Trump to tap Sean Curran for Secret Service director

By Susan Crabtree
Real Clear Politics

President Trump plans to announce Secret Service agent Sean Curran, who heads his detail, to be the agency’s director, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

Curran, who has served in the agency for more than two decades, leads a team of roughly 85 agents who protect the president-elect and has done so over the last two and a half years of his presidential campaign. Curran has the closest relationship to Trump of any current agent and is usually physically closest to him at any given moment in the innermost ring of Secret Service security dedicated to protecting the incoming president’s life on a daily basis.

Curran was one of the first agents to leap on top of Trump during the assassination attempt against the then-Republican nominee for president during the rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, and can be seen to the right of Trump in the iconic photo of him with a blood-stained face pumping his fist in the air, surrounded by agents against the backdrop of an American flag.

Considering the two assassination attempts against Trump in the final months of the campaign, the president-elect’s choice for Secret Service director is one the most personal and significant decisions for the incoming administration. One of the most powerful points working in Curran’s favor for his selection is his role in repeatedly requesting more security assets for Donald Trump's campaign, despite hitting a brick wall on most of those requests from the Secret Service’s leadership over the course of more than two years.

Curran has written documentation for those denied requests, likely in the form of emails from the Office of Protective Operations, according to several sources in the Secret Service community. Former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, with input from her deputy, now acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe, and others, continued the protocol of treating Trump like a former president who didn’t need nor deserve top security assets. But Trump, one of the most well-known and polarizing figures in modern politics, shattered the mold of former presidents.

In continuing that outmoded policy, the USSS leadership failed to meet their own threat-based standard of allocating security assets to protectees. The various formal investigations found that if assets such as more counter snipers and a Counter Surveillance Unit had been provided, shooter Thomas Crooks likely would have been discovered early and interdicted. 

Curran has a very good reputation among most agents and in the broader Secret Service community as a whole, though some have expressed concern that he lacks managerial experience and will need to have to switch gears and change his personality from a shift agent and team leader to a much more forceful presence to truly shake up the agency, clean house, and bring about the reforms that so many current and former agents believe the agency desperately needs.

Yet Curran was in the top leadership position of a detail that allowed two assassination attempts against Trump to take place, one in which Trump was shot in the ear and nearly killed – the most embarrassing moment for the agency since President Reagan was shot in the chest by John Hinckley and nearly died outside the Washington Hilton in 1981.

Another attempt occurred outside Trump’s West Palm Beach Golf Club roughly two months later, where Ryan Routh, the perpetrator, was allowed to lie in wait for Trump in the bushes along the perimeter of the club for more than 12 hours until a Secret Service agent protecting Trump on the golf course noticed the end of a rifle sticking out of fencing and pointed toward Trump.

In naming Curran, Trump would be rejecting the recommendations of two blue-ribbon commissions, one in 2015 and last year’s bipartisan Independent Review Panel, that the next president should choose someone from outside the agency to bring about the numerous reforms the panel and Congress have recommended.

During his first term in office, Trump did name the first director from outside the agency, Randolph “Tex” Alles, a former U.S. Marine Corps general and the first Secret Service director selected from outside the agency in its 159-year history.

Trump chose Alles to lead the agency from 2017 to 2019. During that time, Alles built a good rapport among rank-and-file agents, but many believed several agency leaders successfully sabotaged him. Alles was swept out of the agency when Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen left her post in April 2019.

Despite Curran's undeniable heroism on the day of the Butler rally and his direct role in saving Trump’s life, the congressional investigations and Independent Review Panel heavily criticized the performance of several agents on the detail Curran managed for failing to place a sniper or any other security asset on top of the building where shooter Thomas Crooks opened fire.

The Independent Review Panel cited multiple failures on the part of the Secret Service that day, including that an inexperienced agent on the Trump detail who was in charge of developing and executing the rally security plan didn’t ensure that an agent was covering the building, allowing Crooks to run across the roof in plain sight of rallygoers and fire eight shots at Trump and the crowd. The flying bullets hit Trump in the ear and killed retired firefighter Corey Comperatore, and seriously wounded two other rallygoers.

That inexperienced young agent is Myotsoty Perez, who had just three years of experience in the Secret Service, and only one as a member of the Trump campaign detail. Her supervisor, Nick Menster, also didn’t quiz her on exactly how the building would be covered by local law enforcement, though he walked through the security plans with her, along with an inspector, one day before the Butler rally, according to the Independent Review Panel’s final report on their findings. The inquiries also heavily criticized siloed communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement supplementing security. The local police officers first spotted Crooks 90 minutes before he opened fire and continued tracking him but failed to communicate effectively to share their concerns about Crooks with Secret Service agents. The morning the rally began, local law enforcement offered radios to the Secret Service, but the agents never picked them up.

Erik Prince, a former Navy SEAL who ran the private military security company Blackwater USA before stepping down in 2009 and is close to Donald Trump Jr., also criticized Trump’s inner ring of Secret Service agents at Butler for allowing him to pop back up, pump his fist, and shout “Fight, fight, fight!” That instinctive reaction by Trump exposed his torso and head to any additional shots.

Prince also faulted Curran and his team of agents on stage for the time it took to remove Trump from the stage and escort him to the motorcade and flee the scene. Prince, appearing at an August 26 panel at the Heritage Foundation, provided his critique under questioning from several members of Congress, including GOP Reps. Cory Mills of Florida, Eli Crane of Arizona, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas, and then-Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida. 

“The Secret Service detail did an awful job getting Trump off the X and let him stand up again,” Prince told a panel of Republican House members at the Heritage Foundation.

“[It showed] great instincts of the president to come back defiant, having just been shot in the head to come back and say, ‘Fight, fight, fight,’” Prince acknowledged. “But he never should have had the opportunity to do that because his detail should have put him horizontal and moved him off there immediately.”

On Thursday night, however, when news broke that Trump planned to tap Curran for the top Secret Service role, Prince, who is close to Donald Trump Jr., gave a full-throated endorsement of Curran in a post on X.com, quote-tweeting RealClearPolitics’ breaking news alert about Trump’s decision to select him.

“Sean Curran is an excellent choice to lead and reform the @SecretService,” Prince said in the post. “He’s been President Trump’s lead agent for many years and has the trust and confidence of our next president. Sean knows what must be done to tighten up executive security in a time of enhanced threats at much longer ranges.”

Fox News host Laura Ingraham also posted her enthusiasm over the choice on X.com Thursday night.

“No one deserves it more than Sean!” she wrote.

Yet, there were other signs of concern among Trump loyalists about the agency’s failure to maintain its “zero fail” standard in protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, and dozens of other top U.S. officials. Numerous social media posts cited Curran’s role as the leader of the Trump security team that allowed two assassination attempts against him and expressed reservations about the selection.

While many sources reached out to RCP to hail the decision to elevate Curran, others also noted his role as the leader of a team that failed to protect Trump and committed glaring errors in basic Secret Service protocols.

Menster was not part of the group of agents assigned to telework in the wake of the assassination attempt while internal Secret Service, congressional, and other investigations into the assassination attempt took place. Agents placed on the temporary work-from-home assignment include Perez and three agents from the Pittsburgh Field Office: Dana Dubrey, Perez’s local counterpart agent, Meredith Bank, the lead advance agent charged with coordinating security with local from the time Trump touched down at the airport to his departure, and Tim Burke, the head of the Pittsburgh Field Office.

Perez has since been reassigned to the Miami Field Office for a desk job that doesn’t involve providing security for Trump or any other protectee.

Menster is expected to take responsibility for protecting Trump’s son, Eric, and his wife, Lara Trump, who co-chaired the Republican National Committee this cycle along with Michael Watley, according to two sources in the Secret Service community.

Both new roles are raising concerns among rank-and-file agents and some aides on Capitol Hill involved in the Secret Service investigations. While agents are encouraged that Perez is no longer involved in providing physical security for Trump or other protectees, some agents are frustrated that she hasn’t been fired or disciplined six months after Trump nearly died and Comperatore was killed at the Butler rally.

Larry Berger, Perez’s attorney, did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

The agents angered by Secret Service leaders’ decision to move Perez to Miami argue that she has been re-assigned a desirable Field Office and taken off the usual rigorous protective duty that often requires long hours with little time off and was especially high-tempo this year with the agency stretched so thin during a campaign season.

Usually, several years of this type of demanding protective duty are required in Phase 2 of an agent’s career. If agents request to be moved away from the protective requirements, they can be rebuffed, refused promotion, or told to follow through with the commitment or leave the agency. Many agents have experienced these consequences for requesting to leave protective duty before completing their Phase Two assignments and believe Perez is not being held to the same standards.

Menster, meanwhile, appears to have been assigned to a top protective role in the incoming Trump administration even though he was the assigned supervisor for the Trump detail at the Butler rally who failed to press Perez to show exactly how the AGR building would be covered.

Responding to claims that Perez’s re-assignment amounted to an elevated role in some agents’ eyes, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi denied it was akin to a “promotion.”

“This is a reassignment from the Donald Trump Detail to the Miami Field Office under the Office of Field Operations,” he added.

The office didn’t respond to a request for comment regarding Menster’s new role.

A different agency spokesperson also noted that any agent reassignments are separate from other disciplinary actions that may be taken by the agency’s Office of Integrity.

“The security lapses that contributed to the attempted assassination of President-elect Donald Trump must never be repeated, and the U.S. Secret Service is fully committed to ensuring they do not occur again,” a different Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement. “A comprehensive discipline and accountability process is currently underway.”

“In addition, some personnel involved in the incident have been reassigned to alternate roles,” the spokesperson added. “These reassignments are independent of other actions being taken by the agency’s Office of Integrity, which continues to oversee measures to address these failures.

The second assassination attempt against Trump at his golf club in Palm Beach, Fla., has received far less scrutiny from Congress and other bodies. But the security that day has faced criticism from lawmakers and in the press for Trump’s Secret Service detail’s failure to sweep the perimeter of the golf course where Routh was hiding in the Brush for nearly 12 hours before an agent discovered his rifle sticking out of the bushes. 

In taking on the role, Curran has a heavy lift in overhauling the agency and handling the fallout over the assassination attempts and any upcoming disciplinary action agents responsible for those failures will face. The agency also faces years-long retention problems, high exhaustion levels, low morale, and dissension over the diversity, equity, and inclusion priorities of the outgoing Biden administration and USSS leadership.

RCP Thursday night noted in a tweet that Prince and Dan Bongino, a top conservative commentator, Trump loyalist, and leading contender for the Secret Service director role, would likely be providing advice on Secret Service reforms from the private sector. Bongino, an 11-year veteran of the Secret Service and conservative commentator who provides incisive critiques of the agency on his popular podcast, in recent weeks had repeatedly posted on X.com and told his podcast audience that he preferred to remain in the private sector.

Bongino Thursday night responded tersely to the thread of posts about Curran’s selection and noted that he would likely provide ongoing counsel to Trump on the Secret Service.

“Already gave my advice,” Bongino wrote. “Wasn’t taken. Hope it works out.”

Bongino, known for his searing honesty and fiery delivery, in recent days in X.com posts and on his podcast, has publicly warned Trump not to move forward with the inauguration activities, opting instead to just get sworn in without the pomp and circumstance of an outdoor ceremony on the steps of the Capitol in front of hundreds of thousands of people, because of the ongoing threats against him, especially as it relates to drones.

“I’m absolutely unconvinced that the Secret Service has a bullet-proof – pun absolutely intended – plan for a swarm drone attack in or around the inauguration,” he said on his podcast Wednesday. “I’m not telling you they don’t, I’m not telling you they do. I’m just saying what sources are telling me – that they’re not confident.”

On his Tuesday podcast, Bongino argued that FAA’s temporary flight restrictions are not easily enforceable, describing them as mere “stop signs” that can be violated.

“They’re basically suggestions, if everybody doesn’t agree to stop, okay … there are other things we can do to make sure planes don’t and drones don’t violate the [flight restrictions],” he said, noting he didn’t want to disclose Secret Service sources and methods. “However, I’m not sure we have the manpower for all that.”

Bongino also ridiculed the FBI for saying that it isn’t tracking “any specific or credible threats” against the president or the Capitol complex for inauguration weekend or the day of the swearing-in. Considering the multiple known plots against Trump during the campaign, including two from Iran that the FBI was involved in disrupting, Bongino lambasted the agency for stirring deep distrust among conservatives for years over its investigations targeting Trump. The FBI also has faced criticism for failing to have any information or leads before the ISIS-inspired attack on the crowd in New Orleans by a U.S. citizen and Army veteran.

Trump appeared on Bongino’s radio show Thursday afternoon, calling him a “good friend” at the beginning of the interview. Trump and Bongino discussed the Hamas-Israel ceasefire, Biden’s efforts to thwart the incoming administration, the California wildfires, and initial legislative strategy. Bongino didn’t raise the issue of inauguration security directly, although he addressed the broader drone questions and whether they pose a threat to “the homeland.”

Trump promised “to get answers fast” and suggested that the Biden administration must be “embarrassed about something” or “it’s us doing it” because Biden and other U.S. officials should have already provided the public answers.

“It’s right over my house in New Jersey. You know, the activities taking place [are] over Bedminster and areas near Bedminster,” he added. “That’s a little weird. But we’ll know soon, and you’ll be one of the first to know.”

At the end of the interview, Trump teased that he thinks Bongino and his “very large audience” are going to be “very, very happy with the things I’m going to be announcing on Monday.”

Secret Service Agent Matt McCool, who heads the Washington field office and is leading security preparations for the inauguration, earlier this week expressed “100% confidence” that the Secret Service, working with military and law enforcement officials, would keep Trump and all the attendees and the public safe.

During a Monday press conference with D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser and other federal and local law enforcement officials, McCool said a combined force of 25,000 law enforcement officials and members of the military will be on hand to provide security for Trump’s swearing-in ceremony. The festivities include an inaugural parade in which presidents and first ladies traditionally walk at least part of the route from the Capitol to the White House alongside the presidential motorcade, flanked by contingents of Secret Service agents.

McCool, a square-jawed, muscular agent straight out of Secret Service central casting, acknowledged the higher threat level and a “slightly more robust security” operation for the days leading up to the swearing-in ceremony and the inauguration itself. He also said the inauguration will be the fifth National Special Security Event this year that has taken place without major incident, including the Jan. 6 certification of Trump’s victory and the funeral of President Jimmy Carter just last week.

(An NSSE is an event of national or international significance deemed by the United States Department of Homeland Security to be a potential target for terrorism or other criminal activity.)

“And if there’s areas where we need to improve, we do it,” he said, acknowledging an “ever-changing threat environment.”

“But what I can tell you is that we are 100% confident in planning for this inauguration [that the] the public, our protectees will be safe,” he added.

McCool also warned that the Secret Service would be using drones as part of the protective plan both in the days leading up to the inauguration and during the event itself, so the public shouldn’t worry if they see these unmanned aerial vehicles in the Washington, D.C., sky in the days leading up to the swearing-in and on Inauguration Day. The drones, along with Federal Aviation Administration flight restrictions for other aircraft and unmanned aerial vehicles, are part of the normal security plan.

U.S. Capitol Police Chief Thomas Manger, at Monday’s press conference, said law enforcement agencies are expecting more than 10,000 protesters to D.C. that weekend and into Monday. He said the biggest threat the inauguration faces is from an unknown lone actor.

“That threat of the lone actor remains the biggest justification of us staying on a heightened state of alert throughout the next week,” he said.

Two lone actors showed up at the Capitol when former President Jimmy Carter was lying in state and members of Congress and other U.S. officials were paying their respects, according to Manger. One tried to bring a machete into the Capitol building, and another tried to set his car on fire near the Capitol in an effort to “disrupt” the day’s proceedings, Manger said.

Over the last several weeks, some Secret Service agents, without disclosing methods, also expressed concerns about the agency’s drone-mitigation capabilities, though several others expressed confidence in what they described as a robust, multi-layered system in D.C. that has been used for years.

As RCP previously reported, both Bongino and several Secret Services sources cited manpower issues – that the agency was suffering from a reduced number of senior veteran agents and a high level of exhaustion of all agents who were already stretched thin during the frenetic campaign schedule and high tempo that hasn’t dissipated since Election Day.

Agents pointed to an internal email sent out Friday with the subject line, “File Operations Manpower Update,” which a senior USSS official sent to several agency divisions. The memo, obtained by RCP, thanked rank-and-file agents for filling inauguration assignments but stressed that the manpower demands from Secret Service offices across the country would not decrease for several months as the agency helps provide security for the presidential transition.

“I want to provide everyone with a quick update on manpower status and expectations going into and coming out of the Inauguration,” the official wrote in the email. “I know ASAIC [redacted] team has been working diligently with your OPs sections to fill inauguration assignments and am told that process, while another heavy lift is going smoothly and is greatly appreciated.”

“Unfortunately, there will be continued needs for significant numbers of Field Operations personnel to support protective assignments as the transition continues in the coming months,” the official concluded.

The email closes by noting that the agency is “working to get a clearer picture of the permanent protective support anticipated as the new administration transitions in and the number of protectees grows” before thanking agents for their continued high workload.

“I feel fine about the inauguration [plans]. The only thing I’m worried about is the tempo is not slowing down whatsoever,” one agent, who requested anonymity, told RCP.

“Agents are completely exhausted – mistakes are made when people are tired,” another agent remarked.  

Secret Service agents also shared their concerns about the training level of Homeland Security Investigative agents involved in helping to secure the inauguration. There were a large number of HSI agents on hand to supplement security at the July 13 Butler rally. Those HSI agents complained to members of Congress that they only received a couple of hours of training for the rally via a glitchy online video. Some USSS agents aren’t confident that HSI training has improved as much as is needed before such a critical National Special Security Event as an inauguration.

Other Secret Service agents are greatly appreciative of the work HSI agents regularly provide for the Secret Service, noting that they were great assets during security for the United Nations General Assembly in October and usually assist with security and do not replace the vital protective work of Secret Service agents.

Behind the scenes, Secret Service agents are also deeply concerned about the friction between top agency leaders and the incoming Trump administration, along with several institutional problems.

Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe has tried to set up a meeting with Trump since the election, but Trump has rebuffed those attempts, even though Rowe has traveled to Florida multiple times, two sources tell RCP.

The lack of communication between Rowe and Trump is likely not affecting security planning, one Secret Service source noted, because Rowe is in regular contact with John Bush, the special agent in charge of the presidential protective division, which oversees security for the first family, the vice president’s family, and all protectees. Following normal post-election protocol, Bush spent several weeks at Mar-a-Lago prepping Trump, his family, and incoming staff on transition security.

Trump is widely expected to name a new director soon and either fire Rowe or ensure that he is removed from a leadership position, the sources said. The sources expect Rowe to voluntarily step down from the post and possibly resign from the Secret Service altogether after the inauguration.

Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics' national political correspondent.