A Weakened US Secret Service
I have tried for years to give the benefit of the doubt to the US Secret Service. I've known and worked with a ton of guys there.
I also worked in government long enough to know that this agency is supposed to be tight on managing (of all things!) the kinds of records that can be used in freaking bloody court for crying out loud. Like their own damn cell phone records.
News broke this past week that the US Secret Service erased their own cell phone records (not on purpose supposedly). It’s a story I'm not really buying.
The general public may not be aware that something like 80-90% of the Secret Service's job is tracking down financial crime, corruption, terrorist related financing, and so on.
How do you specialize in that kind of crap and delete your own agency's records? Which were supposed to have been backed up by the law enforcement employees for said law enforcement and court reasons?
The Service is supposed to be one of the best such agencies in the whole damn world.
I mean, are you kidding me?
One danger that's hard to understand from Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans is the institutional erosion they have caused. This certainly could be one result.
And this was an agency that had been having trouble for quite some time.
Toxic masculinity is a bear, and this agency was pretty seriously infected. Not that that's unique for law enforcement.
But the Service had had some pretty spectacularly notable toxic masculinity action. Literally: stories about the agents getting some action in not appropriate ways while on the road internationally to protect the US president. That was probably nearly a decade ago.
More recently, it seems that the primary political appointee in the agency under Trump has been reported in the January 6th hearings as having some funky association with Trump. But it certainly contributes to the funkiness of this breaking story.
This is also an agency involved in some of the most classified and most highly sensitive business of the United States government.
Sloppiness is not supposed to be their game... like accidentally deleting phone records.
Care of detailed information is literally their business. In so many ways.
Add this to the list of unexpected and spectacular news things that will continue to come out this year. There's so much more.
Be safe. Going to be a dicey rest of the year.
Shift the Country intends to help us have tools to turn this ship - from institutional erosion, to functional government, to elections that continue to work well, to government that actually better serves it’s citizens. Check out our 5 Thing approach at www.shiftthecountry.com.
Onward. We’ve got shift to do.