A Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President J.D. Vance’s protective detail has been placed on administrative leave reportedly over allegations the agent leaked sensitive information about Vance’s movements to the press.
The Suspected Leak
As reported on Friday’s AM Update, the Secret Service confirmed Thursday that a member of its Vice Presidential Protective Division is now facing an administrative investigation and a possible criminal inquiry, though the agency declined to identify the employee or specify exactly what information may have been disclosed.
“While we will not comment on the specifics of this matter, one principle is unequivocal: any conduct that undermines the trust and confidence between a protectee and their protective detail is fundamentally incompatible with our mission and will not be tolerated,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
The employee is suspected of serving as a source for an MS NOW report published last week detailing alleged frustration among agents protecting the vice president and his family. The article alleged some members of the detail have grown exasperated by frequent, last-minute changes to the Vances’ personal travel that sometimes force agents to cancel days off and rapidly assemble new security plans.
The report pointed to one planned outing in particular in which the vice president and one of his sons were expected to fly aboard a Marine Corps helicopter to a golf lesson at Joint Base Andrews. That flight was ultimately canceled because of severe thunderstorms and high winds around Washington, D.C.
MS NOW characterized the complaints as evidence of a growing morale problem inside the detail assigned to protect the the VP, Second Lady Usha Vance, and their young family, which welcomed its fourth child on Sunday.
CNN reported the controversy comes as the Secret Service continues grappling with staffing shortages that result in agents working longer hours in an already demanding and high-stakes environment.
Meanwhile, the publication of information about the vice president’s planned movements has reportedly infuriated officials at the Secret Service, the FBI, and the White House. A former Secret Service agent told CNN that publicizing the movements of two protectees, including a minor, exposed what the agent described as a serious vulnerability inside the organization.
The vice president’s office responded to the original MS NOW report in a statement. “The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction…While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day,” it read.
More to the Story
AM Update spoke with RealClearPolitics National Correspondent Susan Crabtree, who has reported extensively on the Secret Service and says the strain inside Vice President Vance’s protective detail has been building for more than a year:
“I’ve been reporting on the understaffing of J.D. Vance’s Secret Service detail for more than a year. I’ve heard multiple complaints and I’ve been reporting on this in various stories and tweets. The presidential detail is almost twice as large, from what I understand, as the vice president’s detail. But of course J.D. Vance is doing more than half. He is traveling at least twice as much, if not likely more. He’s very integral to this administration, far more than [former Vice President Kamala Harris] was. And he also has young kids. So that is providing a lot of stress for the detail, and they haven’t done anything at the leadership level, that I know of, to address these concerns that have been simmering on the detail for months and months.”
Crabtree expanded on the differences between Vice President Vance and former Vice President Harris’ roles in their respective administrations:
“Her travel wasn’t near as extensive and her responsibilities– you didn’t have her leading negotiations with foreign countries that we’re at war with. I mean, there was just no comparison whatsoever. Obviously during her campaign schedule there was more activity level, but the size of the detail, as I understand it, has not increased since J.D. Vance has has taken the job and has obviously a much more vigorous schedule and has little kids that he wants to be involved with their lives, even though he is the vice president of the United States.”
Crabtree places much of the responsibility on agency leadership, including Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who previously served as the Special Agent in Charge of President Trump’s detail:
“I think it’s an issue of not standing up and speaking truth to power. Obviously, Sean Curran is very close to President Trump and he that’s why Trump selected him and trusts him… But in every blue ribbon report that’s been issued over the last decade on the Secret Service problems, they say do not choose your detail leader… Sometimes you don’t have the experience level if you’re just a campaign detail leader and you haven’t risen through the ranks of outside organizations, like reforming a police department… He didn’t have the leadership jobs before becoming the director that really most directors do.”
While Crabtree believes the staffing complaints deserve serious scrutiny, she argued parts of the original MS NOW report were aimed more at embarrassing the vice president than addressing the underlying problem:
“Some parts of it are seemingly partisan gratuitousness on the part of MS Now that leaked it. You know, the fact that there was a request that J.D. Vance was accompanying his son to a golf course on Joint Base Andrews… and that was played up as some kind of elitism, you know, privilege when that is the easiest way to transport the vice president and the president is by Marine One and Marine Two. The motorcades involve far more agents. But the issue that I think should have been had, it should have been at a leadership level that Sean Curran or Matt Quinn, the deputy at the Secret Service, should have sat down with the scheduler or the vice president himself and said, you know, there are some issues with how quickly you’re doing some of the changes in these schedules.”
Crabtree also accused the outlet of applying a double standard to the demands placed on agents protecting presidents, vice presidents, and their families:
“We didn’t hear much about criticism of taking care of Hunter Biden’s children… from MS NOW or from this particular reporter during the Biden tenure. And it’s interesting to note that it’s even part of a lawsuit that a Secret Service agent has filed. Because he was penalized for telling Maisy Biden, who is Hunter Biden’s daughter… this particular agent was carting around Maisy Biden and her friends. She was over 21 at the time. They were drinking; there was a lot of, you know, going to nightclubs… A friend said, hey, I’d like you to drop me off at a place before she they dropped Maisy Biden at her final destination. And the Secret Service agent said, I’m not an Uber driver. And the Maisy Biden then turned him in to his supervisors for saying that. And he believes he was penalized… I haven’t heard any other reporters on the left, even though I reported that last year or the year before, pick that story up in this same context – that the Secret Service is being burdened by any of the the duties that they have to be providing security for the children.”
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