The Secret Service is dealing with yet another scandal involving a rogue agent.
This time, the agent revealed secrets about Vice President J.D. Vance’s protective detail, its schedule, and how the vice president travels. Tomas Escotto, now on administrative leave, disclosed the security information to an undercover reporter from the O’Keefe Media Group (OMG).
The latest embarrassment for the once-respected agency comes after two assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, the first of which was nearly successful and forced the resignation of the agency’s girl boss, whose top priority was hiring women to become agents.
It also appears that another priority at the agency is hiring foreigners. Escotto, who confessed that he hates Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids, did not become a citizen until 2018.
The Video
The honey-pot trap was the usual for OMG, which typically involves sending a woman on a date with a lonely but loose-lipped government official, or perhaps a leftist media bigwig, after meeting on a dating app. The men thus entrapped start yakking, happily answering questions that later get them in trouble.
Escotto met the OMG undercover on Tinder in October. On meeting the reporter, he readily whipped out his Secret Service identification when she asked.
Escotto told the reporter he “hates” Immigration and Customs Enforcement and voted for Joe Biden. Escotto also sent the reporter photos of himself at a Christmas Party with protectees Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff.
Frighteningly, as OMG summarized Escotto’s communications, he “detailed how the Vice President is physically surrounded, described multiple daily shift changes, & disclosed advance security procedures.”
As well, he “revealed future travel plans, sometimes days in advance,” the report continued:
Escotto even sent images from Air Force Two while onboard with the Vice President. Despite acknowledging that he signed paperwork prohibiting the disclosure of sensitive information, the Secret Service agent repeatedly shared details with someone he believed was a casual romantic interest.
Escotto also divulged how many agents protect the vice president ahead of and behind him, and sent photos — containing metadata revealing the time and location taken — including one of the vice president’s caravan loading onto the jet.
“LOL, I’m flying on Air Force Two, I think he leaves in the afternoon,” he wrote in a text to the reporter.
He wrote in another:
Ohio, he’ll be there for like 4-5 days, and Flori[d]a will be just one night but he gets there next weekend.
In a third, he wrote:
Well today we went from there to pick up the wife and now I’m at [redacted] with him.
Somewhat amusingly, Escotto also explained his nondisclosure agreement with the agency. “I sign paperwork so if I don’t have to give out information I never do, otherwise I get in trouble,” he wrote.
New Citizen; Hates ICE
That Escotto voted for Joe Biden is not surprising. What is surprising is this: His vote for Biden in 2020, he confessed, “was the first time I was able to vote. I wasn’t a citizen. I got my citizenship in 2018.”
Escotto told the reporter that he has been an agent for five years, which means the Secret Service hired him only two years after he became a citizen. So despite being a citizen less than 10 years, Escotto has served on two vice presidential protective details.
Escotto offered his opinions on President Trump’s deployment of ICE. Explaining that ICE agents shouldn’t cover their faces, he said, “I don’t agree with that at all.”
“I hate that [expletive],” he said. “They’re deploying tactics that shouldn’t be deployed.”
Secret Service Responds
OMG worked with the Secret Service in redacting sensitive information that would compromise the safety of Vance and his family.
Matthew Quinn, the service’s deputy director, wrote to agency employees that Escotto “was deliberately targeted and manipulated by a citizen-journalism media organization that misrepresented itself in an effort to get close to the employee and expose sensitive information”:
This is the second time in less than a year that our personnel have been subjected to this same deceptive tactic.
Sadly in this instance, the employee failed to meet the standards demanded of this agency and engaged in conduct that runs counter to our values, our policies, and the training we provide to prevent exactly this type of compromise.
Quinn told OMG that the agency has “no tolerance” for behavior that would “compromise the safety, privacy or trust of our protectees.”
The agency is investigating. Escotto is on “administrative leave with his clearance suspended and access to agency facilities and systems revoked.”
As well, all agency employees must “retake the agency’s required anti-espionage training.”
As OMG noted, the security breach is particularly troubling because a “trans woman” tried to break in to Vance’s home in Ohio on January 5.
Trump Assassination Attempts
The latest on the agency comes four months after a jury convicted Ryan Wesley Routh of attempting to assassinate Trump at his golf course in Palm Beach, Florida. Routh gained access to the course because the Secret Service did not secure its perimeter.
That security lapse wasn’t as embarrassing as the near-assassination of Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. That crime forced the resignation of agency director Kimberly Cheatle, a “diversity, equity, and inclusion” hire thanks to being a gal pal of former First Lady Jill Biden.
Cheatle laughably claimed that agents were not stationed on the rooftop from which Thomas Matthew Crooks shot Trump because it was too steep and therefore dangerous. As well, the agency denied Trump more protection despite multiple requests.
Cheatle’s top priority in her job was making women 30 percent of new agents by 2030, the so-called 30×30 program, a dangerous idea given the poor performance of women agents when Crooks nearly murdered Trump.
Other embarrassments for the agency were an agent’s nursing her infant at a Trump campaign event, and, months before the first assassination attempt, another who went berserk and attacked fellow agents at Joint Base Andrews.
