The U.S. Secret Service, once a highly respected federal law enforcement agency, is not doing so well on the PR front these days.
Just a few weeks after the agency was dragged for nearly allowing former President Donald Trump to be assassinated by a 20-year-old weirdo with a rifle at a Pennsylvania rally, the agency was once again humiliated for its actions during a Kamala Harris event.
News broke last week regarding an Atlanta fundraiser put on by Harris's campaign, during which the Secret Service reportedly took over a local salon owner's business and allowed people to use the restroom without authorization, while duct-taping the video cameras.
The salon owner reported that someone from the agency in charge of securing the business left the doors unlocked and the tape hanging off the cameras after they departed the area, Fox News reported.
It was reported that the salon owner said the agency picked the lock of her business before turning it into a VIP bathroom area, and covering the cameras to hide the evidence.
The U.S. Secret Service is apologizing to a Massachusetts salon owner after an agent covered her security camera with duct tape and broke into her salon by picking the lock so that its bathroom could be used by various people for a two-hour period.
After the two-hour period,… pic.twitter.com/s4qSFtebn0
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) August 11, 2024
While the agency initially apologized for the incident, it later hinted that it might not have been responsible. USSS spokeswoman Melissa McKenzie said as much in a statement.
"The U.S. Secret Service works closely with our partners in the business community to carry out our protective and investigative missions," McKenzie said.
She added, "We hold these relationships in the highest regard and our personnel would not enter, or instruct our partners to enter, a business without the owner’s permission."
The spokesperson failed to name who was responsible for the situation, which was caught on camera.
The owner of the Salon described the mess that she walked into after the alleged incident took place.
Fox News reported:
Powers told Business Insider that "several people" who were "in and out for about an hour-and-a-half – just using my bathroom, the alarms going off, using my counter, with no permission."
"And then when they were done using the bathroom for two hours, they left, and left my building completely unlocked, and did not take the tape off the camera," she added.
Though the owner didn't go into detail, she reported that the agency contacted her in the wake of the reports about the break-in.
The agency can't afford many more hits on the PR front, as it already has a massive black eye.
