Too Secret? The Secret Service’s Long, Troubling History of Omerta
The conduct of the Secret Service during the January 6 Capitol attack was highly confusing, but the ongoing kerfuffle over its erratic behavior elides one consistent fact: Our modern-day Praetorian Guard has long been a problematic institution.
As I wrote last week, although the Secret Service’s actions around the JFK assassination were most egregiously suspect, the history of our elected officials’ bodyguards is riddled with scandal and incompetence. Despite this, the agency itself — with its more than $2 billion annual budget — has never been seriously investigated or called out for its failings. And it’s naive to believe that the ongoing and widening text message scandal will change this sad status quo.
In apparent violation of agency policy, as many as 10 agents on the security details of Donald Trump and Mike Pence may have sent text messages on or before the Capitol riots on January 5 and 6, 2021, only to either delete them or to have the agency conveniently “lose” them when they were requested by Congress. Only one message was turned over to the January 6 committee.
Joseph Cuffari, the Trump-appointed inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, has opened a criminal investigation, but since Cuffari may have known about the vanishing texts months before he told Congress, several top Congressional Democrats are asking him to recuse himself. Meanwhile, top agents and security officials — including Anthony Ornato, who was a top aide in the Trump White House while still carrying a Secre
Article from LewRockwell
