Former Secret Service agent Charles Marino said the shooting of an armed man at Mar-a-Lago early Sunday shows the agency's layered security plan worked as designed.
"This was detected very early, happened on the outer perimeter, which is why you saw the involvement of uniformed police," Marino said on Newsmax's "Sunday Report."
"Mar-a-Lago is a fixed site," he added. "Fixed sites are harder to protect, and what I can tell you is this is what success looks like when the layered security plan is effective."
The Palm Beach County sheriff said the man, described as a white male in his 20s, entered the outer perimeter around 1:30 a.m. carrying a gas can and a shotgun.
After he raised the shotgun into a firing position, a deputy and two Secret Service agents opened fire and killed him.
Investigators later identified the man as 21-year-old Austin Tucker Martin of North Carolina.
Marino said the Secret Service has adopted "a more aggressive posture to quickly identify and engage with these types of threats.
"The political rhetoric, the divide, the threat level in this country when it comes to elected officials, beginning with the president, has never been higher.
"The Secret Service knows that there is what I would call a more aggressive posture to quickly identify and engage with these types of threats," Marino added.
President Donald Trump was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the incident.
Marino, meanwhile, said inflammatory rhetoric must stop.
"It needs to stop immediately because this rhetoric is falling on the ears of many, and unfortunately, some of these folks are going to take action," he said.
He cautioned against dismissing attackers as unsophisticated.
"That's not the point," Marino said. "The point is, does this rhetoric fall on the ears of somebody, whether mentally unstable or not, that is able to formulate a plan of attack, execute on that plan of attack, and be successful? That's where the danger comes from."
Marino also said, "It is now reported that the family reported this individual as missing and heading to Florida to potentially carry out some type of attack at Mar-a-Lago. That is very important."
He added that authorities must determine whether others are involved.
"This may not be one of one," Marino said. "This can be one of many from the same group that this individual may be associated with. You've got to get that out, and you've got to start talking to some of these families and some of these close acquaintances of others."
Marino called the use of deadly force justified.
"The Secret Service has to be an agency that is going to quickly identify these threats," he said. "And when these threats appear, take the appropriate action quickly and definitively. And that means the use of deadly force."
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