The United States Secret Service sent its five agents on leave as part of the investigation into the near-fatal assassination attempt on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Included in these agents is the head of the Secret Service Pittsburgh field office and one agent of Trump’s security detail. Similarly, three other agents of the Pittsburgh field office have also been sent on leave.
The real reason behind their leaves remains unknown, but it is a common practice for the federal agency to place the agents on leave during the investigations for different reasons, including but not limited to giving them mental health breaks.
This comes at a time when the Secret Service is desperately trying to make sense of how a young aspiring assassin came in the striking distance of the former president while holding a rifle in broad daylight and managed to climb a roof with no stairs. The Secret Service also said that the roof from where the assassin fired was not protected due to its sloppy nature, even though their sharp shooters were present on another roof with almost similar slopes.
According to the Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, the agency is committed to finding the facts behind the operational failure, although he declined to confirm if the agents are sent on leave.
The agency can take different actions against the serving officers, and most disciplinary actions send agents on administrative leave, where they still collect their salaries while doing the paperwork instead of being present in the field. Apart from that, the agency can also suspend the officers both with or without pay and in some cases, their security clearance can also be revoked.
The Secret Service has been under intense scrutiny since July 13 after its miserable failure to protect the former president. Former Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle had to resign from her office after receiving intense backlash from bipartisan Congressional lawmakers, who demanded her resignation right after the unfortunate attack.
Ronald Rowe, who assumed the charge of the Acting Director of the agency, told Congress that he was “ashamed” to see his agency failing to protect the White House contender.
Multiple Congressional investigations into the incident are also trying to find facts that are yet to come in front of the public. Trump has vowed to make an independent presidential commission after winning the upcoming elections that will dig deep into the investigation of his own assassination attempt as well as the killings of former presidents, particularly John F. Kennedy, who was shot down in 1963.
