Sen. Marsha Blackburn sent a sharply worded letter Wednesday to Secret Service Director Sean Curran demanding an immediate, top-to-bottom review of the Secret Service, a move that comes nearly two weeks after an armed gunman sprinted past a checkpoint leading to the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in a third assassination attempt on President Trump.
As part of the review, Blackburn called for a “full, thorough audit of every single employee on your payroll.”
“It is blatantly clear that the Secret Service needs to be cleaned up,” the Tennessee Republican wrote. “Unless you root out the rot, our nation will suffer the consequences.”
Blackburn’s letter also comes just days after a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer was arrested in Miami after being found naked and masturbating in a hallway in yet another embarrassing spectacle.
The senator drew an explicit connection between the misconduct pattern and the agency’s core protective mission: “At a time when President Trump faces increasing threats to his safety, including yet another assassination attempt, the Secret Service cannot afford to have individuals who engage in this kind of embarrassing, disgraceful conduct on its payroll.”
Blackburn stopped short of calling for Curran’s resignation, but her demand for a full personnel audit – along with the blunt warning about consequences – signals mounting congressional pressure on an agency that has faced repeated public scrutiny since the July 2024 assassination attempt against Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, that nearly killed him. An attempt on Trump’s life two months later at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, was another close call.
Blackburn cited the recent arrest of the agent for indecent exposure at the Miami hotel and framed the personnel issues as symptomatic of deeper structural problems – including what she described as persistent difficulties in vetting, hiring, and maintaining agent morale.
“There are broader questions about your agency’s ability to properly vet and hire agents," she wrote, “which has resulted in continued manpower and morale issues.”
Cole Tomas Allen, the suspect charged with multiple felonies for his aborted attack on the White House Correspondents’ dinner, managed to sprint through a checkpoint while allegedly exchanging fire with a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer. Federal prosecutors and Curran have said the officer was shot but was protected from harm by his ballistics vest.
The agents pursued Allen, who fell and then was apprehended 45 yards from the stairs to the ballroom. If the “brave” officers and agents hadn’t acted swiftly, Blackburn wrote, many attendees – including the president – “could have been seriously harmed.”
Just hours after the arrest of the naked officer on Monday, the Secret Service made headlines again – this time for engaging in a gunfight with an armed man that injured a juvenile bystander with a stray bullet near the Washington Monument, which is not far from the White House complex.
Law enforcement experts, including Fox News contributor Paul Mauro, who served 24 years with the new York Police Department, have questioned why the Secret Service didn’t provide more details sooner about Monday’s exchange of fire and the suspect’s injuries. Federal prosecutors on Wednesday charged 45-year-old Michael Marx of Midland, Texas, with assaulting federal officers with a dangerous weapon, among other crimes.
“A press conference over this recent mysterious shooting in D.C. wouldn’t be a bad idea either,” Mauro remarked in an X.com post. “USSS involved in more shooting incidents than NYPD these days. And that’s…new.”
Curran has also drawn fire for telling Fox News last week that the security for the White House Correspondents’ Dinner was “set-up perfectly.”
Former Rep. Jason Chaffetz, who led multiple investigations into the Secret Service when he was Oversight Committee chairman, strongly questioned that characterization. “Perfect? Are you kidding?” he told RealClearPolitics. “What if there were 12 guys with guns that decided to rush that point? “And Curran’s talking about how great the training was. Are you kidding me?” he added.
Former Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, who previously served as a Secret Service agent, also expressed concern about the possibility of multiple assailants bombarding Secret Service checkpoints and argued that agents with elite training should help fortify that layer of security.
“What worries me is not the first guy going through who charges the checkpoint. It’s the second, third, and possibly tenth guy after that,” he said in an interview this week with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham. “You get a counter-assault team there, you got a real force to hit back.”
The dinner incident was not the only recent security lapse Blackburn highlighted. Just 19 days before the correspondents’ dinner, sometime between 1 a.m. and 2 a.m. April 6, a gunman fired shots near the White House grounds. In an RCP report cited by the senator, multiple sources said Secret Service investigators were unable to identify any information about the shooter – who, as of the letter’s writing, remains unidentified. Trump also was pressing the agency for more information, the sources said.
Blackburn cited other personnel incidents RCP reported, including a junior Secret Service agent faulted for the security planning and execution failures at the Butler rally marrying a foreign national without promptly notifying her superiors; another in which the FBI raided an agent’s home in an investigation of an alleged massive tax fraud scheme; and an agent charged for murdering his brother on New Year’s Eve.
“These are just a few of the many examples of personnel concerns that demonstrate a clear pattern of incompetence at the Secret Service that must be promptly addressed,” Blackburn wrote Curran.
The spate of such incidents has fueled bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers have questioned whether the agency is structurally equipped to protect its principals at a moment when threats against the president are, by Blackburn’s account, escalating.
A bipartisan push began this week to place the Secret Service under direct White House supervision. Led by Reps. Russell Fry and Jared Moskowitz, the move would transfer the Secret Service away from the Department of Homeland Security oversight and make the agency report directly to the White House. After the WHCA scare, RCP reported that White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles had blocked efforts by former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem’s team to impose a layer of oversight at the Secret Service aimed at ensuring deeper reforms under Curran’s leadership.
After the WHCA dinner shooting, Wiles convened a meeting with Secret Service and DHS leaders to discuss “protocol and practices” for major events involving Trump. A senior White House official said the meeting was convened to plan for upcoming events commemorating America 250. Trump also has expressed interest in attending the World Cup, which kicks off June 11.
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