Why?
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has been under the protection of the U.S. Marshals Service since mid-February, after a small group of unarmed protestors tried to block her visit to a local Washington, D.C. area school. For the first eight months of this extra protection taxpayers will be charged about $8 million, according to The Washington Post. Over time the cost reportedly will be somewhat less than $1 million per month.
It’s unclear why DeVos needs the extra protection of the U.S. Marshals Service. As the Secretary of Education DeVos, like her predecessors, would be under the protection of the Dept. of Education’s own in-house protective security team. DeVos, with her husband – the son of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos – is worth about $5.5 billion. She is the sister of Erik Prince, the founder of the disgraced military and security consulting firm formerly known as Blackwater.
Earlier this week The Post reported that Prince had established a secret back-channel between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump before the inauguration.
The Education Department’s in-house security agents have not been reassigned and are still being paid.
The Marshals Service is hiring nearly two dozen people to guard her, according to a person briefed on the arrangements, who was not authorized to speak publicly. The jobs include 20 positions at the GS-13 level ($95,000-$123,000 annual salary, depending on experience), and 2 positions at the GS-14 level ($112,000 to $146,000 annual salary).
A department spokesperson who spoke to The Washington Post under the condition of anonymity “said the agency deferred to the federal marshals’ threat assessment and determination about what would be necessary to keep the secretary safe and able to do her job.”
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in 2015 the average teacher’s salary across the nation was $57,200. Secretary DeVos’ additional security detail could pay the annual salaries of more than 200 teachers.
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Image by Michael Vadon via Flickr and a CC licenseÂ