Six Secret Service agents have been suspended nearly a year after the July 2024 assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn told CBS News that the suspensions range from 10 to 42 days without pay or benefits. Upon their return, the agents will be placed in positions with fewer responsibilities.
“We are laser-focused on fixing the root cause of the problem,” Quinn told the outlet, noting, “We’re not going to fire our way out of this. We’re going to focus on the root cause and fix the deficiencies that put us in that situation.”
“Secret Service is totally accountable for Butler,” he said. “Butler was an operational failure and we are focused today on ensuring that it never happens again.”
A 180-page report released in December by a House task force on the assassination attempt found that evidence “clearly shows failures in advance planning by the Secret Service and its law enforcement partners in the days before the July 13 campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, and failures in execution on the day of the event itself.”
The task force found that the events occurring in Butler, Pennsylvania, were “preventable and should not have happened.”
“The fundamental principle that the American political process is free from violence underpins our system of representative democracy. The effectiveness of the Secret Service—as the agency responsible for protecting the country’s highest elected officials—is therefore central to upholding the Nation’s constitutional values,” the report concluded, calling for the restoration of the Secret Service’s standing as the “world’s preeminent protective agency.”
