Trump’s security ahead of election day a top concern for Congressman Fulcher

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - Idaho Congressman Russ Fulcher is not mincing words when it comes to the safety of former President and current Presidential candidate Donald Trump.

In an exclusive interview with Local News 8, Congressman Fulcher was asked what his biggest concern was between now and November 5.

"Well, on the presidential front, quite frankly, it's keeping him alive," he said.

Local News 8 asked if he was surprised about another assassination attempt on Trump.

"I'm not," said Fulcher, "In fact, I had predicted it. I had predicted the first one, too. That's the level of vitriol that's in Washington, D.C. and in other places towards the former president. And, you know, typically when we come up on an election cycle like this and you're close to a general election, the focus is on policy. The focus is on get out the vote, those types of things. But this time it's can President Trump stay alive? You know, I truly feel like that's could be the deciding factor on this, is just whether or not he can stay alive by Election Day."

Congressman Fulcher also shared his frustrations when asked if he has confidence in the Secret Service.

"The confidence level is low on the congressional side," he said. And that's because the intelligence community in general has earned a lot of mistrust within the congressional front. Every time we try to exercise our right of oversight, they resist. They're reluctant to share detail. They're reluctant to go into any kind of information transfer at all, even if it's in the skiff, which is the private, secure arena there. They're just not generally cooperative. And not to say that's everyone and it's not to be a condemnation of all of the members of that community. But certainly, at the top there are those that are mistrusted by Congress."

He also detailed how Congress can get more transparency from the federal agencies.

"Congress has the constitutional right of oversight. However, what we've learned is the tools to actually exercise that oversight are quite limited. For example, when we go into a scenario where we need to subpoena someone or we need to enforce that subpoena and hold them in contempt that needs to be executed by the Department of Justice. So we have to go to the Department of Justice, which is part of the executive branch, in order to enforce our subpoenas or our contempt charges. Well, quite frankly, a lot of us think the Department of Justice is just got corruption problems like everybody else. And so that is a, I believe, a flaw in the current system that leaves the primary tool as power of the purse. And we do have that. We do have the ability to constrain budgets or enhance budgets. And ultimately, that's the the largest tool that we have. But it is cumbersome and there's a lot of collateral damage when you use that budget tool to try to get enforcement of your oversight," says Fulcher.

Congressman Fulcher has made suggestions for beefed-up security before November 5.

"I have encouraged the former president's staff to at least look into the possibility of some private security enhancements. And that's especially within the short term that might be part of the solution to augmenting his security while we get to the general election."

When asked what else he would like to see happen for Trump's security, Fulcher said "Well, the speaker came out a couple of days ago and said that he felt that there was truly a problem in getting enough qualified personnel for this coverage, and that is very possibly the case. But I can tell you from my vantage point, and I've got a relatively close seat, the vice president appears to have a far more sophisticated, complete detail than the former president. And so I think how that's allocated needs to be looked at, whether that is going to be fairly applied. I don't have a lot of confidence in that. That's one of the reasons why I suggested and I am suggesting at least the consideration for enhancement of security detail using private resources."

Congressman Fulcher also told Local News 8 that any constituent from Idaho can reach out to him with their concerns, even if they are not in his Congressional district.

"To the extent we can get feedback from your viewers, from from people in Idaho to our office to the Idaho delegations office, we covet that insight. We covet that input. We do not have a monopoly on good ideas. A lot of the things that we do that are positive come from people who are on the ground and live in it every day."

Idaho Senator Jim Risch is also weighing in on bolstering security for Presidential nominees. You can read more about that here: https://localnews8.com/news/top-stories/2024/09/19/risch-crapo-rick-scott-lead-the-protect-our-presidents-act-following-the-trump-assassination-attempts/