The Secret Service ordered every agent to retake anti-espionage training in January after a Biden-era hire was caught on video disclosing sensitive information about the Vice President’s protective detail to a woman he believed was a romantic interest. The training apparently didn’t take.
Six months later, internal affairs is back inside JD Vance’s detail looking for another suspected leaker. A second agent has been placed on administrative leave — this one believed to have fed information to MS NOW, the rebranded remnant of left-wing MSNBC, for a July 15 story portraying Vance and his family as an unreasonable burden on their security team.
The story relied on anonymous sources complaining that agents were “fed up” with last-minute travel requests. It included advance details about a planned Marine Corps helicopter flight — the kind of operational information that has no business appearing in a news article regardless of how annoyed the sources behind it might be. The flight was canceled after the disclosure. The Secret Service, FBI, and White House all took notice of the operational details that made it into print. They identified a suspected source. That agent is now on leave.
Let’s be clear about what this represents. The Vice President of the United States has been the target of two suspected internal leaks from his own protective detail in six months. The first agent — Tomas Escotto, a Biden-era hire who admitted voting for Biden and opposing Trump’s immigration enforcement — was caught discussing protective formations, shift schedules, travel plans, and real-time locations with someone he was trying to impress romantically. He was placed on leave, had his clearance suspended, and his access to agency systems revoked.
The second suspected leaker, unnamed, fed operational details to a left-leaning outlet that used them to run a story designed to embarrass the Vice President and his family publicly. Publishing images of coins and stickers agents made to mock the VP using his Secret Service codename isn’t journalism protecting the public interest. It’s a hit piece assembled with the help of someone inside the detail who decided their political sympathies were more important than their oath.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn said what he said in January and apparently needs to say again: “Nights, weekends, and holidays are part of the job.” You don’t get to leak operational information to friendly media outlets because you’re annoyed about a schedule change. You don’t get to brief journalists on advance movements because you voted for the other guy. That’s not a political opinion worth protecting. It’s a firing offense at minimum and potentially a criminal one.
The Vance family thanked the agents who serve with distinction. That’s the gracious response. The appropriate institutional response is considerably less gracious toward the people who have now done this twice.
Two suspected leaks. Six months apart. Same detail. Same Vice President. The anti-espionage training clearly didn’t solve the problem.
The question is what does? How about firings and criminal charges followed by jail sentences? Enough, already.
