Susan Crabtree@susancrabtree
🚨🚨UPDATE: Secret Service Director Sean Curran announced ANOTHER big promotion last week for Nick Olszeweski, one of two supervisory agents at the Butler rally where Trump was nearly assassinated.
The two supervisors were supposed to be providing senior oversight for far more junior agents who were assigned to the big outdoor Trump event even though most of them had ZERO experience handling an event of that size at a location that the Secret Service had never used before.
Olszeweski will move from heading the Inspections Division, which investigates agents' misbehavior and infractions, to become an ASSISTANT DIRECTOR in charge of the Secret Service's Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees all agency disciplinary matters. That's one of the eight assistant directors, considered the director's top lieutenants who are just one leadership tier down from the director, deputy director, and the chief counsel.
Nick Menster, the other supervisor, was DIRECTLY in charge of overseeing inexperienced agent Miyo Perez, who failed to place a security asset on the AGR roof where would-be assassin Thomas Crooks fired off his shots. Menster also was not disciplined over Butler. Curran instead promoted Menster to a leadership position on Eric and Lara Trump's staff.
Many rank-and-file agents are outraged by Curran's decision to promote Olszeweski once again -- while mostly far less senior agents took the fall for Butler.
They are viewing the promotion as a way for Curran to further insulate himself from any accusations of wrongdoing during his time as the leader of the Trump campaign detail. At least one agent on the detail filed formal complaints against Curran's leadership team of the Trump campaign detail, but internal inspectors cleared all of any wrongdoing, sources tell @RCPolitics.
What agents want to know is whether the investigation that cleared Curran and his leadership team was thorough - did it include interviewing more than the people accused? Did inspectors look at cellphone texts, and did they polygraph Curran, his deputy, Matt Piant, and others on the leadership team?
A source in the Secret Service community says it's par for the agency's course to discipline anyone below a GS 13 level far more severely while failing to hold more senior supervisors accountable for similar misconduct. The reason? A culture of corruption that has been plaguing the agency for decades. Senior agents have far more ties to the top brass and information they can leak on top leaders if they were to receive harsh discipline, sources tell RCP.
"It's more normal than not-- it's almost as if it is standard protocol -- that if you are a GS14 or higher, that you will be treated with kid gloves, i.e., you will be allowed to sit at home with pay no longer how long it takes to reach retirement, " a source in the Secret Service community tells @RCPolitics. "As opposed to a GS13 or under. For those more junior agents it's more likely than not that they will be suspended without pay or terminated [for misconduct]."
