The Real Reason Joe Biden Is Getting Extra Secret Service Protection

Secret Service agents are on their way to the Chase Center on the Riverfront convention center in Wilmington, Delaware, where Joe Biden and his team have been stationed since the campaign ended on Election Day (via The Washington Post). Many feel it's possible that by the end of Friday, Biden will be declared the next president of the United States, and it is standard, especially in an election that is drawn out over many days the way this one has been, to increase protection for a candidate who appears to be on the brink of victory. Back in 2000, during the hotly-contested Bush/Gore race, Al Gore was also given increased security when it appeared he was in the lead (via Fox News). It is important to note, however, that the security detail being assigned to Biden is substantially less intense than that which would be assigned to someone officially given the title of the next Commander in Chief.

According to the Fox News Decision Desk, as of early Friday morning, Biden had 264 of the necessary 270 electoral votes, and Trump had 214. Therefore, if any of the states currently still counting, including Nevada and Pennsylvania, declare for Biden, the race could be considered won.

While Joe Biden is currently considered to be in the lead, it has been such a close, neck-and-neck race that no news outlet is yet comfortable declaring a winner. And even if we reach the point sometime on Friday where it is generally accepted that Biden has won, it remains to be seen whether Donald Trump would concede defeat. Considering the fact that he falsely declared he had already won the election in the early hours of Wednesday morning, and given his multiple, unfounded assertions of voter fraud and attempts to challenge results in the state courts, it seems a far-fetched assumption that he would go quietly into that good night in the event Biden is declared the winner.

If Biden wins and Trump does not concede, Secret Service may wait under agency protocol until the electoral college meets in mid-December to verify the election results before officially treating Biden as the president-elect (via The Washington Post). This is what occurred in 2000, when, for 36 days, there was no official president-elect while recounts were conducted in Florida, and then a legal fight took place in the Supreme Court. At that time, the Secret Service maintained vice-presidential protective detail for Gore and continued to protect Bush as a major candidate.