Does Bill Clinton Still Have Secret Service Protection

The Slatest

Would a Former President Get Hole-and-corner Service Protection in Prison?

What about a erstwhile first lady?

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton shake hands at a debate. — Photograph analogy past Slate. Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has told the president he's not a criminal target in the Russia investigation, but that doesn't mean Trump could never exist indicted or imprisoned. Meanwhile, the White House and its allies continue to agitate for a criminal investigation of former first lady Hillary Clinton, in an apparent endeavor to lock her up. If somehow Trump or Clinton did get sent upward the river, would the Clandestine Service still protect them?

Yeah. Barring an act of Congress, the responsibility of the Secret Service to protect a former president or showtime lady would not disappear because that person had been convicted of a law-breaking. This has never happened, though, and any potential details of such an arrangement are mysterious even to Hole-and-corner Service veterans and other experts on the agency. A spokesman for the Secret Service refused even to address the issue. "It's a route we would have to become downwardly if it ever happened," he told the Explainer. "It's not something nosotros're going to think virtually unless it happens."

(The most recent time this came up, when Nib Clinton was facing criminal prosecution for perjury and obstruction of justice, the Explainer ignominiously punted on the question.)

A prison setting might exist safe in some regards. An incarcerated former president or first lady wouldn't have to worry too much about beingness kidnapped, for example, or blackmailed for information. Merely he or she would exist at a heightened risk of violence. (Rapes and other assaults occur 15 to thirty times more often among prisoners than in the general population.) It'due south possible the Secret Service would deploy a protective item at the facility, with agents stationed in the cellblock, the prison yard, or otherwise in the vicinity of the VIP inmate.

In this scenario, agents wouldn't have to exist hanging out inside the erstwhile president or offset lady'due south cell—just close plenty to go on an eye out. The situation might be analogous—loosely analogous—to how the Secret Service protects the president'south children while they're in school.
While Calvin Coolidge'southward son, John, went to Amherst College in 1926, a Underground Service agent lived in the same business firm every bit him and remained by his side throughout the day—except when John was in class or hanging out with his buddies during recreation periods. Agents guarding Julie Nixon when she was enrolled at Smith Higher maintained a post exterior her dorm room overnight so joined up with her when she went out. They as well took their meals in the higher mess hall. Secret service agents deployed at Stanford University on behalf of Chelsea Clinton dressed similar students in club to fit in. (Would Underground Service agents guarding an incarcerated former president dress in prison blues? No one knows.)

Some other option for the Cloak-and-dagger Service would be to hand off its protective responsibilities to the Bureau of Prisons or advisable state-level Department of Corrections. When Hillary Clinton joined President Barack Obama's Cabinet in 2009, the Underground Service turned over at least some of the work of protecting her to the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security. If a one-time president or first lady were locked up, the Secret Service might inspect the prison and its procedures to ensure everything was upwards to snuff, and then agree to let the warden handle things from there. Even and then, the agency might choose to keep a pocket-sized presence in the prison house, with an amanuensis stationed in an authoritative part, for example. It might also have a special plan for extracting the former president or first lady in instance of prison riots.

It's possible that Congress would pass a law that stripped the incarcerated erstwhile president or first lady of their protection. (Lawmakers accept often tweaked the rules on who gets a Cloak-and-dagger Service particular, and for how long. At the moment, former presidents get the perk for life, while their spouses lose it if they remarry.) A old president or first lady could too make the choice to forgo Clandestine Service protection. Pat Nixon asked for hers to be dropped in 1984; her hubby followed accommodate in 1985.

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Explainer cheers Ronald Kessler, writer of In the President's Secret Service, and Sonny Smith of Texas A&M University.