A former Secret Service agent said President Trump’s decision to terminate protection for former national security adviser John Bolton and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will put them at “significant risk.”
“So what has been accomplished here is that the president has put ambassador Bolton and Pompeo at significant risk,” John Wackrow said during a Thursday appearance on CNN’s “AC360.”
“And what worries me the most is does this now empower Iranian proxies or Iran to launch an attack here, knowing that we are divided,” he added.
Bolton said he lost Secret Service protection after Trump was sworn in while Pompeo and a top aide, Brian Hook, were notified that they lost protection provided by the State Department despite both men facing threats from Iran.
“You have the president who is subject to this threat, surrounded by the Secret Service, but other people who are part of that decision now are left vulnerable,” Wackrow told Anderson Cooper.
Bolton said in November that Iranian threats were a “very major concern” for the country amid multiple plots to kill U.S. officials.
“This is not computer chatter. This is not speculation. This is not some guy locked in a basement ranting … on the internet,” Bolton told CNN's Kaitlin Collins.
Trump said that he thought “there was enough time” when asked by a reporter about the decision to remove protection for Bolton.
“We take a job, you take a job, you want to do a job, we’re not going to have security on people for the rest of their lives. Why should we?” Trump added.
“I thought he was a very dumb person, but I used him well because every time people saw me come into a meeting with John Bolton standing behind me, they thought that he’d attack them because he was a warmonger.”
Bolton, a harsh critic of Trump, said in a statement to The Telegraph that he's making arrangements for private security.
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