A few weeks before Joe Biden’s inauguration, the Democrat’s transition team was alarmed by a discovery, among other things, of Donald Trump’s crimes in the federal government.
Secret Service agents familiar with the president-elect, from when Biden was protected as Barack Obama’s MP, explained that there was a dangerous asset within the elite agency, whose mission is defined by necessity as apolitical. With the election of Obama in 2008, the number of threats against a politician, before his inauguration, has quadrupled.
The revelations were so disturbing that the majority of the team tasked with protecting Joe, Jill and the Biden family were replaced before taking office. A book released Tuesday (18) largely justifies the measures of the transition. It should be remembered that part of an agent’s training is to jump in front of the President and take the shot, as Tim McCarthy did, saving Ronald Reagan’s life in 1981.
In “Zero Fail: The Rise and the Fall of the Secret Service”, Washington Post reporter Carol Leonnig tells a story of leadership failures, venality and the locker room of men of culture that makes us wonder what luck is a factor of survival. presidents after the traumatic assassination of John F. Kennedy in November 1963.
After JFK’s death, the secret services consisted of 300 agents for a team of 7,000, responsible for protecting, in addition to presidents, vice-presidents and their families, former presidents and events such as the General Assembly of Nations. United, the Super Bowl and the tours. like that of the Pope.
On two occasions, in 2014 and 2017, mentally ill people entered the White House under the beards of more than 100 Secret Service agents. The biggest scandal in Cartagena in 2012 was not enough for the Service to become more transparent and implement reforms. After a night of drinking with prostitutes, 11 officers in charge of Barack Obama’s security at the Summit of the Americas were removed from the delegation, when the Colombian police were called by a prostitute who could not be paid by the customer.
The Trump era did not usher in the attempt to use federal agents for political purposes. Richard Nixon invented the trick of “protecting” then-Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy, the younger brother of his enemy JFK, before declaring himself a pre-candidate for the presidency. Nixon wanted to smear the potential rival and notorious slush fan. Ted Kennedy noticed and sent the agents.
But Trump, to anyone’s surprise, went further. He was so amused by one of the agents, Anthony Ornato, that he temporarily removed him from the Secret Service and placed him as Deputy Chief of Staff of the White House. In this role, Ornato began to actively work on the re-election campaign and organize criminally negligent rallies which resulted in the contamination and / or subsequent quarantine of hundreds of officers.
Leonnig reports that members of the Secret Service posted social media messages supporting the invasion of Capitol Hill and described Trump as the victim of a “liberal communist” conspiracy (yes, the irony of the contradiction didn’t penetrated the brain of pneumatic agents).
Trumpet Ornato has been transferred to the Secret Service and is now in charge of training new agents.
May the heavens protect the first black woman vice president of the United States.
LINK PRESENT: Did you like this column? The subscriber can release five free accesses from any link per day. Just click on the blue F below.