After Iran Put Out $80m Hit On Donald Trump, Secret Service Adds Four Checkpoints To Examine Vehicles For Explosives And Search Guests For Weapons In Mar-a-Lago

As the tension between Iran and United States goes tougher, Iran has put out $80 bounty on Donald Trump’s head, but the Secret Service has opted their security across all Trump’s properties in order to protect the president, among others.

The Secret Service has substantially toughened security at Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort after three potentially harmful intrusions and now as Iran has put out an $80million hit on the president.

According to Dailymail UK, no longer can anyone wander onto the Palm Beach property under false pretenses, as happened last March with Yujing Zhang from China.

Depending on where members and guests are headed on the property, they now may have to pass through as many as four Secret Service security checkpoints.

Their identities are checked based on their driver’s licenses, and their vehicles are examined for explosives under the hood and in the trunk. They must pass through metal detectors or be wanded for weapons or explosives at several more check points.

The added security should make it impossible for intruders to sneak in again, avoiding repeat incidents by trespassers Mark Lindblom, a college freshman who wandered around the resort for 20 minutes during Trump’s 2018 Thanksgiving visit and Chinese national Jing Lu, who entered the grounds last month to try to take photos without being immediately apprehended by Secret Service agents.

Now the presence of Secret Service agents and uniformed officers appears to have been increased by at least a third.

Ramped up Secret Service security has also been imposed at Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach, where President Trump goes to play golf or partake in buffet dinners.

Under the new protocol, identities of club members and guests are checked with their driver’s licenses, and vehicles entering the property are examined for explosives under the hood and in the trunk.

The tougher measures by the Secret Service are in addition to protection by the Air Force, which enforces a no-fly zone over Mar-a-Lago when Trump is in town, the Coast Guard, which patrols the waters around Mar-a-Lago, and Palm Beach and Palm Beach County police, who shut down roads leading to the former Marjorie Merriweather Post estate and inspect trucks approaching the area when Trump is in town.

The U.S. Army also maintains a contingent on the grounds in case needed.

Troubling as the recent intrusions at Mar-a-Lago were, they were trivial compared with the repeated Secret Service fiascoes that took place during the Obama administration.

Back then, Michaele and Tareq Salahi went prancing into a White House State Dinner and were greeted by President Obama even though they were not on the guest list.

In a story I broke, Secret Service agents were hiring prostitutes when Obama visited Cartagena, Colombia. Back home, inebriated Secret Service agents drove their car up to the White House itself and interrupted an active bomb investigation. And intruder Omar J. Gonzalez jumped the White House fence, ran into an unlocked White House, and entered the East Room armed with a folding knife.

Underscoring the agency’s arrogance and cover-up tendencies, then Secret Service Director Julia Pierson publicly claimed that in not killing Gonzalez, Secret Service uniformed officers exercised ‘tremendous restraint.’

Pierson coupled that with false statements she approved saying that Gonzales had been quickly detained at the door and a search determined that he was unarmed. Pierson later admitted at a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing that she knew that Gonzalez in fact carried a weapon when he was arrested.

Senior FBI officials were horrified by the Secret Service’s handling of the matter and found laughable its effort to cover up its own failure by brazenly hailing the officers’ ‘restraint.’

Just after Trump became president and before he had appointed his own Secret Service director, Tuan Anh Tran jumped the fence carrying two cans of pepper spray. He advanced along the exterior of the White House as far as the entrance to the Diplomatic Reception Room.

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Ronald Kessler, a former Washington Post and Wall Street Journal investigative reporter, is the New York Times bestselling author of ‘The Trump White House: Changing the Rules of the Game’ and ‘In the Presidents Secret Service: Behind the Scenes With Agents in the Line of Fire and the Presidents They Protect.’