Pentagon officials say they have not been asked to provide any additional security support to the Republican national convention in Milwaukee this week following the assassination attempt on Donald Trump on Saturday.
The National Guard is providing around 1,700 Guardsmen, as well as a small number of active-duty troops, but that the effort was pre-planned, Pentagon spokeswoman Sabrina Singh told reporters on Monday.
States have deployed the National Guard to political conventions of both parties for years, and the support they provide is not unusual or atypical. “As of right now, I’m not tracking any additional requests for more support,” Singh said.
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The news comes after a gunman, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, opened fire on Trump and a surrounding crowd at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a small town about an hour north of Pittsburgh. Crooks shot from the roof of a building overlooking the rally that was roughly 400 feet away from the stage where Trump was speaking.
Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper but not before he killed one person and seriously wounded two others, including a Marine veteran. Singh said Crooks has no military service affiliation “in any branch, active or reserve component.”
The National Guard personnel that are deploying to the convention have been in place since July 13 and are slated to stay until Friday supporting the FBI, Secret Service and Milwaukee Metro Police Department, according to Singh.
The 1,700 National Guard personnel are mainly from the Wisconsin, Minnesota and North Dakota National Guard and are “providing capabilities such as civil support, [explosive ordnance disposal] and security,” Singh said before adding that they will “remain postured to respond to other emergent domestic requirements.”
The National Guard is also planning on deploying troops to support security for the Democratic National Convention that is scheduled to take place Aug. 19-22 in Chicago.
Saturday’s shooting has raised questions and concerns about the Secret Service and its protection of Trump, but Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said that he had “100% confidence” in the agency at a White House press conference Monday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, along with many other members of the Biden administration, condemned the shooting over the weekend and, in a statement posted to social media, said that violence “has absolutely no place in our democracy.”
President Joe Biden, in a message to the nation following the incident, also said that “there is no place in America for this kind of violence, for any violence ever. Period. No exception. We can’t allow this violence to be normalized.”
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