Secret Service changes the agency has made post-Trump Butler assassination attempt
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn disclosed the suspensions Wednesday in an interview with CBS News, and said the consequences ranged from 10 days to 42 days of unpaid leave. Additionally, he said the agents would return to restricted roles following the suspension, and said the agency was "laser focused on fixing the root cause of the problem."
"Secret Service is totally accountable for Butler," Quinn told CBS. "Butler was an operational failure and we are focused today on ensuring that it never happens again."
The Secret Service confirmed to Fox News that the suspensions went into effect in February and that no agents had been fired.
The agency faced harsh scrutiny in the aftermath of the ambush, where 20-year-old gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks fired eight bullets at Trump from a rooftop during a campaign rally on July 13, 2024. A bullet grazed Trump's ear, and the gunman killed Corey Comperatore, a 50-year-old firefighter, father and husband attending the rally. A Secret Service sniper killed Crooks.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Fox News Digital.
Bill Gage, who served as a Secret Service special agent for former Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told Fox News Digital that the attempted assassination served as a wake-up call for the agency – bringing about overdue changes to the Secret Service.
Specifically, Gage said the incident prompted the Secret Service to "create new divisions, new units to counter modern threats, and gave the agency a real focus."
Former Secret Service Acting Director Ronald Rowe told lawmakers on a bipartisan House task force investigating the assassination attempt in December 2024 that the immediate changes to the agency included expanding the use of drones for surveillance purposes, and also incorporating greater counter-drone technology to mitigate kinetic attacks from other drones.
Likewise, the agency also overhauled its radio communications networks and interoperability of those networks with Secret Service personnel, and state and local law enforcement officers. Streamlining these radio communications is a major change, according to Gage, who said he sometimes was outfitted with up to five radios because an integrated system didn't exist.
Rowe also told lawmakers that the agency is seeking to beef up its staffing, and had assigned more special agents to Trump's security detail. Rowe said the agency was planning to use some of the additional $231 million in funding that Congress approved for the Secret Service in a stopgap spending bill in September 2024 to hire 1,000 new agents and officers in 2025.
Other potential changes in the works include constructing a precise replica of the White House, instead of using Tyler Perry's White House replica at his Atlanta film studio as agents historically have done.
Secret Service Director Sean Curran said in an April interview with Fox News' "My View with Lara Trump" that the agency is coordinating with the White House to build the replica at the James J. Rowley Training Center in Laurel, Maryland.
Gage called it "inexcusable" that a replica of the White House didn't already exist and said even more value should be placed on training.
"The service should really focus on training," Gage said. "There needs to be an increased mindset for training, where training is viewed as just as important as your assigned shift."
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