© AP/ Evan Vucci
The arrangement represents a major break from tradition. All modern presidents and presidents-elect have entrusted their personal security entirely to the Secret Service, and their event security mostly to local law enforcement, according to presidential security experts and Secret Service sources.
But Trump — who puts a premium on loyalty and has demonstrated great interest in having forceful security at his events — has opted to maintain an aggressive and unprecedented private security force, led by Keith Schiller, a retired New York City cop and Navy veteran who started working for Trump in 1999 as a part-time bodyguard, eventually rising to become his head of security.
Security officials warn that employing private security personnel heightens risks for the president-elect and his team, as well as for protesters, dozens of whom have alleged racial profiling, undue force or aggression at the hands of Trump's security, with at least 10 joining a trio of lawsuits now pending against Trump, his campaign or its security.
"It's playing with fire," said Jonathan Wackrow, a former Secret Service agent who worked on President Barack Obama's protective detail during his 2012 reelection campaign. Having a private security team working events with Secret Service "increases the Service's liability, it creates greater confusion and it creates greater risk," Wackrow said.
"You never want to commingle a police function with a private security function," he said, adding, "If you talk to the guys on the detail and the guys who are running the rallies, that's been a little bit difficult because it's so abnormal."
Wackrow, who left the Secret Service in 2014 and is now executive director of a security company called RANE (short for Risk Assistance Network + Exchange), said if he were the lead agent at a Trump rally, "I wouldn't allow it." But he suggested it's a tricky situation for the Secret Service. "What are they going to do, pick a fight with the president-elect and his advisers? That's not a way to start a romance."
Several past presidential nominees have used private security or, in the case of governors running for president, state police details. But the experts could not think of another example of a president-elect continuing with any private security after Election Day, when Secret Service protection expands dramatically for the winner. In fact, most candidates drop any outside security the moment they're granted Secret Service protection.
Trump's spending on private security, on the other hand, actually increased after he was granted Secret Service protection in November 2015.
Through the end of last month, Trump's campaign had spent more than $1 million on private security contracting, compared with $360,000 spent by the campaign of his vanquished Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, according to Federal Election Commission reports. That's despite the fact that every other aspect of her campaign operation dwarfed his. Overall, her campaign outspent his by nearly 75 percent.
Whereas Clinton's security spending — like that of most presidential campaigns — went mostly to protection for her offices and payments to local law enforcement or security companies for ad hoc event security, Trump's campaign took it to a whole different level. It built a robust private security force that traveled the country supplementing the protective personal security supplied by the Secret Service, and working to identify and remove possible protesters — or just people Trump and his allies had a bad feeling about — from his events.
The private security team has been present at each of the seven rallies on Trump's post-election "Thank You Tour" and has removed protesters — sometimes roughly — at many stops.
That included about a dozen protesters during a rally here on Dec. 9 in a minor-league arena called the Deltaplex, where Trump mostly shrugged off the interruptions until he became impatient with a particularly disruptive protester. "Get 'em out!" the president-elect instructed his private security. That appeared to spur Trump's security director, Schiller, to venture away from the stage, where he arrived with Trump, and wade deep into the crowd to assist other private security personnel with the removal.
Before the end of the rally, Schiller returned to his place by Trump's side, along with a Secret Service contingent of which he is often misidentified as a member. (Despite being — at 58 years old — significantly older than most agents, Schiller looks the part, invariably sporting a uniform of dark suits and white shirts, along with a Secret Service-issued perimeter pin, and maintaining an athletic 6-foot-4-inch, 210-pound frame.) Together, the entourage accompanied Trump back to the airport, onto his plane and back to New York. It was the same routine as Schiller and Trump repeated countless times during the campaign, and it likely will be repeated countless more times over the coming years, since Schiller is expected to follow Trump into the White House, according to multiple sources on the transition team.
In interviews with about a dozen people who interact with Trump, they said even as the president-elect's Secret Service detail has expanded significantly since the election, he remains most comfortable with Schiller and his team. A native of New Paltz, New York, and father of two, Schiller has been director of security for The Trump Organization since 2004.
The Trump associates say Schiller is expected to become a personal White House aide who would serve as the incoming president's full-time physical gatekeeper, though he might not be able to offer his boss the wide range of services he has in the past. For instance, federal law prohibits anyone other than law enforcement officers from bringing firearms into federal buildings, and there are even stricter rules about who can carry on the White House grounds or around Secret Service protectees. Schiller had been armed at times early in the campaign, but it's unclear whether he continued carrying a firearm after Trump was granted Secret Service protection.
Even after the arrival of Trump's Secret Service detail, which typically marks the end of any pre-existing security arrangement, Schiller never strayed from his boss' side.
The associates say Schiller provides more than just security. Trump has been known to ask Schiller's opinion on all manner of subjects. When people want to reach Trump, they often call Schiller's cellphone and he decides who gets through to the boss.
Photos often show Schiller looming over Trump's shoulder as he works crowds, standing sentry by the stage as Trump speaks, or ejecting protesters from rallies. He's developed a small but avid fan base on Twitter, where Trump supporters cheer Schiller's confrontations with protesters, pose for selfies with him at events and backstage, and praise him as a brave "American Eagle" who kept Trump "safe & sound."
And Schiller, a registered Republican, showed signs of reveling in Trump's campaign, creating his own Twitter account just before the first primaries to promote the campaign and chronicle his unique perspective from the trail. He occasionally channeled his boss' attacks on rivals like Ted Cruz ("Wow Lyin Ted is becoming unhinged! So sad...," he tweeted as Trump was clinching the GOP nomination over the Texas senator) and spread false claims about Democrats, including that 20 percent of Clinton's campaign cash came from people who were responsible for the September 2001 terrorist attacks, that a grand jury had been convened to investigate her use of a private email server for State Department business and that Obama encouraged undocumented immigrants to vote illegally.
Yet Schiller mostly remains — as one former campaign aide put it — "the most important man no one has ever heard of."
That influence comes from Schiller's ability to essentially control access to Trump, acting as his liaison to everyone from staff and well-wishers to dignitaries — and even Secret Service agents.
"Keith is kind of a consigliere," said a transition team official. "He knows all the players, all the properties. He has the confidence of Trump and of the family. To describe him as a body guy would be very, very beneath the role that he actually plays."
A younger aide — possibly the campaign's trip director John McEntee — likely will be tapped for the traditional body man valet-like role, while Schiller would fill a new type of a hybrid staff-security role, the official explained. "Keith knows Trump inside and out. He knows when he turns right and when it turns left," the official said.
Yet Schiller's tight relationship with — and protectiveness of — his boss has already complicated the Secret Service's rigid protection protocols, say allies of the agency and independent security experts.
In March, when a 32-year-old man jumped a barricade and rushed toward the stage as Trump was speaking at a rally in Dayton, Ohio, Secret Service agents immediately descended on Trump from opposite sides of the dais, encircling him in a human shield as a handful of other agents tackled the man before he could leap onto the stage. About a second after the first two agents reached Trump, Schiller leapt onto the stage and moved to position himself between the scrum and his boss.
The response appeared tightly choreographed to the untrained eye — a phalanx of men in dark suits and close-cropped hair swarming to protect their charge.
But in law enforcement circles, Schiller's reaction was panned as too slow and was the subject of disapproving conversation among agents, according to a law enforcement source briefed on the conversations. The source said one agent described Schiller as the "JV trying to keep up in a varsity game."
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The US Secret Service agents assigned to protect President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 were told to back off during the drive into Dallas, TX that day, and they did. As a result, JFK's assassin(s) had a clear field of fire.