The director of the U.S. Secret Service said Sunday ongoing political division has created a “constantly” evolving threat environment ahead of the Republican and Democratic national conventions, but there is no credible threat to either event ahead of their scheduled dates over the next month.
Republicans are set to gather for the RNC in Milwaukee next week, where former President Donald Trump is all but guaranteed to become the party’s official nominee. Democrats will do the same in Chicago in mid-August, but the party’s political calculus has shifted dramatically after President Joe Biden’s performance at the debate against Trump last month.
Kimberly Cheatle, who heads the Secret Service, said the agency had been preparing for both events for a year and a half.
“I think that the environment that we’re dealing with today is certainly different than it was four years ago. I’m sure we’ll see an evolution in the next four years as well,” Cheatle told ABC News host George Stephanopoulos on Sunday, adding extreme political polarization had definitely played into the shift. “But it is definitely something that we take into consideration.”
Stephanopoulos asked if there were any specific or credible threats ahead of the conventions, but Cheatle said there was nothing “out there right now.”
“We are tracking all threat streams and we certainly work with our partners at the FBIand other intelligence agencies that supply that information to us,” she said.
Some groups are planning to protest in Chicago to voice discontent with the Biden administration’s policies amid the Israel-Hamas war. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker (D) said such events would be allowed to go forward as long as there was no threat to convention-goers, Politico notes.
CNN reported this weekend that the Milwaukee Police Department and other federal agencies had prepared a threat assessment ahead of the RNC, which found the event could be an “attractive” target for extremists to sow discord ahead of the November election. But the document also noted there was no credible threat ahead of the convention and was rather a summary of potential tactics that could be leveraged by bad actors.
