The Secret Service met with Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in response to comments the Republican nominee made at a rally Tuesday suggesting that Second Amendment supporters could stop Hillary Clinton’s Supreme Court appointments.
"There has been more than one conversation," on the issue, a Secret Service official told CNN on Wednesday.
The campaign reportedly told the federal agency that Donald Trump was not intending to encourage violence.
Trump said at a rally Tuesday in Wilmington, North Carolina that Clinton wants to abolish the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and heeded that it would be a "horrible day" if the Democratic nominee were able to appoint a judge to the Supreme Court, bringing the number of justices to nine.
"If she gets to pick, if she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is, I don’t know," Trump said. "But I tell you what, that will be a horrible day, if Hillary gets to put her judges in, right now we’re tied."
Rep. Eric Swalwell (D., Calif.) called on the Secret Service to investigate Trump for his comments, writing on Twitter that the business mogul "suggested someone kill Sec. Clinton. We must take people at their word."
The Secret Service said soon afterward that the agency was "aware of the comments."
Trump rejected the notion that he had advocated gun owners to assassinate Clinton during an interview with Fox News on Tuesday night, calling his comments a "political movement" reacting to the Democratic nominee’s desire to "take your guns away."
"It’s called the power of unification—Second Amendment people have amazing spirit and are tremendously unified, which gives them great political power," Jason Miller, the Trump campaign’s senior communications adviser, said in a statement.