Don Mihalek Retired Secrect Service

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I've got Damahalli standing by. Let's get him on the

(00:01):
Legacy Retirement Group dot com phone lines. He is a
correspondent of course with ABC, but also contributes on all
kinds of law enforcement. And he's he's a retired Secret
Service agent, a senior Secret Service agent at that don
How are you okay? I'm just I'm trying to figure
out what we saw here at the Hilton, and I'm
baffled by the order. Everybody's been praising, from the President,

(00:24):
the media. Everybody says what a great job they did.
But I keep watching these clips over and over, and
when jd. Vance is off that stage and then they
come back for the President, I just feel like something
went off the rails.

Speaker 2 (00:36):
Yeah, so nothing kinetic looks great when it's filmed live.
You know, TV and movies make kinetic situations look very
well choreographed, but in reality they never are. And also,
the other's a mythsnomer that all of the Secret Services
one big entity. The vice President has a separate, standalone
detail from the President's detail, so they function independently, and

(00:59):
at that moment in time where they were being evacuated,
we don't know what information each may or may not
have had, and we don't know what they were keying
off of vantage points, what they were seeing, that kind
of thing. The one thing I'll note though, is for
the president, I mean for the vice president, they literally
went up, ripped them off the stage and pulled them away.

(01:21):
The president had the first lady next to him. So
what you saw is the detail come out. You saw
an agent stand up in front of the president to
block the line of sight to him to take any
of the punishment that may come. And then they eventually
brought out the Counter Assault Team, which is the Secret
Service swat team to harden up around a president to
help evacuate him. Because you want for the president, because
he's the commander in chief, you want to put as

(01:42):
much armor around him as possible to keep him safe.
So that's kind of what happened there. Again, it might
not have looked pretty, but that was the methodology that
they try to use in order to ensure the highest
level of protection for the president.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
So you were flying under the same corporate but essentially
you've got different franchises there, the vice president franchise the
president franchise. Now let me ask you this, and I
don't know if there's a rule, or if this is
a subjective thing. You've got two of them there, Milania
and JD. Vance does a secret service. Is there a
rule that says we must default to the vice president

(02:20):
before we go to the first lady? Is there an
order in that too, or is it just so it's
a matter of opinion and what's available at the time.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
There's no hard and fast rule. There's no it's just
the rule is cover and evacuate as quickly as possible.
It's just with the President and the first lady, the
covernor evacuation has to keep in mind he is the
commander in chief, so you want to maximize resources to
him to get him out of there as safely as possible,

(02:50):
because theoretically, the ripping pulling the VP off the stage
theoretically was an exposure issue because there really wasn't anything
protecting the VP when they pulled them off the stage
with the president. When they moved the President off of
this stage, you saw this, you know, swarm of bodies
around him, including the counter assault team who had armor.
So that way, God forbid, it was a worse situation.

(03:12):
He had maximum protection to get him off that stage.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
I know you're making the rounds today. We're down to
the last minute here, but don just give me the
Mahalek treatment here. What's your take home on this whole thing?

Speaker 2 (03:22):
So far? Everything worked as it is designed. The Secret
Service puts in trip wires in order to catch situations
because nothing is perfect. And in this case, the place
you want something to happen is the magnet coom inter checkpoint.
That's where it did. It got stopped. Nobody was really hurt.
There was a uniform divisional officers shot, but thankfully he

(03:44):
was shot in the vest, so he's okay. So all
things being equal, everything worked and so it was everybody's happy.

Speaker 1 (03:55):
You are such a valuable resource. I seriously we could
do two hours. I'm not joking, but I appreciate. I
appreciate having a few minutes with you this afternoon and
maybe later on in this week we can catch up
as things progress with the investigation.

Speaker 2 (04:08):
Sounds good? Would what would love that?

Speaker 1 (04:10):
Thank you very much, Domhlle