In yet another major embarrassment for the already disgraced U.S. Secret Service (USSS), an agent shot himself on Saturday night.
Details are few. The agent will survive.
The once-revered agency has been under heavy fire since the first assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13. Then came the attempt at Trump’s golf course in Florida.
Given the performance of the female agents in Butler; a female agent who went berserk at Joint Base Andrews just outside Washington, D.C.; and another who took a break to nurse her baby at a Trump campaign event, questions remain about not only the safety of the agency’s protectees — notably, presidents and vice presidents — but also its priorities.
And, not surprisingly, public confidence in the agency has collapsed, a Gallup poll shows.
“Negligent Discharge”
The Secret Service did not disclose where the agent, a uniformed division officer, shot himself or the extent of his injuries.
But it did tell Fox News “that the ‘negligent discharge’ occurred near 32nd and Fessenden streets in the northwest section of [Washington, D.C.] just before 8 p.m,” the network reported:
The agent, who was on duty, was handling his service weapon when the firearm discharged.
The USSS said the agent’s injuries were not life-threatening, adding that he was taken to an area hospital for treatment and evaluation.
The agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility is investigating.
The latest on the Secret Service, transferred from the Department of the Treasury to Homeland Security in 2003, comes after not only two assassination attempts, but also revelations that former Director Kim Cheatle’s priorities were out of whack.
Poor Perimeter Security
Revelations about the agency’s preparations as two assassins prepared to murder Trump suggest that the agency can’t or won’t — the agency denied multiple requests from Team Trump for more protection — provide proper security for the 45th president.
In the first case, it left perimeter security at the event site in Butler to local police. But beyond that ill-considered decision, agents encountered would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks three hours before the event and knew he had a golf rangefinder.
Local police countersnipers shared text messages about and photographs of Crooks before the shooting, which killed firefighter Corey Comperatore.
Though former Director Cheatle said the roof from which Crooks tried to assassinate Trump was too steep to safely station agents, video — taken by one of the shooting victims — showed Crooks running across the roof with ease.
Another disturbing revelation for many was Cheatle’s focus on her 30×30 program. Its purpose is to ensure that 30 percent of Secret Service personnel are women by 2030.
Female agents on Trump’s detail appeared panicked and incompetent.
Two months later came another bungled security detail when Ryan Wesley Routh attempted to shoot Trump while he played golf at his Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach.
The agency admitted that it did not search the golf course or secure its perimeter before Trump began play. The reason, said Acting Director Ron Rowe, was that the round “was an off the record movement, meaning it was not on the former president’s official schedule.”
Frighteningly enough, Routh arrived at the course at about 2 a.m., then waited 12 hours for the chance to assassinate Trump. An agent spotted him and fired, whereupon Routh fled. Martin County sheriff’s deputies arrested him as he drove northbound on Interstate 95.
DEI Failure
How many of the agency’s failures are attributable to Cheatle’s effort to feminize the agency is unclear. But “diversity, equity, and inclusion” isn’t serving the agency well, as the performance of female agents at the assassination attempt in Butler well show.
But two other events also suggest that priorities at the agency are more than a little askew. In August, as The New American reported, citing Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics, a female agent at a Trump campaign event in North Carolina abandoned her post to breastfeed her baby. Other agents have been caught snoozing at Mar-a-Lago.
And at Joint Base Andrews in April, sources told Crabree, a female agent assigned to Vice President Kamala Harris’ protective detail suffered a mental breakdown.
Agent Michelle Herczeg grabbed a senior agent’s phone and deleted applications. As Crabtree reported, she
began mumbling to herself, hid behind curtains, and started throwing items, including menstrual pads, at an agent, telling him that he would need them later to save another agent and telling her peers that they were “going to burn in hell and needed to listen to God.”
Herczeg also tackled and punched her boss.
Not surprisingly, she was hired despite failing the situational awareness training called Hogan’s Alley. A Change.org petition reported that Cheatle was in charge of the training center. “Director Cheatle reportedly decided to not heed the warnings by the tactical range instructors and instead authorized this agent’s graduation from training in support of filling the quota to support the 30×30 pledge,” the petition reported.
As well, Herczeg sued the Dallas police for more than $1 million for sex discrimination, accusing a male superior of assaulting her. She also claimed she suffered retaliation for reporting sexual harassment. The courts dismissed her claims.
Those red flags were ignored.
Cheatle, who resigned after her agency’s disastrous performance in Butler, Pennsylvania, became director of the agency because she is pals with first lady Jill Biden.
Gallup: Public Approval Craters
No wonder Americans are wondering about the Secret Service.
“Americans’ rating of the Secret Service’s job performance has deteriorated sharply to a new low in Gallup’s 10-year trend,” Gallup reported of a recent poll.
“About one in three U.S. adults now rate the Secret Service’s performance as ‘excellent’ (8%) or ‘good’ (24%), while 25% say it is ‘only fair’ and 36% ‘poor,’” the polling company continued.
After the two assassination attempts, “the percentage of Americans rating the Secret Service as excellent or good plunged 23 percentage points, while the share of those rating it as poor rose by the same margin.”
They continued:
The 23-point drop for the Secret Service in 2024 is similar to the largest decrease Gallup has recorded for any agency between measures. Ratings of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) dropped by 24 points, from 64% to 40%, between 2019 and 2021 amid the COVID-19 pandemic. The Federal Reserve’s rating also fell by 23 points, from 53% in 2003 to 30% in 2009, after the Great Recession.
H/T: Ace of Spades
