Tag: secret service

“Transparency is the first step to a reformed Secret Service.
But what’s already known about the agency shows there’s plenty of room for improvement. John Koskinen, the former commissioner of the IRS who worked on the 2021 NAPA report on the Secret Service’s workforce, found that the agency needed more staffing.

“The place ran better if they had enough people, but they were chronically understaffed,” Koskinen said.

According to the report, employee turnover and a lack of sufficient hiring resulted in a staff that was less experienced, overworked, and stretched too thin. “The major finding was that as the staffing increased, employee satisfaction increased,” Koskinen said, meaning that more staffing would lead to less turnover as a result of burnout.

Koskinen believes Congress should focus on the lack of sufficient staffing, especially given the expanding scope of the Secret Service’s mission. The number of people it protects, for example, has grown, with requests like Trump’s for Secret Service protection for his adult children and top officials just before he left office.

It’s not clear, however, whether staffing problems had anything to do with the security lapses at Trump’s rally. The agency did hire over 600 new employees in 2023, and the Secret Service had recently bolstered security around the former president before the incident. That’s all the more reason for Congress to expand its investigation beyond what went wrong at Trump’s rally to get a full picture of how big of a problem staffing actually is — before committing more funding to the agency so that, if needed, the money can be properly directed.

One question that Congress should ask that could help address the Secret Service’s needs — from transparency to resources — is whether the Department of Homeland Security is where it should be housed. Before the 9/11 attacks, the Secret Service was part of the Treasury Department. But since it moved to Homeland Security in 2003, people have questioned whether it receives enough scrutiny or accountability, blending into a massive bureaucracy of over 250,000 employees.

“Are they given the right visibility in light of the importance of their job, or do they get lost day in and day out of that huge organization?” Koskinen said.

Now, with the Secret Service under renewed scrutiny, Congress has a chance to review the agency’s transparency, staffing problems, and the scope of its mission. And it might be time to rethink how the agency approaches all three.”

https://www.vox.com/policy/361371/trump-assassination-secret-service-failure

“As Hutchinson related it in a June public hearing, Trump became enraged when agents tried to take him back to the White House and not to the Capitol. “I’m the f-ing president, take me up to the Capitol now,” Trump reportedly exclaimed before reaching for the steering wheel of the Secret Service vehicle. He then “lunged at [the] clavicle” of an agent trying to restrain him, Hutchinson said.

Immediately after her testimony, anonymous Secret Service agents told several outlets that Ornato and Engel are prepared to deny that this happened, but neither has testified about it under oath. In its most recent hearing, the committee said other anonymous sources had corroborated what Hutchinson said.

Visibility into the text messages between agents would confirm what happened and could further prove Trump’s intent to join the crowd at the Capitol in its effort to halt the certification of the 2020 presidential election. They also might offer more details on what Trump was doing during the attack. The committee established in its July 22 hearing that Trump spent most of the time during the attack watching Fox News and lobbying senators to back his efforts to overturn the 2020 elections.

In addition, they could clarify what was happening around Vice President Mike Pence that day. The hearing displayed audio transcripts of Secret Service agents at the Capitol who worried that Pence might not be able to escape to a secure location in the Capitol, and one anonymous security official testified that members of Pence’s detail were so concerned that they called family members to say goodbye in case they did not survive.

Afterward, when Pence fled, he refused the requests of agents to get into a car because he didn’t trust them not to drive away and evacuate him from the Capitol. Pence, who thought it was important for the country to proceed with finishing the task Congress started that day, didn’t want to prevent the election’s certification if he couldn’t return to the Capitol that night, as the Washington Post’s Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker reported in their book I Alone Can Fix It. Pence told Tim Giebels, the head of his detail, “I’m not getting in the car, Tim. I trust you, Tim, but you’re not driving the car. If I get in that vehicle, you guys are taking off. I’m not getting in the car.”

At the same time, Ornato told Keith Kellogg, Pence’s national security adviser, that there were plans to move the vice president to Andrews Air Force Base. Kellogg replied, according to the Post, “You can’t do that, Tony. Leave him where he’s at. He’s got a job to do. I know you guys too well. You’ll fly him to Alaska if you have a chance. Don’t do it.”

The missing text messages might reveal more details about this as well, but it is unclear if we will ever see them. The Secret Service says it’s unlikely they can be recovered. We may, though, learn more over the course of the criminal investigation about who erased them and why.

In the meantime, committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) told reporters after the July 22 hearing that both Ornato and Engel have retained private lawyers.”