The Secret Service placed its chief spokesman and two other communications officials on administrative leave and stripped their security clearances as federal investigators probe leaks of sensitive presidential security details, including information about threats to President Trump.
Anthony Guglielmi, the agency's chief of communications, was among the three employees escorted from Secret Service headquarters after the agency confirmed the suspensions late Tuesday. All three lost access to work devices and were designated "do not admit," barring them from re-entering the building, CBS News reported.
The agency described the trio as "non-law enforcement personnel" and said its Office of Professional Responsibility is conducting the investigation into "potential misconduct." But the scope of the probe extends well beyond an internal personnel review. Both the FBI and CIA are reportedly involved, according to RealClearPolitics, a signal that the suspected leaks may have compromised classified material or jeopardized active security operations.
The Secret Service offered a carefully worded statement that avoided specifics about the nature of the alleged misconduct.
"The U.S. Secret Service is committed to upholding the highest standards of professionalism and integrity in fulfilling our zero-fail mission of protecting the President and other high-level government officials. Our critical work demands that our workforce maintain an unwavering commitment to duty, honesty, and courage in all aspects of their jobs."
That language, "zero-fail mission," "unwavering commitment to duty, honesty, and courage", reads less like boilerplate and more like an indictment of the very employees just shown the door. CBS News reached out to Guglielmi for comment but did not report a response.
The leaked information at the center of the probe is not trivial. The New York Post reported that the compromised material included details about Trump covertly departing Air Force One via a catering truck during a visit to Turkey because of an Iranian threat. The leaks also reportedly exposed the fact that the new Air Force One lacks advanced anti-missile defense systems, the kind of operational detail that, once public, cannot be undone.
Those disclosures reportedly enraged the White House. And for good reason: broadcasting the specific method a president uses to evade a known assassination threat, and advertising gaps in the aircraft's defensive capabilities, hands adversaries precisely the intelligence they need. The administration has already shown it takes leak investigations seriously. The Department of Justice recently subpoenaed four New York Times reporters over a story involving Air Force One security, a move that underscored how aggressively the government is pursuing unauthorized disclosures about presidential protection.
The threat environment around Trump is not abstract. The president himself has spoken publicly about Iranian plots against his life, and the Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny over whether it has adequate resources and protocols in place to counter those threats. Trump addressed the danger directly ahead of the anniversary of the Butler rally shooting, where he was wounded by a gunman in 2024.
Against that backdrop, leaks from inside the agency's own communications shop look less like carelessness and more like a serious breach of the trust that holds presidential security together.
Guglielmi's removal carries an additional layer. RealClearPolitics noted that the spokesman had a prior record of publicly denying accurate reporting about Secret Service failures during the Biden era. He called RCP's reporting on the diversion of resources ahead of the Butler rally "very wrong", but internal agency emails later corroborated the story's central claims.
That history matters. A spokesman whose job is to be the agency's public face used that position to dismiss legitimate press inquiries. If the same official is now under investigation for leaking sensitive information in other contexts, it raises a straightforward question about what information was being managed, and for whose benefit.
The two other suspended employees have not been publicly identified. U.S. officials told CBS News the staffers worked in the same communications office as Guglielmi, but their specific roles and the nature of their alleged involvement remain unclear.
The suspensions do not exist in isolation. Weeks before the communications office shakeup, the Secret Service launched a separate investigation into a member of Vice President JD Vance's security detail for allegedly leaking sensitive information, including details of Vance's travel schedule. The agency described that probe as both an "administrative investigation" and a "potential criminal inquiry," language that suggests investigators believe laws may have been broken.
Two concurrent leak investigations inside the same agency, one involving the vice president's protective detail and another involving the agency's top public-facing officials, point to a systemic problem. The Secret Service is not dealing with a single rogue employee. It is dealing with a culture that allowed sensitive security information to flow out of the building through multiple channels.
The broader federal government has been grappling with the same challenge. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the DOJ recently launched a joint task force to hunt down Pentagon leakers, reflecting an administration-wide push to plug unauthorized disclosures across national security agencies.
Meanwhile, the Secret Service's institutional credibility continues to take hits from multiple directions. The agency has also faced questions about its handling of legal process in high-profile cases, including a recent episode in which the BBC alleged the Secret Service blocked a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. in a defamation lawsuit.
The Secret Service has not disclosed what specific misconduct triggered the investigation, whether the probe is connected to the separate Vance detail inquiry, or whether any of the suspended employees face potential criminal referrals. The involvement of the FBI and CIA suggests the matter extends beyond internal discipline, but the agency's public statements have offered no detail beyond confirming the leave status and invoking its Office of Professional Responsibility.
Revoking security clearances and confiscating work devices are described as common practice during internal probes. But escorting employees out of headquarters and flagging them as "do not admit" goes further, it signals the agency views the situation as serious enough to physically bar its own people from the building.
For an agency built on the premise that its personnel can be trusted with the most sensitive information in government, the president's location, his movements, the vulnerabilities of his aircraft and motorcade, the discovery that its own communications team may have been the source of damaging leaks is a fundamental failure. The Secret Service asks the public to accept its "zero-fail mission" at face value. Three empty desks at headquarters suggest the agency couldn't even keep that standard inside its own press shop.
