White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will temporarily be under the protection of the U.S. Secret Service after she was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant because of her work for President Donald Trump, according to multiple reports.
The Secret Service will provide security at Sanders’ home, NBC News reported Tuesday. The network was the first to report the news, citing an unidentified law enforcement official.
The Secret Service declined Tuesday to confirm the report.
"For operational security purposes the Secret Service does not comment on its protective operations," officials told CNN in a statement.
Two unidentified sources confirmed to CNN that Sanders would be getting Secret Service protection, but they did not know for how long. An unidentified source who confirmed the news to Reuters provided no additional details.
Sanders was asked to leave The Red Hen in Lexington, Virginia, over the weekend. She wrote Saturday on Twitter that she was asked to leave “because I work for @POTUS.”
Stephanie Wilkinson, a co-owner of The Red Hen, told The Washington Post that she personally asked Sanders to leave the restaurant after speaking with some of her employees, who felt uncomfortable about serving Sanders.
“I’m not a huge fan of confrontation,” she told the newspaper. “I have a business, and I want the business to thrive. This feels like the moment in our democracy when people have to make uncomfortable actions and decisions to uphold their morals.”
The incident happened days after protesters confronted Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen as she was eating at a Washington-area Mexican restaurant amid criticism of the Trump administration’s policy of separating migrant children and parents at the U.S.-Mexico border. Trump ended the policy with an executive order last week.
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