The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has launched an investigation into potential vulnerabilities in the Secret Service’s ability to protect President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Donald Trump and their families after an incident last month raised new concerns about the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring decisions and vetting process.
Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the panel, sent Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle a letter Thursday requesting an agency briefing on the matter by June 13.
Comer referred in the letter to an incident in late April in which a female Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Harris was removed from her duties after suffering from an apparent mental lapse and physically attacking the commanding agent in charge and other agents trying to subdue her. Several sources in the Secret Service community identified the agent who physically attacked her superior as Michelle Herczeg.
The altercation occurred at Joint Base Andrews, the home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two, the call signs of the Boeing aircraft used by the president and vice president. Harris was at the U.S. Naval Observatory at the time of the incident, and it did not impinge on her travel. A Secret Service spokesperson in early May confirmed that the agent had been “removed from her assignment” following the attack and that the agent had been “displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing,” further describing the incident as a “medical matter.”
RealClearPolitics first reported alarming details of the incident, including that the agent chest-bumped and shoved her superior, then tackled and punched him while still having her gun in her holster, further raising her colleagues’ concerns. Fellow agents wrestled her gun away from her, cuffed her, and removed her from the terminal.
“This incident raised concerns within the agency about the hiring and screening process for this agent, specifically whether previous incidents in her work history were overlooked during the hiring process as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as a part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort,” Comer wrote in his Thursday letter to Cheatle.
“To assist the Committee’s oversight in this matter, we request you designate the appropriate officials with the U.S. Secret Service to provide a briefing to Committee staff on or before June 13, 2024,” Comer added. The Kentucky Republican concluded the letter by reminding Cheatle that his panel is the “principal oversight committee” of the House and, under House Rule X, which governs his panel’s jurisdiction, has “broad authority to investigate ‘any matter’ at ‘any time.’”
The Secret Service acknowledged receiving Comer’s letter but declined to say whether it would meet Comer’s June 13 deadline for a briefing.
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