Three employees in the U.S. Secret Service communications office were reportedly escorted from the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters Monday amid an investigation into the possible disclosure of classified or sensitive information to the press.
The Reporting
RealClearPolitics reported the employees were removed from their positions, stripped of their security clearances, and designated “do not admit” – barring them from Secret Service facilities. The group is believed to have included Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s top spokesman since 2022 and public face throughout the fallout from the July 2024 attempted assassination of President Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service only confirmed three non-law enforcement employees have been placed on administrative leave while its Office of Professional Responsibility conducts a review. The agency did not identify the employees or reveal the focus of the investigation, though RealClearPolitics is reporting the FBI and CIA are also involved.
Administrative leave and the suspension of security clearances are standard during an investigation and do not establish that any of the employees engaged in wrongdoing, but there seem to be some unusual elements to the probe.
What’s Driving the Investigation
AM Update spoke with RealClearPolitics national political correspondent Susan Crabtree, who broke this story, and revealed a bit more about what the investigators are likely trying to uncover. According to her sources, “it is has everything to do with the media leak investigation into the reports about Donald Trump using the decoy plane to leave [the NATO Summit in] Turkey and not using the Qatari gifted Air Force One.”
That remarkable operation unfolded last month when President Trump reportedly hid inside a catering truck before sneaking aboard a decoy aircraft and slipping out of Turkey. The covert switch kept him off Air Force One amid intelligence warning of a possible Iranian surface-to-air missile threat.
Crabtree said the alleged involvement of the FBI and CIA separates this investigation from the agency’s typical internal disciplinary process. “Usually, the, either Inspector General of the Department of Homeland Security is investigating after the Secret Service itself, its Office of Professional Responsibility, investigates,” she noted.
“What I understand is the White House wanted to get to the bottom of who talked to these reporters. The Washington Post first reported about the decoy plane,” Crabtree continued. “So, the fact that the FBI and the CIA are involved means that it’s a far more serious investigation into the leak of classified material that has to do with President Trump’s movements and security.”
Who’s Involved
Additionally, Crabtree said Guglielmi’s inclusion in the suspension of security clearances is “really bizarre.” He has served as the agency’s chief public defender through the intense scrutiny following the attempted assassination in Butler. “Obviously, he works with reporters all the time, but he’s been more of a company man, and he’s defended the agency in an aggressive way,” she said.
As Crabtree recalled, she encountered that “aggressive” defense firsthand after reporting on the distribution of security resources in Pennsylvania on the day of the Butler campaign rally. “Anthony Guglielmi, as the communications director, was very aggressively defending the performance of the Secret Service at Butler and denying some of the initial reports, including some of my own, and directly saying in a very aggressive way, that I found unusual at the time,” she said.
“My reporting [was] about Jill Biden having more security assets at her dinner the same night in Pittsburgh… than the Butler rally. I reported that the day after the assassination attempt in Butler against Donald Trump,” Crabtree recounted. “Anthony Guglielmi direct tweeted at me that that was very very wrong. Meanwhile, fast forward a week, and Senator [Chuck] Grassley had done a report investigating it and found that there was more security assets at Jill Biden’s, at least when is when it came to post standards, than at the Butler Rally.”
You can get all the day’s headlines by tuning into the AM Update with Megyn Kelly on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you like to listen. And don’t forget that you can catch AM Update on SiriusXM’s The Megyn Kelly Channel (channel 111).