Tag: secret service

The Worst US Secret Service Failure Since Nov. 1963?

The revelation that the U.S. Secret Service deleted text messages from the day of the Jan. 6, 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol is raising potential parallels with the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to the Trump White House chief of staff,  testified on June 26 to the congressional committee investigating the events of Jan. 6 that her boss, Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, warned her four days in advance that “Things might get real, real bad on Jan. 6th.” She also testified that President Donald Trump was warned about weapons on hand that day. In spite of that, he still wanted his security to scrap the metal detectors at the site of his White House rally.

The accepted wisdom was that Trump had not planned on going to the Capitol to join the thousands of people he had helped summon there.  But Hutchinson testified that Trump had indeed planned on going to the Capitol to join the demonstrators.

She said under oath that she was told he was so intent on going that he tried to grab the steering wheel, and even lunged at Bobby Engel, one of the Secret Service agents in the SUV, to direct the vehicle to the Capitol. Hutchinson testified that she was told that by Tony Ornato, a Secret Service agent who left to become Trump’s deputy chief of staff, only to return to the service as a senior official.

Hutchinson’s testimony is being disputed, however. Senior Secret Service agents are ready  to testify that that did not happen, according to The Guardian. The newspaper reported:

“Carol Leonnig of the Washington Post, author of two books on the Trump administration and a history of the Secret Service, Zero Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Secret Service, said: ‘Sources tell me agents dispute that Donald Trump assaulted any agent or tried to grab the steering wheel on Jan 6. They agree Trump was furious about not being able to go to Capitol with his supporters. They offer to testify under oath.’”

Salon reported:

“After her testimony, journalists citing anonymous sources reported that Engel and the driver of Trump’s vehicle were ‘prepared to testify under oath’ to dispute Hutchinson’s account and that Ornato denied telling Hutchinson that Trump ‘grabbed the steering wheel or an agent.’”

But Salon reported Monday that neither Ornato nor Engel have showed up to testify one month later and both have hired private counsel. 

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Secret Service finds record of deleted text messages from around January 6 on the phones of at least TEN agents as Department of Homeland Security continues criminal probe of agency

Before it was instructed to halt its investigation last week, the United States Secret Service found records of deleted text messages on or around January 6, 2021, stored on the phones of at least 10 agents.

Secret Service investigators discovered metadata showing that text messages were sent and received on at least 10 agents’ phones in the days surrounding the Capitol riot – but have since been deleted, according to CNN. 

Investigators were then working to determine whether the content of these texts contained information about the attempted  insurrection, and whether they should have been preserved amid an ongoing House investigation into the riot, two unnamed sources told the network.

Among the text records the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General requested were those of the heads of the detail for both former President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence: Bobby Engel and Tim Giebels, respectively.

It’s unclear whether they are included among the 10 personnel whose phones contained metadata showing records of deleted texts.

But among the 24 Secret Service members that were originally under scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General, sources told CNN, 10 other members had no text messages around that time and three others only had personal messages.

The deletion of the messages has raised the prospect of lost evidence that could shed further light on then-President Donald Trump’s actions during the insurrection, particularly after testimony about his confrontation with security as he tried to join supporters at the Capitol. 

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SECRET SERVICE DELETED JAN. 6 TEXT MESSAGES AFTER OVERSIGHT OFFICIALS REQUESTED THEM

THE SECRET SERVICE erased text messages from January 5 and January 6, 2021, according to a letter given to the January 6 committee and reviewed by The Intercept. The letter was originally sent by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General to the House and Senate homeland security committees. Though the Secret Service maintains that the text messages were lost as a result of a “device-replacement program,” the letter says the erasure took place shortly after oversight officials requested the agency’s electronic communications.

The Secret Service did not respond to a request for comment from The Intercept. In a statement to the Washington Post, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi disputed the timeline, saying that some electronic communications had been deleted in January, while the Inspector General made its request in February.

The Secret Service has emerged as a key player in the explosive congressional hearings on former President Donald Trump’s role in the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to prevent the 2020 election results from being certified. That day, then-Vice President Mike Pence was at the Capitol to certify the results. When rioters entered the building, the Secret Service tried to whisk Pence away from the scene.

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What Are They Hiding? Secret Service Claims to Have “No Records” of Visitors to Biden’s Delaware Homes

Throughout his time in office, the US Secret Service has kept “no records” of who visits Joe Biden when he is away from Washington at either of his Delaware homes, according to a newly released Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request that was published by the New York Post.

In all, Biden has spent over 25% of his presidency stationed at his Delaware homes, which consists of him taking “personal time” while also conducting official and unofficial business. However, during the past year-plus, the USSS did not record any of Biden’s visitors at all.

The admission from the agency came in response to a FOIA request from the NY Post. When the outlet asked for records about who was visiting Biden, the USSS officer Kevin Tyrell was forced to admit they didn’t have them, because they didn’t exist.

From the NY Post:

“The Post sought more than one year of visitor log records, including for Biden’s first year in office, but Secret Service Freedom of Information Act officer Kevin Tyrrell wrote in a response dated Monday that “the Secret Service FOIA Office searched all Program Offices that were likely to contain potentially responsive records, and no records were located…

…Tom Fitton, president of the conservative watchdog group Judicial Watch, which also has sued for presidential visitor logs, accused the Secret Service of playing a “shell game” — potentially claiming that the Delaware logs belong to the White House rather than the protective agency.

“Obviously the Secret Service knows and tracks who is visiting President Biden at his homes in Delaware and they are playing a shell game with the public to keep that information secret,” Fitton said.”

These types of records are especially important given the current situation surrounding Hunter Biden and the Bidens more broadly. Not only is Hunter currently under federal investigation for tax fraud, but the contents of his infamous laptop from hell are finally starting to catch some traction. Documents and photos from the laptop expose the Biden Crime Family’s direct links to China, Mexico, Russia, and Ukraine and it has been proven for quite some time now that he has taken in large sums of cash from ‘business associates’ in many of these countries – which makes identifying who is coming and going from Biden’s home these days pretty relevant.

As for precedent, it is not out of character for the USSS to not record visitors when the president is away from the White House. In fact, this same issue was raised when Trump was in office by a left-wing watchdog group. However, the group was able to procure the documents from the Trump Organization, which recorded the information in their own records.

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Secret Service is renting $30,000-a-month Malibu mansion to protect Hunter Biden, ABC News reports

Hunter Biden, President Biden’s remaining son, is living in a rented four-bedroom “resort-style” home in Malibu, California, and the nearest property his Secret Service detail could secure was a $30,000-a-month six-bedroom mansion with ocean views and a “castle-like tower to the master retreat with wet bar,” ABC News reports, citing the mansion’s listing and sources familiar with the matter. 

That’s “the cost of doing business for the Secret Service,” former agent Don Mihalek told ABC News. “Typically, wherever a protectee sets up their residence, the Secret Service is forced to find someplace to rent nearby at market value,” he added. “The Service has had to do this in past administrations, and unfortunately, the housing market right now has driven the prices.”

“The cost of protecting first families has raised eyebrows in the past,” ABC News notes. “In the first year of Donald Trump’s presidency, the Secret Service requested $60 million of additional funding to protect Trump and his family, with about $27 million of that going to protecting them at their private residency at the Trump Tower in New York City,” and the Secret Service paid at least $1.2 million at various Trump properties while protecting the Trump family, including $17,000 a month for a cottage at Trump National Golf Club in New Jersey, The Washington Post found. 

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Secret Service: $100,000,000,000 in pandemic relief cash stolen!

One hundred billion dollars would buy 25 billion Big Macs, or 44 million season tickets (prime field level) to the Denver Broncos (of course there AREN’T that many), or some 1.8 million five-carat diamonds or more than a million Teslas.

Or that’s what has been reported stolen after the federal government’s massive trillion-dollar COVID-19 pandemic relief funds have gone out the door.

The Independent Sentinel said that figure was an estimate from the U.S. Secret Service which narrowed the losses to the programs to help businesses and people to lost their jobs due to the problems from the China virus.

“Nearly $100 BILLION AT MINIMUM has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic,” the report said.

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Hunter Biden emails show Secret Service provided false info to Congress

The Secret Service has told Congress it doesn’t have three years of records related to its protection of Hunter Biden, the then-vice president’s son.

However, emails discovered on Hunter’s laptop, which has been in government custody for more than two years, show multiple Secret Service communications during the time he “crisscrossed the world from China to Ukraine seeking foreign business on his father’s vice presidential watch.”

Just the News has reviewed the emails and written a new article about them.

“The Secret Service’s inability, or perhaps unwillingness, to comply with my requests for records relating to Hunter Biden is unacceptable,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin) told Just the News. “We now know that Hunter Biden’s laptop contained records that the Secret Service claimed they did not possess and therefore failed to produce to me and Senator Grassley. I can think of only two explanations for their lack of compliance, either the Secret Service is incompetent or it is corrupt.”

The emails are from a laptop Hunter reportedly abandoned at a Delaware repair shop in 2019. The shop owner turned over the laptop to the FBI when he says he saw it contained evidence of alleged criminal activities. The FBI never took any public action on the laptop material. Lead Democrats at the time spread a theory that it was probably Russian disinformation. 

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Secret Service Unable to Locate Multiple Years of Hunter Biden Travel Records

The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) says it cannot locate years of records on communications regarding agents guarding Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.

Hunter Biden was a Secret Service protectee from Jan. 29, 2009, to July 8, 2014, and traveled extensively during that time, including to Russia, China, and India, a congressional investigation found.

As part of the probe, which is ongoing, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have sought records from the Secret Service in their roles as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Secret Service provided some 261 heavily redacted pages (pdf) concerning the travel but did not provide any records from 2010, 2011, or 2013.

“The USSS’s lack of communications during these years raises questions given that USSS travel records show that Hunter Biden made trips to China and other destinations around the world, including, Russia, Italy, Spain and Mexico,” Grassley and Johnson wrote in a letter to USSS Director James Murray in January.

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Secret Service Agent Dies At Bush’s Compound In Maine

A secret service agent who protected the late President George H.W. Bush and former President George W. Bush has died at the Bush’s compound in Maine.

Secret service agent Keith Mills was found dead at the Bush’s compound in Maine and according to his brother, he died during training.

An autopsy has been done on Mill’s body but a report has not been released to the public yet.

Mills funeral will be held for the secret service agent next Saturday and officials have stated his death will be considered “a line of duty death”.

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