Trump Names Agent Who Blew Butler Protection To Head Secret Service

I glanced at a headline about this yesterday and ignored it. I figured it had to be a mistake of some sort. But it doesn’t seem to be a joke after all. It’s not like Secret Service Agent Sean Curran is some newbie to the job. He’s got over twenty years in. His competence is another matter because he has been in charge of Trump’s protection detail these past years.

That means in the end HE was the one that allowed the failed security arrangements in Butler PA that, had the kid been even a modestly decent shot would mean Trump would be dead and buried instead of about to return to the White House. Yet Curran, who has no management experience beyond leading Trump’s post WH protection is the pick to head up the entire U.S. Secret Service!

I already said I didn’t take the news seriously yesterday. I figured it was a rumor of some sort or perhaps a trial balloon. However reading this article from Real Clear Politics earlier this evening it looks like this is going to happen.  RCP cites three sources from within the Secret Service that say this is who Trump intends to name to the job of ensuring not just he, but a large number of others who require protective details get adequate… you know, PROTECTION! 

Bear in mind that less than 24 hours after the shooting in which Trump got nicked on the ear by shrapnel multiple failings on the part of the Secret Service that day were already news. In case you’re wondering Curran himself was there and in fact was one of the first to pile on Trump to protect him AFTER the young man was allowed easy access to that nearby rooftop to start shooting.

Hearings have been held and the list of failings has been explored in depth. However, in the end it was the head of the detail that day who had to make the call on whether the site was secure and it was safe for Trump to take the stage. Did Curran even bother to check with the various units he was supposed to be coordinating? 

And perhaps look across 150 yards of space to that set of rooftops with NO visible LE on them and check with the counter-sniper team?  Apparently not. I’ve said again and again, from that position and in those conditions even a modestly good sniper in a prone shooting position could have drilled Trump right through his fat ugly orange head.  If I had been Trump before the night was out I’d have been on the phone to the head of the Secret Service demanding Curran’s firing!

The entire detail was complacent. Lazy even. They let their guard down and that was only possible because the leader of their group allowed it to happen.  He might have made requests up the chain for extra assets (sometimes granted and sometimes not) but it’s for damned sure that if he was soooooo worried about Trump he wouldn’t have ridden his people hard to be extra diligent and vigilant! 

And I say that having been part of peripheral security at appearances of bigwigs in the DC area when I was stationed there. And knowing people who were in and out of PMO at Henderson Hall for various reasons back in the 1980s. I’ll note again while as far as I’m concerned he used up every bit of consideration he might have once had, the fact is Curran had decades of experience in the Secret Service and a decent reputation, at least before last summer:

Curran has a very good reputation among most agents and in the broader Secret Service community as a whole, though some have expressed concern that he lacks managerial experience and will need to have to switch gears and change his personality from a shift agent and team leader to a much more forceful presence to truly shake up the agency, clean house, and bring about the reforms that so many current and former agents believe the agency desperately needs.

Yet Curran was in the top leadership position of a detail that allowed two assassination attempts against Trump to take place, one in which Trump was shot in the ear and nearly killed – the most embarrassing moment for the agency since President Reagan was shot in the chest by John Hinckley and nearly died outside the Washington Hilton in 1981

Read that second part again.  To add insult to injury Trump’s detail failed to adequately patrol the perimeter of a golf course where Trump went to play and ANOTHER shooter got set up. Had he not made the dumbass mistake of poking his rifle through the fence and had a couple of agents patrolling the holes ahead of Trump not been looking at the right place at the right time who knows what might have happened. And this guy STILL kept his job?  I for one am stunned to have never read that he’d been relieved of duty pending a hearing on his dismissal.  And now Trump wants this dude to head up the entire Secret Service? WTF?

In naming Curran, Trump would be rejecting the recommendations of two blue-ribbon commissions, one in 2015 and last year’s bipartisan Independent Review Panel, that the next president should choose someone from outside the agency to bring about the numerous reforms the panel and Congress have recommended.

During his first term in office, Trump did name the first director from outside the agency, Randolph “Tex” Alles, a former U.S. Marine Corps general and the first Secret Service director selected from outside the agency in its 159-year history.

Trump chose Alles to lead the agency from 2017 to 2019. During that time, Alles built a good rapport among rank-and-file agents, but many believed several agency leaders successfully sabotaged him. Alles was swept out of the agency when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left her post in April 2019.

From where I sit this guy can make himself a FORTUNE teaching others how to ass-kiss Trump as well as he does. Most who want to curry favor with Trump aren’t fabulously wealthy billionaires after all.  I’m sure there are those with merely a few billion or several hundred million who’d gladly cough up some serious (Trump) bitcoin for lessons.

As for Trump I don’t know what the hell to make of it. Does he have a death wish? Does he actually think he’s invincible and/or immortal?  Seriously. I wouldn’t trust this guy to protect me or the people I value. He’s clearly spent years more interested in sucking up to Trump than doing his job. Much less moving up into jobs that would give him even a semblance of the management experience and skills someone in this job needs.

Well, Trump SHOULD be scared as hell at the prospect of this asshat leading the agency tasked with keep him protected. As for others who need Secret Service protection? THEY should be terrified.  We can only hope that we don’t see J.D. Vance sworn in because of Secret Service failures. A Secret Service led by the agent who’s failures almost got Trump killed during the campaign. TWICE.