Secret Service Agent Faulted for Butler Failures Suspended Again

A site agent is in charge of planning and executing the security plan for rallies and other events that presidential and vice-presidential candidates, as well as presidents and vice presidents along with Cabinet officials, attend. Others, such as the lead agent and counterparts from local field offices, as well as supervisors, also usually contribute.  

Congressional investigations that examined the Butler failures faulted Perez for not placing any Secret Service or local police asset on top of the American Glass Building where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks fired off his shots, among other security problems at Butler. Yet the probes also questioned why the Secret Service allowed an inexperienced agent to be placed in such a crucial role at an outdoor rally with thousands of people in attendance. The decision to have Perez in a leading security role for the Butler rally is even more concerning considering that top-level Secret Service officials, including current Secret Service Director Sean Curran, who was serving as the Trump campaign detail leader at the time, had been briefed on an Iranian threat to Trump’s life.  

Over the last year and a half, in the wake of the assassination attempts, Perez has remained an agent, though she has faced ongoing leadership scrutiny. She was supposed to be sidelined from protective duties and working on criminal investigations only, although Secret Service supervisors in the Miami Field Office, where she works, recently allowed her to violate an understanding with others in the Trump administration that she wouldn’t serve in a physical security role.

Despite the ongoing congressional investigations and internal Secret Service review of her role in the Butler failures, Perez quietly married a Brazilian foreign national last April without notifying the agency, according to a copy of her marriage certificate located on the Brevard County public records website and according to sources familiar with the timing of when she informed the agency of her marriage. Upon learning of the marriage, the agency suspended her and issued an internal “Do Not Admit” notice.

The internal Secret Service investigation is examining whether the woman Perez was dating and married last year had overstayed her visa and was facing a deportation order, multiple sources familiar with the matter told RCP.

Neither the Secret Service nor the Homeland Security Department returned repeated requests for comment on the matter. Perez’s attorney, Larry Berger, told RCP that it’s “premature to comment at this time.”

The new allegations against Perez come as the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General, which provides congressionally mandated oversight of DHS and all 22 agencies that fall under it, including the Secret Service, is finalizing five reports related to the Secret Service’s failures during the two 2024 assassination attempts against Trump.

The DHS funding lapse has further delayed the reports’ release, though all are in the final investigative stages, according to sources familiar with the timeline.

DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari has recently accused outgoing DHS Secretary Kristi Noem of obstructing several of his top investigations, including the probes into the Secret Service failures at Butler. Oklahoma GOP Sen. Markwayne Mullin, who Trump tapped to replace Noem, pledged to cooperate with Cuffari and his investigations during his Wednesday Senate nomination hearing.

Perez had informed the Secret Service of her contact with the Brazilian woman in 2024 before the assassination attempt on Trump’s life, but the agency may have either lost the notification or failed to act on it at the time, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

It’s unclear, however, whether Perez characterized the contact accurately in 2024 and ever since. Agents are questioning whether she followed mandatory protocol to keep the Secret Service updated on how the relationship was developing and when the two began to live together and subsequently married. The marriage took place in April 2025, according to the marriage certificate attained on a public records database. Yet sources in the Secret Service community say Perez didn’t inform the agency until January.

Former longtime Secret Service agents say the investigation and questions surrounding Perez’s relationship with the Brazilian foreign national and possible illegal immigrant raise serious questions about both the agency’s due diligence when it comes to potential insider threats and threats from foreign nationals and whether Perez has the judgment to remain an agent.

There are strict rules requiring security holders to proactively self-report foreign contacts and significant life changes, including foreign travel, arrests, financial distress, and shifts in marital or cohabitation status, to a facility security officer at their respective agency. Failure to report these can lead to clearance suspension or revocation, a penalty that would prevent Secret Service agents from performing their duties.

Perez in 2024 had notified the Secret Service of a foreign contact, but agents question whether she followed up when the relationship became more serious, and she and the Brazilian national started living together, eventually marrying last year, sources tell RealClearPolitics. Former Secret Service agents said the troubling scenario raises questions about whether Perez was harboring an illegal immigrant and trying to obtain a friend or love interest a green card while covering up the effort, or at least failing to be forthcoming or transparent about it.

“How does a Secret Service agent not properly report a relationship with a foreign national that could be an illegal alien, let alone marry her and then not report the marriage?” Rich Staropoli, former long-time Secret Service and DHS official, asked in an interview with RCP. “It speaks to the sad state of affairs of the Secret Service in recent years and who they're hiring.”

The Secret Service over the last decade has been criticized for lowering its hiring standards to solve a persistent agent shortage.

The Secret Service also has a long history of explosive cases involving Secret Service agents dating foreign nationals and improperly informing the agency. In 2012, Rafael Prieto, a Secret Service agent assigned to President Obama’s security detail, committed suicide while he was being investigated for failing to report a romantic relationship with a foreign national. Prieto, a married father with a distinguished 20-year Secret Service career, had admitted to investigators that he had been having a long-time affair with a woman in Mexico.

In 2018, news broke that a suspected Russian spy had been working for the Secret Service at the U.S. embassy in Moscow for more than a decade and was quietly dismissed in 2017. Former FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, on his podcast in the wake of the Butler assassination attempt months before Trump tapped him to join the administration, discussed the Russian spy incident while criticizing the Secret Service’s “cover-your-ass” culture.

Bongino, on his podcast, said he was serving with Sean Curran, the current Secret Service director, in the U.S. embassy in Moscow before he left the Secret Service in 2008. The two of them suspected that the woman eventually identified as a Russian spy was involved in espionage and informed agency headquarters about it. Yet their suspicions were dismissed by leaders at headquarters in Washington, D.C., who warned them to keep their mouths shut, according to Bongino.

 In fact, the same Russian woman had been involved romantically with the top Secret Service agent working at the embassy, who had served as the Resident Agent in Charge, or RAC, several years earlier, multiple sources in the Secret Service community told RCP. 

The Secret Service and the FBI launched an extensive investigation and suspended the former Secret Service RAC because he couldn’t pass his polygraph when questioned about his relationship with the spy, according to sources familiar with the matter. At the time, the agent in question was the head of the Inspections Division, which oversees disciplinary actions and investigations against all Secret Service employees. The agency allowed this agent to remain on administrative leave until he retired in 2019, a breach of normal disciplinary protocol to benefit an agent and keep the matter out of the press, the sources told RCP.

More recently, a Secret Service agent from the Miami Field Office was fired while engaging in a sexual affair with at least one foreign national while assigned to a position in Lima, Peru, according to knowledgeable sources.

After the assassination attempt against Trump, in the fall of 2024 some members of the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that at least one of the agencies devoted to protecting the security of presidents, former presidents, presidential Cabinet officials and current and former State Department secretaries had been infiltrated by Iranian assets, RCP reported at the time.

“Our counterintelligence vigilance for our security protective services in the United States, be it Diplomatic Security Services, be it Secret Service, be it in the U.S. Marshals or in the Treasury [Department], have been penetrated by people who are wittingly or unwittingly providing tangible support for Iranian network activities in this country,” a former senior intelligence official in the Obama administration said in an interview.

In another alarming incident that could have implications for the Iranian plot against Trump, two men of Pakistani heritage were arrested in 2022 and charged with posing as Department of Homeland Security officers in Washington and duping four Secret Service agents charged with protecting President Biden and his family.

According to federal prosecutors, the imposters provided the Secret Service agents with tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of gifts, including rent-free apartments, in a two-year scheme that began in February 2020 while Trump was president.

Prosecutors also said they used their false identities to obtain security footage of the apartment building as well as a list of the building’s residents and contact information.

The Secret Service agents implicated in the scheme were placed on administrative leave, but it’s unclear what disciplinary action, if any, was taken against them.

It’s unclear why Perez waited so long to notify the agency about her marriage to a foreign national, but when she finally did so, allegedly in January, internal Secret Service investigators asked her why she had taken so long to do so and launched an investigation into the matter.

The agency previously suspended Perez early last year for speaking to a reporter about her role in the Butler failures without the agency’s consent, and again for the Butler failures themselves.

Perez was one of six agents suspended without pay for 10 to 42 days for their connection to Butler. As part of Trump’s regular campaign detail, Perez served as the “site agent,” in charge of developing and executing the rally’s security while working with two other more experienced female agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office.

Yet the reality of the situation was that Perez, because of her inexperience and detailed knowledge about running a big outdoor rally, had no business planning and leading security that day. She was set up to fail by bosses, including Curran, who served as Trump’s campaign detail leader at the time and is now leading the Secret Service, according to dozens of Secret Service sources inside the agency and those who have retired after lengthy careers.

Perez was supposed to be sidelined to a desk job in the Miami Field Office working on criminal investigation, far from providing any security protection for current or former U.S. officials, according to sources in the Secret Service Community and Department of Homeland Security. But in early February, she was assisting on the Secret Service team assigned to protect former President George W. Bush when he traveled to Miami.

Not only was Perez on the team helping protect Bush, the Secret Service Miami Field Office documented her participation with photos and touted their “seamless coordination and steady professionalism” during Bush’s visit on its LinkedIn page.

“Protecting our nation’s current and former Presidents is at the core of our mission,” the LinkedIn post stated, before the office took it down. “Visits like today’s require detailed planning, seamless coordination, and the steady professionalism of the men and women who execute them.”

At a Christmas party with his entire Secret Service campaign detail in 2024, Trump commented on Perez that there was someone notably absent from the party because he didn't want her anywhere near him.

Congressional investigations into the Butler failures determined Perez, whom they did not name, was too inexperienced to be placed in charge of security for an outdoor rally the size of the one in Butler. The probe also found that her two supervisors, Nick Olszewski and Nick Menster, also signed off on the security plan for Butler and were never disciplined.

In fact, they both received big promotions despite their failure to point out the serious holes in Perez’s plan.

Having the supervisors walk through the security plan with Perez and sign off on it was supposed to add additional layers of scrutiny for such a complicated outdoor rally – especially when there was a known Iranian threat that U.S. intelligence agencies had briefed top Secret Service leaders about before the rally.

Both Menster and Olszewski were on final walk-throughs of the site, and neither asked how the AGR building, where shooter Thomas Crooks fired his shots at Trump and the crowd, would be covered, according to the congressional probes’ findings.

Ironically, Olszewski eventually became chief of the Inspection Division, which falls under the Office of Professional Responsibility and is responsible for ensuring the accountability and integrity of the agency’s personnel and operations. Menster was assigned as the second agent in charge of the Lara and Eric Trump protective detail.