Secret Service, FBI downplay threat to Trump at California rally

By Susan Crabtree
Real Clear Politics

The U.S. Secret Service and the FBI are downplaying the threat to former President Donald Trump posed by a man arrested outside a California rally Saturday night – despite assertions made by a local sheriff that his detention likely thwarted a third assassination attempt.

Deputies working for the Riverside County sheriff’s office arrested a man, identified as Vem Miller, and subsequently discovered a shotgun, loaded handgun, and high-capacity magazine in his car about a quarter mile from the entrance to Trump’s campaign rally in Coachella Valley. Riverside Sheriff Chad Bianco, who endorsed Trump publicly in June, said Miller’s car, identified as a black SUV, had a fake license plate that was unregistered and possessed several phony passports and driver’s licenses with different identities, as well as what Bianco described as a fake press pass.

Authorities released Miller after his arrest. On Sunday, Miller told local news outlets that he had no intention of harming Trump, that he was a Trump caucus captain who received a special invitation to the Coachella Valley rally from the head of Nevada’s Clark County Republican Party. Sporting a Trump shirt and hat, the 49-year-old Las Vegas resident said he readily disclosed at a checkpoint that he was lawfully carrying firearms in his trunk.

Miller told the Southern California News Group that he bought the firearms in 2022 for self-protection after he received death threats and that he isn’t aware of the differences between Nevada and California gun laws. Miller reportedly is a registered Republican with a master’s degree from UCLA who ran for state assembly in Nevada in 2022 and lost in the primary.

During his run for the state office, Miller told the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he was in the race because “this country has been taken over by tyranny.” He said he supported solar energy and more electric car manufacturing but also was concerned about election security and wanted to fortify voter ID laws and reinstate paper ballots. He also runs The America Happens Network, which features several podcasts, including “Conspiracy Truths with Mindy Robinson.” Miller hosts a podcast called “Blood Money,” which focuses on “issues of corruption, controversy and conspiracies – topics that the mainstream media will not address,” according to the podcast’s website.

“These accusations are complete bull---t,” Miller said. “I’m an artist. I’m the last person that would cause any violence and harm to anybody.”

Bianco told reporters at a news briefing late Sunday afternoon that he believes Miller is a member of a right-leaning anti-government group known to law enforcement agencies as “Sovereign Citizens” and planned to kill Trump at the rally. Members of this group, Bianco asserted, believe that “government rules and laws and everything else that goes along with it, doesn’t apply to them.”

Miller was arrested after trying to pass through an inner perimeter of the Riverside sheriff’s checkpoint after making it through a less stringent outer perimeter checkpoint. Bianco said Miller identified himself as a journalist who was supposed to be there. Bianco said deputies spotted suspicious signs, noting that the car's interior was in “disarray,” and the SUV had a fake license plate.

Later, the same deputies found the firearms and fake passports in the SUV.

“He showed up with multiple passports with different names and an unregistered vehicle with fake license plates and loaded firearms,” Bianco told reporters Sunday. “If you’re asking me right now, I probably did have deputies that prevented the third assassination attempt.”

When reporters pressed him on whether he was being overly “dramatic,” Bianco bristled.

“I’m going to be accused of being dramatic?” he replied, reciting the details of Miller’s arrest. “We have a serious, serious problem in this country because this is common sense and reason.”

Despite Bianco’s assertions, the Secret Service, the local U.S. attorney’s office, and the FBI released a joint statement Sunday afternoon noting that the “incident did not impact protective operations, and former President Trump was not in any danger.”

“While no federal arrest has been made at this time, the investigation is ongoing,” the statement said. “The U.S. Attorney’s Office, U.S. Secret Service, and FBI extend their gratitude to the deputies and local partners who helped ensure the safety of last night’s events.”

Eight hours after he was arrested, Miller said he was allowed to call a lawyer and relayed his experience on the phone in the presence of an FBI agent and a member of the Secret Service, who was there to interview him. The Secret Service, however, appeared to have called off the interrogation.

Bianco noted that he had family members attending the rally but never felt concerned for his or their safety because of his deputies’ vigilance.

“I was completely confident that there was nothing going to happen inside that facility,” he said. “I am extremely proud of what the deputies did, and the buy-in, the personal buy-in they took upon themselves to ensure the safety of our former president and the attendees of that rally.”

Bianco then added: “We know that we prevented something bad from happening, and it’s irrelevant what that bad was going to be.”

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.