A decade ago, Congress examined more than 100 security incidents, declared the Secret Service "an agency in crisis," and laid out a roadmap for reform. Former House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz now says the agency ignored virtually every recommendation, and the consequences have been measured in gunfire, breached checkpoints, and a president's blood.
Chaffetz, the Utah Republican who led the 2015 probe, told the John Solomon Reports podcast that the six key reforms he pushed have gone nowhere in the intervening years.
"There's six key components that I recommended fixing, but 10 years gone by, and quite honestly, nothing has changed."
That assessment lands at a moment when the agency's record speaks for itself. Three attempts on President Donald Trump's life. An armed suspect who breached a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents' dinner and shot at agents, hitting one in what was described as a non-fatal impact. And a Homeland Security Inspector General warning that staffing shortages continue to plague the very counter-sniper teams tasked with keeping the president alive.
The House Oversight Committee's 2015 investigation was sweeping. The panel analyzed more than 100 separate security incidents around the globe and found persistent staffing shortages, inadequate security clearance screening procedures, and serious communication breakdowns. Among its central recommendations: split the Secret Service's protective mission from its responsibility to investigate financial crimes, and appoint an outsider to lead the agency.
None of that happened. The agency carried on with the same dual mandate, the same internal culture, and, as Chaffetz described it, a deep "lack of accountability."
That culture of impunity was not merely passive. When Chaffetz pressed the agency, it pushed back in ways that went well beyond bureaucratic resistance. A Homeland Security inspector general report found that at least 45 Secret Service employees improperly accessed Chaffetz's 2003 job application, one he had filed and been rejected for years before entering Congress, while he was actively investigating the agency's scandals.
The inspector general said the conduct could represent criminal violations under the U.S. Privacy Act. Assistant Director Ed Lowery wrote in a March 31 email that "some information that he might find embarrassing needs to get out. Just to be fair." Shortly after, Chaffetz's rejected application became public.
Chaffetz called the episode what it was: "It's intimidating. It's what it was supposed to be."
The inspector general's office did not mince words either. As Newsmax reported, the IG found that 18 supervisors or senior executives knew or should have known about the improper access, yet only one person attempted to inform Director Joe Clancy. The report stated plainly: "It doesn't take a lawyer explaining the nuances of the Privacy Act to know that the conduct that occurred here, by dozens of agents in every part of the agency, was wrong."
So the agency's response to congressional oversight was not reform. It was retaliation.
The cost of inaction became horrifyingly clear on July 13, 2024, when a gunman opened fire at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The then-candidate was shot. He went down. He bled. He survived.
A congressional panel reviewing the assassination attempt found that failures in "planning, execution, and leadership" had "undermined the effectiveness of the human and material assets deployed that day." Investigators identified communication failures between agents that hampered response times. The panel called out the Secret Service for failing to fully remedy the issues, and for not terminating any agents or supervisors for the identified missteps.
Chaffetz put the agency's response in terms anyone can understand:
"I thought when Donald Trump got shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, you know, a President of the United States is shot. He's down on the ground. He's bleeding. Thank goodness he survived and is doing fine. Now, every single one of the agents that were involved and engaged in that, every one of the people at the Secret Service, got a promotion."
He followed with a question that deserves an answer: "Nobody was fired. A president was shot. How do those people keep their jobs?"
That pattern, exposed weaknesses within the agency followed by zero consequences, is exactly the dynamic Chaffetz flagged in 2015. The 2015 report warned about it. The Butler review confirmed it. And the agency's own leadership rewarded the people who presided over it.
The latest incident came at the White House Correspondents' dinner, where a defendant identified as Cole Allen allegedly breached a security checkpoint and shot at Secret Service agents, hitting one. Allen was charged with attempted assassination. Senior Trump administration officials were present at the event.
Vice President JD Vance was among those rushed from the dinner after the armed suspect breached the checkpoint, a scene that underscored just how close the threat came to the highest levels of government.
That incident made three known attempts on Trump's life. It also raised the same questions that have dogged the agency for a decade: How does an armed individual breach a Secret Service checkpoint? What happened to the staffing and screening reforms Congress demanded?
President Trump himself addressed the evacuation response around the dinner shooting, adding another data point to the growing record of protection failures surrounding his administration.
Now House Republicans are moving forward with one of Chaffetz's original recommendations: splitting the Secret Service from the Department of Homeland Security to let it focus on its core protective mission. Reps. Jared Moskowitz, a Florida Democrat, and Russell Fry, a South Carolina Republican, introduced bipartisan legislation to transfer the agency from DHS directly to the White House.
The bill would also make FEMA a cabinet-level agency and transfer the Transportation Security Administration from DHS to the Transportation Department, a broader restructuring aimed at untangling the sprawling DHS bureaucracy.
Moskowitz, who served on the panel reviewing the Butler assassination attempt, said the experience opened his eyes to structural problems that went beyond any single failure. He told Fox News Digital:
"Going to Butler, talking to Secret Service, is when I realized, well, the Secret Service is suffering the same problems that FEMA is suffering. Because they were such a small agency, they couldn't get the resources they needed. They couldn't get decisions being made."
He added: "These pieces of legislation would streamline all three of those agencies. It would cut a lot of the bureaucracy we're getting at DHS."
The argument is straightforward. Buried inside DHS, a department that also oversees immigration enforcement, cybersecurity, FEMA, and TSA, the Secret Service cannot get the attention, funding, or decision-making speed its mission demands. Chaffetz made the same case in 2015. It took a president getting shot for Congress to act on it.
The Secret Service's institutional resistance to reform is not a new discovery. Even in 2015, when Chaffetz subpoenaed two senior officials over an incident involving agents allegedly disrupting a suspicious package investigation after a night of drinking, the agency and its allies fought back hard. The Washington Examiner reported that DHS Secretary Jeh Johnson called the subpoenas "unprecedented" and "unnecessary," offering transcribed staff interviews instead. The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association opposed the subpoenas, arguing the DHS inspector general was already investigating.
The agency's posture was consistent: don't look too closely, don't ask too many questions, and trust us to police ourselves. The decade that followed showed what that trust produced.
Chaffetz described the broader picture bluntly on the podcast:
"I'm sad to say, I think a lot of what Secret Service does, there are some heroic people, no doubt about it, and they do some things very well, but a lot of it is security theater, and a lot of it is they have a real issue, and they have got to fix things again."
He called the lack of accountability "most disappointing", a measured word for a record that includes a shot president, a breached checkpoint, and troubling agent conduct that continues to surface.
The agency has had ten years, multiple assassination attempts, at least two major congressional investigations, and an inspector general warning about counter-sniper staffing shortages. At every turn, the pattern repeats: crisis, review, recommendation, inaction.
Splitting the Secret Service from DHS and placing it under the White House may or may not solve the deeper cultural rot. But one thing is clear: an agency that retaliates against the congressman investigating it, promotes the team that let a president get shot, and still cannot keep an armed man from breaching a checkpoint has exhausted every possible benefit of the doubt.
When the people in charge of protecting the president treat accountability as a bigger threat than a bullet, the problem is no longer operational. It is institutional.
