Alarmed by an incident in April that involved a member of Vice President Kamala Harris’s security detail, the House Oversight Committee will be briefed next week on hiring and training issues that could be impacting the Secret Service.
According to the Washington Examiner, an armed agent who was part of the protective detail for Harris scuffled with other agents at Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C. on April 22.
House Oversight and Accountability Chairman Rep. James Comer of Kentucky sent the Secret Service a letter in May asking to learn more about concerns regarding the incident and the broader issue of training, according to Fox News.
“In response to the letter received from Chairman James Comer, the U.S. Secret Service will comply with the House Oversight Committee’s request for a briefing on the topics outlined in the publicly available letter dated May 30, 2024,” a Secret Service representative said.
Comer summed up the incident that led to lawmakers’ concern in a letter to Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle,
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“It was recently reported that a Secret Service agent, tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris, physically attacked her superior (and the commanding agent in charge) and other agents trying to subdue her while on duty at Joint Base Andrews and assigned to the Vice President’s protective detail,” Comer wrote.
“A Secret Service spokesperson confirmed that the agent had been ‘removed from their assignment’ following the attack and that the agent ‘began displaying behavior their colleagues found distressing’ and further described the incident as a ‘medical matter,’” Comer wrote.
Comer said “more harrowing details of the incident” reported in the media claimed “that the agent chest-bumped and shoved her superior, then tackled and punched him while still having her gun in her holster, which concerned her colleagues.”
Comer noted that lawmakers are concerned that the incident may be indicative of other problems in the agency’s hiring and screening process.
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“This incident raised concerns within the agency about the hiring and screening process for this agent: specifically whether previous incidents in her work history were overlooked during the hiring process as years of staff shortages had led the agency to lower once stricter standards as part of a diversity, equity and inclusion effort,” he wrote.
Comer referenced a Bloomberg report claiming “that there is a petition circulating inside the agency that flags concerns about ‘a number of recent Secret Service incidents indicative of inadequate training,’ a double standard in disciplinary actions, and a vulnerability ‘to potential insider threats’ that could pose a risk to U.S. national security.”
Real Clear Politics has identified the agent in question as Michelle Herczeg, citing sources it did not name.
Its report said that the agent in question arrived at Joint Base Andrews, grabbed a senior agent’s personal phone and began to delete applications on it. The senior agent later retrieved the phone.
The report said a source told the outlet that the agent “began mumbling to herself, hid behind curtains, and started throwing items, including menstrual pads, at an agent, telling him that he would need them later to save another agent and telling her peers that they were ‘going to burn in hell and needed to listen to God,’” a source told RealClearPolitics.
As the incident escalated, the agent tackled her supervisor and punched him. Other agents then intervened, restrained the agent, and took away her gun, the report said.
Real Clear Politics noted that in 2016, while she was an officer with the Dallas police, Herczeg filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the department that was later dismissed.
