A member of Vice President JD Vance's Secret Service protective detail faces an internal probe for allegedly leaking sensitive security information to the media, an investigation the agency says could turn criminal.
The Secret Service confirmed the investigation on Thursday, with Chief of Communications Anthony Guglielmi telling Just the News that the unnamed agent's conduct may have compromised operational and information security. The agent has been placed on administrative leave while the administrative inquiry proceeds.
Guglielmi did not name the agent, did not specify what information was allegedly disclosed, and did not identify which media outlets received the material. He did, however, leave the door open to a far more serious outcome.
The investigation "could become a criminal inquiry," Guglielmi said, as the New York Post reported. That language signals the agency believes the alleged leaks may have crossed the line from a policy violation into potential lawbreaking, a distinction that matters when the person under suspicion had direct access to the vice president's movements, schedules, and security apparatus.
Guglielmi offered one unambiguous statement on the record:
"While we will not comment on the specifics of this matter, one principle is unequivocal: any conduct that potentially threatens the safety of a protectee will not be tolerated."
This is not the first time an agent assigned to protect Vance and his family has been caught passing sensitive details outside the agency. Earlier this year, journalist James O'Keefe and his media organization released undercover footage identifying a Secret Service agent named Tomas Escotto, who allegedly disclosed protective formations, shift schedules, travel plans, and real-time locations of the vice president and his family to a woman he believed was a romantic interest.
Escotto, described as a five-year Secret Service veteran, reportedly sent images from Air Force Two while onboard with the vice president. He shared future travel plans days in advance, including details of a Vance trip to Ohio. The Washington Examiner reported that an attack on Vance's Cincinnati residence occurred on January 5, just hours after the family had departed.
That timeline alone should have set off alarms across the agency. Whether the attack was connected to the leaked travel information remains unclear, but the sequence, sensitive details shared days before, followed by a physical incident at the family's home, illustrates the real-world stakes of operational security failures.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn issued a public apology to the Vance family after the Escotto breach came to light.
"The U.S. Secret Service deeply apologizes to the Vance family for this violation of their trust and privacy."
Quinn also confirmed that Escotto's security clearance was suspended and his access to agency facilities and systems revoked. The agency ordered all personnel to retake mandatory anti-espionage training, a sweeping remedial step that acknowledged the problem extended beyond one agent's poor judgment.
O'Keefe went further than simply exposing the leak. He alleged publicly that Escotto was a "holdover from the Biden administration" who held personal views hostile to ICE and to President Trump, Fox News reported. If accurate, those claims raise a pointed question: how did an agent with that profile end up on the vice president's protective detail in the first place?
The Secret Service has not publicly addressed O'Keefe's characterization of Escotto's political views. The agency's official statements have focused narrowly on the breach itself and the disciplinary response.
That narrow focus is itself a problem. A pattern of agents on Vance's detail leaking private family details to sympathetic media outlets has drawn sustained concern. The latest investigation, involving a different, still-unnamed agent, suggests the anti-espionage retraining ordered after the Escotto episode did not solve the underlying issue.
The Secret Service's internal security problems are not confined to Vance's detail. An inspector general review found that the agency failed to secure mobile devices used by personnel, raising the risk of compromised communications involving the nation's most senior leaders. When agents cannot be trusted to keep their mouths shut in person, and the agency cannot lock down the phones they carry, the protective mission starts to look fragile.
Separately, the Secret Service publicly rebuked FBI Director Kash Patel for revealing details of a drone-attack probe before arrests were complete, an ironic posture for an agency now dealing with its own serial disclosure problems.
The current investigation remains in its early stages. The unnamed agent has not been publicly charged, and no details about the substance of the alleged leaks have been released. Whether the probe stays administrative or escalates to a criminal referral will depend on what investigators find about the nature and sensitivity of the information disclosed.
For Vance and his family, including his wife Usha and their children, who recently welcomed their fourth child, the repeated breaches carry a cost that goes beyond bureaucratic embarrassment. Protective details exist because the people they guard face genuine threats. Every unauthorized disclosure of schedules, locations, and formations hands potential adversaries information they should never have.
The Escotto case showed how granular that information can get: shift rotations, advance security procedures, real-time locations shared via text, and photographs taken aboard Air Force Two. The agent reportedly acknowledged during the undercover operation that he had signed paperwork prohibiting exactly the kind of disclosures he was making.
Now a second agent from the same detail faces scrutiny. The agency has promised zero tolerance. Quinn apologized. Guglielmi issued stern language. Retraining was ordered.
And yet here the Secret Service is again, confirming another probe into another member of the same protective detail, with the same vague assurances that the behavior "will not be tolerated."
President Trump himself has publicly referenced the Secret Service incidents surrounding Vance, a sign that the breaches have registered at the highest levels of the administration. The political dimension is hard to ignore: if agents assigned to protect the vice president are leaking to media outlets, the question of motive, ideological, personal, or otherwise, demands an answer the Secret Service has so far refused to provide.
Zero tolerance means nothing if the same detail keeps producing the same failures. At some point, the agency has to stop apologizing and start explaining how it vets the people it puts closest to the vice president's family.
