Secret Service failures expose glaring problem within agency

Only later did we learn that senior-level USSS officials did not share “classified threat information” received 10 days before the assassination attempt with the team assigned to protect the president or with local law enforcement.

In releasing his final report on the Butler incident, Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) stated that “What happened in Butler was not just a tragedy — it was a scandal. The USSS failed to act on credible intelligence, failed to coordinate with local law enforcement, and failed to prevent an attack that nearly took the life of a then-former president.”

USSS headquarters had denied multiple requests for additional staff, assets, and resources to protect Trump. Counter snipers were authorized but not deployed by the USSS for the rally. Later, then-USSS Director Kimberly Cheatle falsely testified to Congress that she had not denied the Trump rally any USSS assets.

Paul continued, almost in disbelief: “Despite those failures, no one has been fired.” He urged Congress and the White House that “We must hold individuals accountable and ensure reforms are fully implemented so this never happens again.”

And this time, would-be assassin Cole Allen might have succeeded in his plot to kill Trump and numerous administration officials attending the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association dinner had he not tripped over his own feet after running past a group of USSS agents, one of whom he shot in the chest.

In the aftermath of the Butler incident (and the Ryan Routh incident months later), many blamed political indifference by Biden administration officials for the incompetent protection detail that cost a father his life. But the WHCA dinner failures lie squarely at the feet of Trump’s hand-picked Secret Service Director Sean Curran, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and newly appointed DHS Secretary Markwayne Mullin.

Reporter Susan Crabtree, who has chronicled numerous USSS blunders in recent years, called the WHCA dinner incident “another epic failure for the Secret Service leadership… because (just like in Butler) these rank-and-file agents were put in a place to fail and set up to fail… This is a serious leadership issue at the Secret Service.”

Former House oversight committee chair Jason Chaffetz says the agency has a serious hiring and vetting problem as it struggles to deal with manpower issues, an indication that the rot at USSS is the canary in the coal mine, exposing the decline in patriotism across the nation.

Chaffetz says that, while “there’s a lot of good, heroic people” at USSS, the agency was reduced to advertising for agents and officers on pizza boxes in Washington, D.C. Some of these pizza box recruits are now guarding the President.

Crabtree, who has documented numerous USSS failures since long before the Butler incident, says that sex scandals, drinking and sleeping on the job, lack of discipline, and other failures among USSS agents indicate that lackluster hiring policies are still alive and well at the agency, which is also plagued by agents with animus toward the president and his agenda.

One person with intimate knowledge of the USSS wonders why Wiles and Curran prioritized spending $400 million to build a replica of the White House at the USSS training center rather than invest in higher-quality training for agency recruits.

Others wonder why the newly appointed Mullin, who was a potential target of the WHCD fiasco, flew back to Oklahoma on the night of the attempted assassination rather than recognize the urgency of getting answers about a near-catastrophic failure of an agency under his command.

Curran was one of the USSS agents assigned to former President Barack Obama’s detail in 2012 when other USSS agents and U.S. military personnel were caught sleeping with prostitutes at a hotel in Cartegena, Colombia, before the president arrived for a meeting, so he had to be aware that the agency is still plagued, as Crabtree suggests, by in many cases “DEI hires” and agents with animus toward the president and his agenda.

The morass at the USSS may be partly due to internal disagreements among administration officials. Wiles, as chief of staff, had wanted a political appointee rather than the careerist Curran as USSS director, and former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem sought to install a politically savvy chief counsel to oversee much-needed reforms at the agency, yet Wiles blocked Noem’s request.

A quick review of some of the foibles at the USSS just since Curran became director shows lapses in judgment and worse by USSS agents who, with better screening and a broader applicant pool, might have been avoided.

In May 2025, two female Secret Service agents were suspended following an on-duty fight outside Obama’s Kalorama neighborhood home.

A vetting failure allowed radical “Code Pink” activists to book tables at a Washington, D.C., restaurant hosting the President and some friends. There were rumors that someone had tipped off the “free Palestine” and “Trump is Hitler” sign bearers at what was supposed to be a secret pop-up outing.

The visit by the president and the first lady to the United Nations General Assembly two weeks later was even worse.

The president pointed to incidents with an escalator and a teleprompter, but the greater embarrassment for the USSS was that the New York Police Department reported that one USSS agent fell asleep on the job and also left his rifle unattended for several minutes while he went to the bathroom.

On Jan. 5, William (aka Julia) DeFoor, son of a prominent Cincinnati family, broke into Vice President JD Vance’s Ohio home, shattering four windows and doing $28,000 in damages, before USSS agents detained the hammer-wielding invader.

Two weeks later, a USSS agent assigned to Vance shared sensitive security information with an undercover journalist employed by O’Keefe Media Group. Tomas Escotto provided shift schedules, advance travel plans, real-time locations with photos containing revealing metadata, and his personal disdain for the Trump administration.

In March, an agent assigned to former first lady Jill Biden’s protective detail negligently shot himself in the leg at the Philadelphia International Airport, a faux pas that could have killed or injured bystanders.

The Secret Service in April arrested a Federal Aviation Administration contractor who had used a government-issued computer to research previous assassination attempts on Trump and searched for ways to smuggle a gun into a federal building, but only after he emailed the White House vowing to “neutralize/kill” the president.

Also in April, the USSS unsuccessfully investigated a mystery shooting near the White House for two weeks. The agency only found rifle casings and a video that showed the shooter’s vehicle, but it still has not identified the shooter.

On May 5, USSS agent John Spillman was arrested in South Florida after being found naked and masturbating in a hotel hallway in front of hotel customers. One female guest said he had followed her from the hotel lobby, and that she and other guests “immediately entered their rooms” in fear for their lives.

Despite these incidents, heads have not rolled, nor has the administration weeded out incompetence and indifference among the cadre whose mission is to protect national security by protecting those the people have chosen to lead a divided nation.

While Trump administration officials themselves have a lot to answer for regarding these near-disasters on their watch, the lapses of these USSS agents are a canary in the coal mine, revealing a glaring lack of patriotism or even an understanding of shared responsibility for national security. And that has got to change.