Secret Service Doesn’t Know How to Drive, Pull Off Cover-up

Photo: Sean Rayford/CNP/Bloomberg via Getty Images

The Secret Service is rolling its “days without a concerning incident” sign back to zero. The Washington Post reports that the vehicle driving Vice-President Kamala Harris to work Monday managed to get in a “one-car accident on a closed roadway” when the driver “struck the curb of a downtown tunnel hard enough that the vehicle’s tire needed to be replaced.”

The vice-president, who was inside the SVU involved in the accident, was unharmed, but she had to be moved to another vehicle. Video of the accident surfaced Monday night on TikTok:

The Post says, “The routine nature of the travel and the high level of training required for agents who drive the president and vice president led many in the Secret Service, as well as Harris, to question how such an accident could happen.” But, incredibly, the biggest concern here isn’t the driver’s inability to avoid a curb on a straight stretch of road with no other vehicles around. It appears the Secret Service tried to cover up what happened, initially citing “mechanical failure” as the reason for moving Harris and making no mention of an accident.

Kim Cheatle, the newly appointed director of the Secret Service, later learned from other agents that the alert was inaccurate, as various other agents and Harris herself reportedly knew what really happened. A Secret Service source said Cheatle had “confided to allies that she was disturbed by the inaccuracy of the alert related to the Harris accident,” as the Post put it.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesperson Anthony Guglielmi said one of the motorcade’s vehicles “had a minor overcorrection and struck a curb.” He went on to say that while the full details of the incident were not conveyed in the initial written report, agents later filled in their superiors in person.

“Initial radio traffic indicated this was a mechanical failure, and that was communicated to agency leadership by personnel supporting the motorcade movement,” he said. “After the protective movement was completed, leadership was verbally updated with additional pertinent facts that the vehicle struck a curb.”

In recent years, the agency has racked up a considerable number of controversies. Several Secret Service agents were let go in 2012 because of their involvement in a prostitution scandal in Colombia. In 2014, an intruder breached the White House and made it all the way to the East Room before being tackled by security. In July of this year, an agent was sent home from Joe Biden’s trip to Israel after being involved in a physical encounter.