MAJOR DISTRUST: How President Biden’s dog & Jan 6th investigation eroded trust in Secret Service
Like every president, Joe Biden relies daily on the U.S. Secret Service for protection and security, but that doesn’t mean he’s placing his full trust in the team.
A new book, The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House, by Chris Whipple, is being released next month and reveals some of his concerns.
President Biden wasn’t in the White House long before there was an incident with his rescue dog, Major.
Major had bitten a Secret Service agent, and while the injury was minor, the concerns were serious, especially since the building that houses the president’s residence and offices is subject to a constant flow of people.
Whipple says that Biden never truly believed the story as the Secret Service agent told it, though, primarily on the basis of the location.
He reportedly told a friend, gesturing to the area where the biting incident was alleged to have taken place, “The Secret Service are never up here. It didn’t happen.”
The January 6th Committee’s investigation, discovering that the Secret Service seemed to have deleted text from the day of the attack on the Capitol, and uncovering former Vice President Mike Pence’s apparent concerns about the security detail on that day, however, seem to have affirmed Biden’s concerns.
Now, he (the book asserts) is careful what he says when agents are within hearing distance and maintains caution about putting his trust in the agency.
“Faced with the knowledge that members of Mr Trump’s detail — some of whom remained with the agency — had actually cheered on the Capitol attack…Whipple writes that Mr Biden ‘wasn’t taking any chances’ with his bodyguards.”
There were already clashes with the Secret Service about how the biting incident was shared with the public.
TMZ reported in April that the agent was upset at the White House’s statement that the injury had been ‘minor,’ and that they wanted a torn coat replaced.
This report also notes that there was allegedly a string of biting incidents over the course of more than a week.
The official release through the White House Press Secretary at the time indicated that Major had been ‘startled’ by the agent and reacted accordingly.
There’s little to be known publicly about what action by the agent is understood to have upset the dog.
What upset President Biden, however, is easier to understand.
The agency that’s intended to protect the president, without any partisan bias, is reportedly infiltrated with MAGA holdouts, and when even the former VP wouldn’t put his trust in agents, it’s understandable that the president MAGA sees as a sworn enemy would exercise caution as well.
