New reports have emerged that Secret Service agents who have been assigned to protect Vice President JD Vance and his family are breaking trust as they appear to be airing issues they have with Vance through media leaks. A story published by MS NOW contains a number of complaints coming from inside Vance’s security detail, citing “Secret Service sources,” individuals who have knowledge of his travel, and the frustrations of both former and current agents.
The focus of the story centered around a recently planned trip by the vice president and his son to Joint Base Andrews for a golf lesson. Agents allegedly expressed frustration at the “inappropriate or even unprecedented use” of government resources to make the trip. Ultimately, the trip was canceled due to bad weather.
“[T]he Secret Service staff’s complaints about a planned chopper ride for an elementary school student reflects a building morale problem inside the team of agents assigned to shield Vance and his young family, according to the two people and another person familiar with the agents’ frustration,” the article goes on to say.
According to a report from The Daily Caller, the article also says that, according to “two people and an additional source with knowledge of their travel who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals,” agents are “fed up” with travel demands made by the vice president and his family at the last minute.
An administration official spoke with the conservative news outlet revealing that a trip from the Naval Observatory to Joint Base Andrews is the most common and routine flight that Marine Two makes. For the golf outing, the plans were made because the base is secure and would not impact the public by forcing the closure of the golf course or roads that would be used for a motorcade.
Rather than being a waste of resources, using the Marine Two helicopter for the trip would have saved resources for local law enforcement and thousands of motorists. “That is RIDICULOUS,” one individual with knowledge of the planned golf trip said to MS Now. “Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that.”
“They change everything,” another source said during an interview with the outlet regarding the Vice President’s shifting schedule. “They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit-tons of taxpayer money.” The article, which reads far more like a hit piece on the vice president, stated that Vance recently planned several last-minute trips to Middleburg, Virginia, where it is rumored he is looking for a new house.
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An official within the Trump administration said that Marine Two was used for those trips for both operational and security reasons, as well as saving local law enforcement departments money and the public from the inconvenience of a motorcade. Middleburg is located roughly about 45 minutes away from Washington, D.C.
The article then says that Vance’s “plans for foreign and domestic trips often change on “short notice” after resources have already been mobilized. The administration official explained that diplomatic travel and matters of state pop up unexpectedly and they must take priority, going on to add that agents don’t see the bigger picture when it comes to sudden schedule changes.
The same official told the Daily Caller that past presidents and vice presidents have, for the most part, not had any small children. Vance has also been much more active than previous individuals when it comes to diplomacy, which often leads to rapid schedule changes and an increased demand on Secret Service agents assigned to his detail.
“A motorcade just shuts down streets, right? It means sometimes people can’t get into Mass when they arrive. It means that you have people trickling in after the start because they’re being put through magnetometers, and so we try, especially, we try with timing of Mass and location and everything to mitigate all of these discomforts for all the other people who are just trying to live their lives,” Second Lady Usha Vance stated during an interview with CBS News.
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