Secret Service Pulled From White House

For at least two months during 2011, then-Secret Service Director Mark Sullivan reportedly diverted agents from patrolling the White House to aid his assistant in a neighborhood dispute. On Saturday, the Washington Post detailed how Sullivan ordered members of special White House Secret Service unit to abandon their posts to go to the Maryland home of his assistant, Lisa Chopey, after an altercation with her neighbor. Sullivan resigned from his post after a scandal involving Secret Security agents hiring prostitutes ahead of a 2012 presidential trip to Colombia. He said in a statement “The U.S. Secret Service always has taken seriously threats made against employees and responds as appropriate.” However, Dan Emmett, a former Secret Service agent strongly disagreed with the decision to move agents off the White House. The unit “is there for a reason, and it shouldn’t be pulled when the president is on the move,” he said. “The president takes far greater priority than the director’s secretary’s well-being.”