Once candidates have Secret Service protection, it's a federal crime to 'impede or disrupt' them

(Image credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images)

published 2 March 2016

Donald Trump made headlines Monday when he reportedly ordered his Secret Service agents to remove 30 black students from a campaign event. Under federal law, however, he — or any candidate with Secret Service protection — theoretically could have asked the agents to do much more.

That's because H.R. 347, which updated existing protest regulations in 2011, makes it a federal crime punishable by up to 10 years in prison to "impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions" — and that applies to a candidate if they're under Secret Service guard.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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