Show Notes
The Secret Service has a difficult job, but its recruitment and screening failures have made it even tougher. Just this week, a Secret Service agent, Marquez Pinder, was just charged with attempted manslaughter over an alleged fraternity hazing incident that occurred in May in Florida.
Pinder was put on administrative leave by the Secret Service (USSS) over the charges, but as Susan Crabtree points out, Pinder’s arrest is the sixth time this year that a USSS agent or Uniformed Division officer has run afoul of the law.
Crabtree says, “I heard back in late May that there was this weird, bizarre situation where a Secret Service agent out of the Miami field office was actually leading a hazing incident in which at an alumni fraternity chapter for a lot of different universities in the Miami area,” she tells co-host Eric Eggers on the On Background podcast.
“The hazing incident was so severe that one of the pledges had his kidney starting to fail and there was blood in his urine and he had to be rushed to the hospital,” Crabtree learned. “It was a near fatal incident.”
She first reported the story in early June, after fully confirming the details of the case and separating the facts from the rumors that swirl within USSS personnel. “I went forward with the story and there was some pushback from the agent, in an email to me and my bosses,” she says. The agent demanded that RealClearPolitics take his name out of the story because “it was causing problems for his career,” Crabtree recalls.
“And I said, Yeah, I would imagine so, since you were put on administrative leave over this.”
Crabtree has reported other incidents of law-breaking by both undercover and uniformed division agents.
- Secret Service agent Kenneth Premo, 50, who currently serves as a polygrapher, was arrested on July 6 in Virginia, charged with a driving while impaired, assault on a law enforcement officer, and sexual battery.
- In May, Secret Service officer John Spillman was arrested in Miami after police responded to a complaint and found him naked and masturbating in a hallway.
- In March, Secret Service Uniformed Division officer Tristan Hale was arrested and faced charges for sending sexually explicit messages, images, and videos to a minor girl in Lancaster County, Pa.
- A Secret Service agent on the vice president’s detail had his home raided by the FBI late last year over tax fraud.
- A Secret Service agent on Vice President JD Vance’s detail is under internal investigation for either buying or trying to sell drugs to an undercover police officer, according to multiple sources.
- Last New Year’s Eve, a new Secret Service agent recruit shot and killed his 16-year-old half-brother and may have also wounded a woman. The suspect has claimed self-defense, and Florida police are still investigating.
Anna Giaritelli, a reporter and previous On Background podcast guest, has reported on problems within ICE and some of the problems they’re having with agents they’re putting into the field, notes co-host Eric Eggers.
USSS Director Sean Curran “inherited a real mess with the Secret Service, and this has been going on for more than a decade. There has been a cultural rot in the Secret Service,” Crabtree says. “Sen. Marsha Blackburn is well aware of it, as was former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, the former House oversight chairman.” Chaffetz has also appeared on On Background.
“On top of the cultural problems, uneven discipline and the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion priorities of the President Obama and Biden years, what Curran inherited was a complete and total mess,” she says.
She reported on one frustrated agent who came forward shortly after the attempt on Donald Trump’s life in Butler, Pa.
“We had a black agent, Rashid Ellis, come forward and say on the record publicly in a video,” that the problems with discipline and bad behavior “have everything to do with DEI, and that the lowering of standards at the agency is just so abysmal,” Crabtree says.
“There’s a manpower issue and that’s why they’re having to lower their standards – to try to get more agents. They are desperate for bodies in the Secret Service and likely also for the DHS agents and ICE agents, because they’re so overworked,” she says.
“I honestly don’t like reporting on it anymore, Eric. I want to report on some positive news of the Secret Service,” Crabtree says.
