An off-duty Secret Service agent assigned to Vice President Mike Pence’s detail has been suspended after meeting with a prostitute at a Maryland hotel. After law enforcement arrested him while exiting the hotel, the agent later self-reported his arrest to the Secret Service.
Last week, an unidentified Secret Service agent solicited a prostitute while off-duty in Maryland, according to CNN’s law enforcement sources. After receiving a phone call from a hotel manager suspicious of activity in one of the rooms, police arrived at the scene and arrested the federal agent as he exited the hotel.
Charged with solicitation, the unnamed agent was immediately suspended after self-reporting his arrest to the Secret Service. Placed on administrative leave, the agent was ordered to surrender his gun while his security clearance remains suspended pending an investigation.
In a separate incident, two Secret Service agents are also under investigation after they were caught abandoning their posts to take selfies with President Trump’s sleeping grandson. Both agents were ordered to report to the Secret Service Office of Professional Responsibility.
Last month, a laptop with “highly sensitive” information was stolen from a Secret Service agent’s car in New York City. That same month, a mentally ill man carrying two cans of pepper spray jumped over the White House fence and remained undetected on the grounds for 17 minutes as Secret Service agents appeared to ignore several alarms.
In 2015, two intoxicated Secret Service agents were caught on surveillance video crashing into a White House barricade during an active bomb investigation. On October 1, 2014, former Secret Service Director Julia Pierson resigned after lying to congressional members regarding her failure to disclose all security breaches to then-President Barack Obama.
On September 19, 2014, Iraq war veteran Omar Gonzalez leapt over the fence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and broke into the White House equipped with a three-inch serrated knife. During a visit to the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention three days earlier, President Obama entered an elevator accompanied by an armed private contractor with three convictions for assault and battery.
In May 2013, Secret Service supervisor Ignacio Zamora left a bullet in a woman’s hotel room and attempted to force his way back into the room to retrieve it. In March 2013, three members of the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team were placed on paid administrative leave after one of them was found passed out drunk in a hallway by hotel staff in Amsterdam. Days before President Obama’s arrival to the international summit in Cartagena in 2012, multiple Secret Service and DEA agents were caught purchasing prostitutes in Colombia.
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