Privatized mercenary

Inside Trump's 'privatized mercenary force'

The security team that patrols the billionaire's rallies has a history of rough tactics, allegations of profiling. 

By Kenneth P. Vogel and Brianna Gurciullo

One night last week, dozens of chanting activists filed into the lobby of a hotel here, demanding that it cancel a Donald Trump town hall set for the following day. Within minutes, three members of Trump’s advance security team were in the lobby, and things escalated quickly.

An official with the Trump advance security team, a 61-year-old former FBI agent named Don Albracht, began circling the room, putting his phone in the faces of protesters and filming them. As they chanted “build communities, not walls,” Albracht ripped a sign out of one protester’s hands, jutting his phone within inches of her face, as her comrades shouted objections.

When some of the protesters tried to return the favor by filming Albracht at close range, one of Albracht’s associates pulled a protester away, screaming at her and wagging a finger in her face, an exchange captured in a video taken by activists with the group Stand Up For Racial Justice.

Neither the Trump campaign nor Albracht would comment on the protest or the role of private security personnel like Albracht on Trump’s campaign. After a Trump speech on Wednesday in Appleton, Wisconsin, Albracht explained “our policy is that we’re not going to comment, because you just never know whether you’re going to get a fair shake.”

The fracas in Janesville was only one example of the aggressive tactics Trump’s security has been using to tamp down even peaceful protests. A POLITICO investigation revealed that Trump has assembled a privately funded security and intelligence force with a far wider reach than other campaigns’ private security operations: tracking and rooting out protesters, patrolling campaign events and supplementing the Secret Service protection of the billionaire real estate showman during his nontraditional campaign for the GOP presidential nomination.

The investigation ― which utilized Federal Election Commission reports, state licensing records, court filings and interview accounts or testimony from more than a dozen people who’ve crossed paths with Trump’s security ― found that the tactics of Trump’s team at times inflamed the already high tensions around his divisive campaign, rather than defusing them.

The Trump campaign could be forced to publicly justify its security tactics in June when a New York state court is set to hear a little-noticed case brought by a handful of protesters who allege they were assaulted by five Trump security officials during a raucous protest outside the campaign’s Manhattan headquarters in September. The protesters’ lawyers have asked the Trump campaign to release its contracts for security, its guidelines for use of force, its security team’s personnel records, and complaints against its members ― including for excessive force, assault, battery or “violation of any federal or state constitutional right.”

Among Trump critics who’ve had run-ins with his security, complaints include unnecessary force, discriminatory profiling and removing people from events based on little more than their appearance. Some question whether the force’s members are properly trained and certified for the work they’re doing, while others assert that the force acts as if it has the power of the law behind it.

“It was this privatized mercenary force that seemed to have state sanctioning, and that’s something that I haven’t seen before,” said Josh Jenkins, a Madison, Wisconsin, auto mechanic and veteran protester who served as the liaison with police at the Janesville hotel protest.

The Janesville Police Department eventually cleared the lobby, arresting six of the protesters and towing another’s car, which was filled with supplies for planned protests the next day, deeming it suspicious because of an 8-pack of D batteries visible in the backseat. The department’s deputy chief did not respond to questions about the role or conduct of Trump’s security at the protest, or about why the car was towed.

But Jenkins, 45, said that Janesville police officers came across as the personification of professionalism and accountability, compared to Trump’s security forces. The police officers introduced themselves to protesters almost as soon as they arrived on the scene and remained in communication throughout the four-hour protest. In contrast, Albracht and his associates did not identify themselves or give their affiliation, Jenkins said, adding that “their goal did not seem to be to de-escalate. Their goal was to escalate.”

In fact, after watching the video of the Janesville protest, Steve Amitay, executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, concluded that Trump’s team handled the situation poorly. “Ripping the sign was inappropriate and potential battery,” he said, though he added that the filming of protesters “may be obnoxious and seem inappropriate, but [it’s] perfectly legal and a tactic used by a lot of different groups.”

While official Trump campaign events begin with a staffer’s announcement urging supporters “please do not touch or harm the protesters,” the candidate himself has sent conflicting messages. He has promised to consider paying the legal bills of a supporter who sucker punched a protester, expressed a desire to punch a different protester himself and suggested that his team needed to physically intervene at one rally because local police were “a little bit lax” with protesters. At a January rally in Vermont, Trump called on security to confiscate protesters’ coats and “throw them out into the cold,” prompting cheers from the crowd. And he has warned of riots at the Republican National Convention if he doesn’t emerge with the nomination.

The behavior of Trump’s security team seems to echo the confrontational rhetoric of the candidate and his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who was charged last week with simple battery for grabbing a female reporter. Jenkins deemed it “a type of politics that is paranoia-inducing and condoning of violence from the top down.”

At a Trump rally at the Tucson, Arizona, convention center last month, a group of Trump’s private security officers wearing street clothes walked amid a raucous crowd, looking for protesters. The head of the group, a retired FBI agent named Eddie Deck, homed in on a transgender college student named Jaqueline Dowell who was not protesting. She said Deck “grabbed my arm and angrily pulled me through the crowd. I was then escorted by a security officer. When I asked why I was being kicked out, the guard told me, ‘because it was requested that you leave.’” But she told POLITICO “I genuinely believe I was kicked out because I am transgender.”

That rally was marred by several violent clashes, including the punching and stomping of a protester as he was being escorted out by security. At another point, Deck was captured on video aggressively confronting a protester alongside Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager. Lewandowski, who also has a law enforcement background, can be seen grabbing hold of the collar of the protester, who is then forcefully pulled backwards.

After the rally, campaign spokeswoman Hope Hicks said the pulling was not done by Lewandowski, but rather by Deck, though she did not identify him by name, or even as a member of the campaign’s security detail, only as “the man to Corey's left.” Hicks suggested that Deck and Lewandowski were justified in confronting the protester and his associates.

The protesters were “holding signs laced with profanity. These are private events paid for by the campaign and while we do not condone violence or interactions of any kind, that kind of language is not acceptable for the families and television cameras in attendance,” said Hicks in a statement to POLITICO and other media outlets. “We will be dedicating additional security resources to larger events in the future to prevent staff from having to intervene.”

She declined to respond to follow-up questions from POLITICO about who would be providing the additional security, or to comment on the role of Deck, Albracht or other private security, and directed inquiries to the Secret Service.

A Secret Service spokesman did not respond to questions about how agency personnel work with Trump’s private security.

But at a number of rallies last week, Deck and Albracht could be seen directing Secret Service agents, local police and employees of a security company hired for specific events. Before a town hall last week at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, Deck could be overheard introducing himself to a college administrators by saying “We work with Mr. Trump. We kind of handle security for him.”

Shortly thereafter, Deck huddled with his team and could be heard telling another private security official to be on the lookout for any potential protesters who might stand in the aisles. “Right away they should be ejected, because it’s a fire hazard,” he said.

At the Trump rally the day after the hotel lobby protest, Albracht and his associates spent hours patrolling a line of several thousand people snaking around the hotel parking lot, waiting to get into the hotel to hear Trump. Several people deemed suspicious-looking were pulled out of the line and told they weren’t welcome. Others waited hours only to be turned away at the door, where security closely scrutinized people for any signs they might be planning a protest. Security could be overheard asking some attendees whether they were Trump supporters. A few anti-Trump activists made it into the rally, only to be flagged as suspicious before things got started.

Nathan Royko Maurer, 43, said he was approached by a man in a suit who turned out to be Trump’s head of advance, George Gigicos, and told that he’d have to leave because he had “been seen in videos of other protests,” Royko Maurer recalled. Separately, his wife, Amelia Royko Maurer, said she was escorted out of the hotel by a team of security personnel, including Albracht, who shouted at her to leave the hotel’s property, she said.

Trump’s security even flagged a New York Times reporter as suspicious partly because he had been spotted at the protest the night before. The reporter, John Eligon, who is African-American, eventually was allowed inside the hotel to cover the rally, and he could be overheard explaining to Trump security officials that he had been present at the preceding night’s protest because he was covering it, not participating in it.

Ultimately, only one person protested inside the event, standing up to unveil a pair of signs he had smuggled in. One featured a photo of Trump in clown face with the words “White Flour” and the other included a photo and quote from a man asserting he “was scammed” by Trump’s since-aborted Trump University real estate courses. The protester was quickly escorted out by Albracht and local police.

Tensions have been building for months around Trump’s campaign events, as groups supporting the rights of immigrants and religious and racial minorities have mobilized to protest the GOP front-runner’s incendiary rhetoric. Arrests and clashes outside his rallies have spiked in recent weeks, and several dangerous situations have been chronicled, including an incident outside the Janesville rally in which a teenage girl protesting Trump got into an altercation with his supporters, one of whom pepper-sprayed her in the face.

But lately, the fireworks have been on the decline inside Trump’s events, which seems partly a testament to the new, more aggressive efforts by Trump’s private security detail to identify protesters ahead of time, and to bar or eject them before they can disrupt the candidate, partly by deploying private security in plainclothes to intermix with the crowds before and during speeches.

In all, the Trump campaign has paid at least $247,000 to individuals and firms for security-related services between June, when the campaign launched, and the end of February, which is the period covered by the most recent FEC filings. A small fraction of that went to a number of different local police departments, off-duty police officers and security firms to patrol specific events, but the overwhelming majority — $168,000 — went to a core group of five former law enforcement officers or their firms who travel with Trump’s campaign from state to state providing services that are typically handled by local law enforcement or the Secret Service.

Albracht’s firm, ASIT Consulting, last year was paid $27,000, though he said he’s still working for the campaign and quipped that its accounting software “takes forever” to process payments. Trump’s longtime director of security, Keith Schiller, a retired New York City police detective who drew attention last year when he removed Univision’s Jorge Ramos from a Trump news conference, has been paid $57,000 for campaign security work.

Schiller shadows the candidate alongside a phalanx of Secret Service agents, and appears to be paid at least partly through Trump’s corporate or personal accounts, with his payroll payments sometimes recorded in the campaign’s FEC reports as in-kind donations. A further $110,000 has been paid by the campaign to Deck, his security company — XMark, LLC — and a pair of other officials associated with the company: former FBI agent Gary Uher and former New York City police officer Michael Sharkey.

XMark’s website features photos of law enforcement personnel in tactical combat gear brandishing assault rifles. It boasts that its employees have expertise in surveillance, “close quarter battle” and “tactical shooting skills: Combat pistol; Instinctive shooting,” among other talents. On a page detailing its executive protection services, XMark features photos of Trump with his security detail and explains that in the months after the billionaire launched his campaign, the firm “provided all PPD [personal protection detail] for Mr. Trump’s campaign travel to include all advance work and coordination with local Law enforcement agencies, in support, throughout the country, until being relieved by the United States Secret Service in mid-November of 2015.”

Deck and Uher continue to travel with the campaign, though neither they nor the campaign would comment on their role or that of XMark. Deck did not respond to multiple messages left by POLITICO. Uher, reached by phone, said, “I don’t feel comfortable talking to you. … I don’t understand why you’re calling me.”

At the rally in Appleton, Schiller declined to answer questions about the balance between his work for Trump’s campaign and corporate entities, the campaign security team’s relationship with the Secret Service or in what way the campaign is increasing its security. “I really can’t comment on that,” he explained apologetically.

If presidential campaigns can afford it, it makes sense for them to supplement Secret Service protection, said Josh King, who ran advance for former President Bill Clinton. The Service is “not, or shouldn’t be, in the business of neutralizing a disruption to an event, one typically aimed at souring the day’s optics, unless that disturbance poses a genuine threat to the candidate’s life and limb,” said King, author of a forthcoming book on presidential advance. “It’s hard to fault a campaign for taking out its checkbook to rent some reasonably priced extra crowd control when the alternative is allowing a small posse of bullhorn-wielding infiltrators to upend your optics for a news cycle or two.”

Still, Trump has spent far more proportionally on security — which accounts for more than 0.7 percent of his overall spending — than the other candidates left in the race, according to a POLITICO analysis of FEC filings.

Hillary Clinton, the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Ted Cruz, who is Trump’s closest rival for the GOP nomination, each have allocated about 0.2 percent of their overall spending to security.

While Clinton has spent slightly more than Trump on security-related expenses, her overall campaign spending dwarfs his. And her $267,000 in security-related spending appears to have gone mostly toward the protection of her campaign offices, of which she maintains many more than Trump, and to local police departments and security companies to patrol her events.

Cruz’s $135,000 in security spending mostly went to a pair of security companies. And Bernie Sanders’ insurgent campaign for the Democratic nomination has spent just $29,000 on security.

Clinton, Cruz and Sanders all seem to rely on the Secret Service for their primary traveling security, while long-shot GOP candidate John Kasich, as the sitting governor of Ohio, has a traveling security detail from the Ohio State Highway Patrol.

To be sure, Trump had maintained some level of personal protection well before he decided to throw his hat into the political ring, and private sector security for the super-rich is a booming cottage industry.

Deck and Uher, in affidavits filed in the lawsuit over the scuffle with protesters outside Trump’s headquarters in September, explained that their duties for the campaign included utilizing their “extensive experience and training in law enforcement to assist in protecting the Campaign’s headquarters, its property and its personnel.”

During the September protest, Deck was photographed pulling on the neck and arm of a male protester, while an unidentified member of Trump’s detail stands accused in the lawsuit of “forcefully” grabbing a female protester “by the wrist and thrust[ing] her down the sidewalk.”

The members of Trump’s security team contend in their court filings that they acted appropriately and that the protesters were at fault in the scuffle that led to the lawsuit, which also names Trump, his campaign and his company as defendants.

In his affidavit, Uher recalls: “I politely asked just one of the demonstrators (who was dressed in a Ku Klux Klan outfit) to move away from the main entrance of the Premises and then escorted him a short distance so that pedestrian traffic in and out of the Premises would not be obstructed.”

Schiller, meanwhile, acknowledges in his affidavit that he struck one of the protesters in the head. But he says that was because he felt the protester “physically grab me from behind and also felt that person’s hand on my firearm, which was strapped on the right side of my rib cage in a body holster. Based on my years of training, I instinctively reacted by turning around in one movement and striking the person with my open hand.”

But the protester’s lawyers, who did not respond to requests for comment, argue in their filings that Schiller, Deck and Uher “have not obtained the licenses required” by New York State law to serve as security guards outside Trump’s headquarters or anywhere in the state. The three are not listed in a state directory of security guards. As such, the lawsuit alleges, there “is absolutely nothing that would permit ostensible security guards who lack legally required licenses to take over the functions of the New York City Police Department in regulating conduct on public sidewalks.”

Amitay, the National Association of Security Companies official, said that personnel who guard a building should be licensed as security guards if such licensing exists in the state in question. “I don't doubt that the persons in charge of Trump’s security have law enforcement backgrounds and that the security plans are adequate. However, the people actually performing the security work should be licensed,” he asserted.

While he noted that traveling executive protection detail work seldom requires a license, he argued that in an ideal regulatory environment, “anyone who foreseeably could get physical with someone as part of their job, and that job is security-related, should be licensed — meaning screened, trained and bonded.”

Albracht noted to POLITICO that he is, in fact, licensed as a private detective in his home state of Kansas. But he asserted of the security services he and his associates provide to the Trump campaign, “for what we do, we don't need to be licensed.”

Trump is reportedly close to Schiller and has taken an active interest in his security at his events, often pointing out protesters for removal from the stage and taunting them as they’re escorted out. But he contended in a previously unreported affidavit filed last month that he didn’t know much about the security operations at his campaign or his company, and, as such, should not be compelled to testify in the pending case related to the September protest.

“Given the breadth and scope of the business, I have delegated full responsibility and authority for the hiring and supervision of all security personnel and related security operations to Matthew Calamari, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Trump Org,” Trump said in the court filing.

A source close to the campaign said Calamari had done some logistics work for the campaign early on, including traveling with Trump to the Mexican border, though the campaign hasn’t reported paying him. The campaign did not make Calamari available for an interview, nor would it answer questions about his role.

Trump in his affidavit, said “because I have delegated full responsibility to Mr. Calamari on these matters, I was not involved with any of the decision-making with regard to either the hiring or supervision of any of Defendants’ security personnel.”