Female Secret Service Agent Abandons Her Post at Trump Rally: Report
It seems that those assigned to protect presidents, sitting or former, seldom incur punishment for dereliction of duty.
Expect nothing different in this case.
Thursday on the social media platform X, political correspondent Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics reported that an unnamed female Secret Service agent assigned to former President Donald Trump’s rally in Asheville, North Carolina, on Wednesday “abandoned her post to breastfeed with no permission/warning to the event site agent.”
Crabtree cited “three sources in the Secret Service community.”
The site agent responsible for event security discovered the female agent and two other family members in a room set aside for possible emergencies.
Breastfeeding, however, does not constitute a relevant emergency. In fact, the Secret Service prohibits working agents from bringing their children on assignments.
The breastfeeding situation, though bad enough, paled in comparison to the presence of other family members.
“The agent and her family members bypassed the Uniformed Division checkpoint and were escorted by an unpinned event staff into the room to breastfeed, the sources said. Unpinned means they have not been cleared by the Secret Service to be there,” Crabtree wrote.
🚨🚨EXCLUSIVE and BREAKING: During a Donald Trump visit to North Carolina yesterday, a woman Secret Service special agent abandoned her post to breastfeed with no permission/warning to the event site agent, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.
Shortly… pic.twitter.com/lkfhhLcA0B
— Susan Crabtree (@susancrabtree) August 15, 2024
That incredible lapse occurred only 32 days after 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, Secret Service leadership has not exactly covered itself in glory.
For instance, Crabtree’s report featured a statement from Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi.
“All employees of the U.S. Secret Service are held to the highest standards,” Guglielmi said. “While there was no impact to the North Carolina event, the specifics of this incident are being examined. Given this is a personnel matter, we are not in a position to comment further.”
But the spokesman also lied on behalf of Secret Service leadership after the Trump assassination attempt.
At a Senate hearing last month, Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas called out acting Secret Service Director Ronald Rowe Jr. for a number of obfuscations, including a “false” tweet from Guglielmi indicating that the Secret Service had actually “added protective resources and technology” for the Trump rally in Butler.
The relevant exchange between Cruz and Rowe began around the :50 mark of the video below.
Heated exchange between Sen. Ted Cruz and U.S. Secret Service Acting Director Rowe.@SenTedCruz: “I believe that the Secret Service leadership made a political decision to deny these requests…”
Rowe: “Secret Service agents are not political.” pic.twitter.com/XFpD1ywlkc
— CSPAN (@cspan) July 30, 2024
In other words, Guglielmi exists to protect the Secret Service’s institutional reputation, not to tell the public the truth. Thus, his statement regarding high “standards” and the breastfeeding agent means nothing.
Speaking of which, we should expect precisely nothing as a punishment for said agent.
In fact, agents who fail in their assignment to protect a president somehow seem to continue in that same assignment.
On Apr. 14, 1865, a bumbling police officer named John Frederick Parker abandoned his post at Ford’s Theater. Incredibly, Parker went to the Star Saloon next door for drinks.
An hour or so later, John Wilkes Booth, who had also visited the saloon that night, slipped into the theater and fatally shot President Abraham Lincoln.
According to Smithsonian Magazine, authorities later dismissed a charge of failure to protect the president. Meanwhile, “[n]o local newspaper followed up on the issue of Parker’s culpability.”
Instead “Parker remained on the White House security detail after the assassination,” though very much against the wishes of Lincoln’s widow, Mary Todd Lincoln.
Thus, for whatever reason, when it comes to protecting a president, abandoning one’s post does not necessarily mean punishment.
Perhaps Trump should demand otherwise. Or, perhaps he should look into hiring private security.
Either way, we know for certain that government and accountability seldom go hand-in-hand. They never have.
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