JASON CHAFFETZ: A decade of Secret Service failure proves the agency is still in crisis
The United States Secret Service (USSS) was described as "an agency in crisis" way back in 2015, according to a comprehensive congressional report. Ten years later, it still is. Despite individual acts of heroism during repeated assassination attempts against President Donald Trump, the agency has not fixed what is broken. We keep seeing the same mistakes repeated. Thus far, we have been lucky, but we can no longer rely solely on luck.
The House Oversight Committee’s exhaustive 450-page report, released in December 2015, followed an in-depth bipartisan investigation. We reviewed more than 100 security incidents. The problems and challenges we highlighted remain the same today.
The agency has a dual mission with little overlap that needs to be split. Most people don’t realize the majority of USSS personnel work on financial crimes and currency integrity. Government worker surveys routinely show the USSS has one of the lowest levels of morale in all of government. Staffing levels, training, workload and other factors are all contributing to that problem.
But most importantly, accountability is virtually nonexistent.
The president’s protective detail may be the most visible mission, but the Secret Service is also responsible for investigating financial crimes. Currency and financial crimes should go back to where they should have always been — the Treasury Department. The protective detail needs to stay focused at Homeland Security.
In addition, the agency is stretched too thin. Staffing shortages are persistent and critical, forcing the agency to rely on overtime. The countersniper team alone is staffed at 73% below the level needed to meet mission requirements, according to a 2025 Inspector General report.
A staffing shortfall was blamed in part for the inadequate coverage of President Trump at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally where he was shot. But the agency has struggled to hire and train enough people amid high turnover rates for the past decade. Between the long onboarding process and high turnover, staffing has been a perpetual challenge.
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The Secret Service also has a training problem. Most people don’t know about FLETC — the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center — where new recruits, hires and most federal law enforcement officers are trained. Our report found most Secret Service agents, after initial training and qualifications, only get 30 minutes of training a year. Yes, 30 minutes per year on average. It’s clearly not enough.
Between the assassination attempts and upcoming security needs for the World Cup, visiting heads of state, the America 250 celebrations, the midterm elections and the upcoming presidential election, even the Democrats must admit we have to prioritize more training for our federal law enforcement agencies. Instead, FLETC has been sidelined by congressional Democrats intent on keeping the Department of Homeland Security shut down.
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Most disappointing to me is the agency’s lack of accountability. A president was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, during a presidential campaign. Nobody was fired. No one was dismissed. In fact, most were promoted. Protection was obviously inadequate, and the extraction of the president after he was shot was an embarrassment, as it was at the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner.
This most recent incident exposed many flaws. The extremely poor extraction, the insufficient screening and the inadequate security at the site indicate there is much more work to do, to state the obvious.
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Yet Democrats, who also need USSS protection, are still playing pure political games and refusing to fund Homeland Security when the agency desperately needs it most. It’s time for the Democrats to protect America and stop using ICE as a political football.
The persistent inability to address these issues over a 10-year timeline suggests the solution may need to be structural. Focus determines reality.
It’s time to break up the Secret Service and allow it to focus exclusively on one objective: protection. For financial crimes and the integrity of our currency, put that back at Treasury.