According to a new report from Susan Crabtree at RealClearPolitics, "Rancor, recriminations, and serious formal misconduct complaints have plagued all levels of the Secret Service detail assigned to protect former President Donald Trump over the last year." The dysfunction distracted the team from its primary mission of protecting Trump from physical harm and preventing the assassination attempt a month ago today.
"Trump’s regular detail team, a force of 60 employees – special agents and support staff – has been beset by internal division, long workdays and weeks, and constant stress. Last year, the team lost one of its members to suicide," the report says. "Among the allegations are accusations of improper sexual relationships or fraternization within the team, debilitating mental health issues, non-merit-based promotions, conflict of interest issues, unfair retaliation and the creation of inappropriate memes and social media posts."
On May 15, the top two leaders of Trump’s detail sternly dressed down the entire 60-member staff in a virtual meeting, announcing formal investigations into what they argued were serious misconduct violations, several sources in the Secret Service with direct knowledge of the online meeting tell RealClearPolitics.
Sean Curran, the detail leader and top boss of Trump’s regular 60-member protective team, and his deputy, Matthew Piant, complained of “rumors, innuendo and toxicity” among the detail, as well as “selfishness and immaturity.”
They reminded all employees that they had worked to mentor and train them, and, up to this point, had refrained from referring agents and support employees for discipline even though there had been violations that they could have reported to agency headquarters for investigation.
Curran and Piant complained that they were not getting the same treatment in response from the team. Over the last year, the two leaders have been the target of formal complaints, and some members on the team viewed the all-hands lecture as an effort to turn the tables and retaliate on those complaining about their leadership.
During the meeting, Piant accused someone on the Secret Service detail of stealing from a colleague but quickly shifted focus to a more serious issue.
He condemned a prank where a team member took cellphone photos of two support staff members sleeping while on duty at Mar-a-Lago and circulated the images. This hardly sounds like the epitome of professionalism, does it?
Sleeping on the job at Mar-a-Lago this spring, the critics said, was especially egregious because of a series of recent security breaches across the Secret Service, including one in which a drunken intruder entered Biden national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s home in the middle of the night. That incident occurred in April 2023 even though Sullivan has 24/7 Secret Service protective detail because of the high-profile and highly sensitive nature of his job.
Curran spoke after Piant, expressing deep disappointment in the team, echoing the contention that the pranksters had put their teammates’ safety in jeopardy just for a laugh.
Toward the end of the virtual meeting, Curran said he was issuing a final warning to the entire team. Though he didn’t want to alert headquarters to the violations of a handful of people, he said he might have to do so if everyone didn’t start supporting one another.
There are a lot more details in the report, but in the end, the important takeaway here is that the Secret Service is plagued by dysfunction and that's not something that can be easily fixed.
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