By It turns out that whoever brought cocaine into the White House just so happened to know where gaps in camera surveillance in the president’s mansion existed. At least, that’s the story being spun by the Secret Service.
Earlier today, the president’s bodyguards announced that they could not determine who brought drugs into the West Wing.
Secret Service officials combed through “security systems” and indexed “several hundreds individuals” who entered the West Wing in the days preceding the discovery and were unable to identify a suspect, according to the USSS statement. The Secret Service said FBI lab results from the packaging found “insufficient DNA” and could not retrieve any fingerprints, writes CNN.
“Therefore, the Secret Service is not able to compare evidence against the known pool of individuals,” a statement from the USSS said.
Investigators were also unable to identify the particular moment or day when the baggie was left inside the West Wing cubby near the lower level entrance where it was discovered.
“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” the agency’s statement said. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered. At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”
A source familiar with the investigation told CNN that the leading theory remains that it was left by one of the hundreds of visitors who entered the West Wing that weekend for tours and were asked to leave their phones inside those cubbies.
Initially, the White House said that the drugs were found in a heavily trafficked lobby, but later it was announced that the bag of cocaine was left in a more exclusive area in the White House, right outside of the White House’s West Executive entrance.
“Outrage ensued from Republican lawmakers,” noted The Daily Beast, “who remain hell-bent on continuing the probe despite the Secret Service’s admission there are no leads left to chase.”
Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) allegedly stormed out of a Secret Service briefing for lawmakers mere moments after it starte, calling the probe’s conclusion “bogus” and the investigation a “complete failure.”
“Y’all know you can’t go in [the White House] without giving your Social Security number anyway, and to say that it’s just some weekend visitor, that’s bogus,” Burchett said. “Nobody’s buying that at all.”
Other commentators noted that this does not give us confidence in the Secret Service’s ability to protect the White House from certain attacks.
Let’s assume the baggie contained fentanyl… or even worse, something like anthrax… are we really supposed to believe the Secret Service, guarding the most heavily fortified citadel on the planet, is just gonna shrug their shoulders? https://t.co/SMgWMsjQIV
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) July 13, 2023
Last week, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre lashed out against reporters who asked if she could deny that the drugs belonged to any member of the Biden family.
While much of the focus has been on Hunter Biden’s role in the affair, conservative writer Jim Treacher had a different theory. Would they turn in one of their own?
Maybe it was a Secret Service agent. Why would you turn in one of your own, when you know everybody will just blame the president's crackhead son? https://t.co/Zm8gJTt04T
— jimtreacher.substack.com (@jtLOL) July 13, 2023
Treacher noted that a few years ago, the Secret Service had its own drug scandal during a foreign trip.
In 2012, the New York Post reported about a wild party the Secret Service through a few days before President Barack Obama arrived on a foreign trip. “Cocaine and several bottles of whiskey apparently fueled the elite agents’ boneheaded fling with about 20 hookers at a posh hotel in Cartagena, Colombia, a hotel staffer told The Post.
The employee responded to the trashed room with police and other Hotel El Caribe workers when one prostitute raised hell after a Secret Service member initially refused to pay her.
‘When I went upstairs I walked into a messy room. The room was littered with two whiskey bottles — and a line of white powder, I believed to be cocaine, was on top of a round glass table in the room,’ the staffer told The Post.
He painted a picture of morning-after mayhem in the lobby — just two days before President Obama landed in the country for an international summit.”
The Secret Service prostitution scandal involved at least 20 Colombian women, according to Maine Senator Susan Collins, the then-ranking Republican on the Homeland Security Committee.
She claimed that the director of the USSS “told me that there are 11 Secret Service agents and officers involved. Some 20 women foreign nationals were brought to the hotel in Colombia, but allegedly Marines were involved with the rest.”
The agents in question, she continued, were “uniformed personnel who were assigned to building security, others were the specialized agents who do security details.”
[Read More: FBI Admits To Breaking The Law]
