enough about Kennedy’s support in key swing states as to be satisfied that Kennedy has to allocate millions in scarce campaign dollars to security.

But as the shooting at former president Trump’s latest rally in Pennsylvania has just proven, American politics can be suddenly volatile. Newsweek reports that 775 pages of documents obtained by the Freedom of Information Act detail 34 instances of direct threats and bizarre rants directed at RFK Jr. by various entities and individuals. One promised, on social media, to “kill rfk jr lawfully on USA soil. Bullets right into the head,” while another wrote, “RFK is not immune from a 7.62 caliber bullet.”

Kennedy’s lawyers have sent six letters to U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas formally requesting protection, to no avail. Last month, cousin of RFK Jr. and former House member Patrick Kennedy weighed in with his own request: “I struggle to understand the administration’s persistent refusal to grant Secret Service protection to a presidential candidate deemed by the Secret Service itself to be at elevated risk.”

In a separate letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Patrick Kennedy wrote passionately:

It is untenable to dismissively conclude that this case is routine or akin to others. Bobby endured the unimaginable trauma of being present at his father’s violent death. The trauma to the national psyche of a repeat event transcends a wooden technical analysis. It is incumbent upon the nation’s intelligence apparatus to weigh these unique factors appropriately in the interest of all citizens.

Even Democrats are starting to question the Biden administration’s preposterous refusal. Colorado governor Jared Polis and Arizona representative Ruben Gallego have demanded protection for Kennedy.

So too have some Republicans. Ari Fleischer, a former White House spokesman for President George W. Bush, says the Biden administration should have provided Secret Service protection to Kennedy “a long time ago.”

Thomas Balcerski, a presidential historian at Eastern Connecticut State University, says the Biden refusal looks both shortsighted and petty: “Giving Kennedy protection would give him political currency. The speculation is that Biden doesn’t want that.”

If that’s true, sadly, it wouldn’t be the first time that our cognitively failing, peevish, and narcissistic president has lashed out at his political adversaries. The attempted assassination of another presidential candidate, one expects, should be enough to alert the president to his folly.