Released by House Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, the report from lawmakers provides new details into a scandalous environment gripping the presidential security detail.
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The White House said Obama has “absolute” confidence in the agency’s director, Joe Clancy, who once headed the president’s security detail. “Over the past year, under the leadership of Director Joseph Clancy, the Secret Service has taken a number of steps to address these challenges, including altering the way the Secret Service is structured and managed, striving to hire new members of its workforce, expanding training opportunities for current employees, and implementing the other recommendations of the independent Protective Mission Panel”.
“This report, it comes out that four individuals were fishing at Vice President [Joe] Biden’s residence, and neighbors called”, said Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.).
The findings of a bipartisan congressional investigation paint a grim picture of the agency tasked with protecting the president’s life. Attrition is high, the report stated, & the personnel who stay are “significantly overworked”, with morale at “an all-time low”.
In another incident, a man posing as a fictional member of Congress was ushered into a meet-and-greet with Obama. Five days later, a woman walked backstage unchecked at a gala dinner where Obama was a featured guest.
That assessment comes from a new congressional report, which cites a series of security lapses and high-profile embarrassments.
Representative Elijah Cummings (D-Maryland), the top democrat on the panel, said that he expected the report would be approved unanimously by both the Democrats and Republicans on the panel.
The report finds fault with Secret Service leadership.
The report claims that Clancy and his staff have failed to correct the systemic problems at the agency, stating that the Secret Service “cannot fix itself without first restoring the trust of its employees and increasing personnel dramatically”.
But the latest details from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform add more unsettling layers to the service’s failures.
A marine helicopter carrying Secret Service agents lands before Marine One, carrying President Barack Obama, arrives at Andrews Air Force Base.
Among their offenses: Partying with prostitutes on overseas trip, failing to stop a fence jumper who ran into the White House and allowing a man with a gun in the same elevator with the president.
It found multiple emails sent between agents and officers, which included reference to the trip motto as “una mas cerveza por favor” – or one more beer please.
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“Swagg cologne-check/Pimp gear-check/ Swagg sunglasses-check/Cash fo dem hoes-check”, one special agent wrote in an email to another special agent April 10, 2012. It also covers the April 2012 prostitution scandal in Cartagena, Colombia, that resulted in the firing of eight Secret Service employees, the 2014 incident in Atlanta previously mentioned, and the March 2015 incident when two drunk Secret Service employees interfered with a crime scene outside the White House.
