The Secret Service Benches Its Spokesman Over Unnamed Conduct

Three U.S. Secret Service communications officials, including chief spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, were placed on administrative leave last week pending an internal misconduct inquiry. People familiar with the action said their security clearances and work devices were pulled, a common step while the Office of Professional Responsibility opens a case.

The agency confirmed only that the three are non-law-enforcement staff and that it will not discuss the alleged conduct. That is the public record as of September 2, a week after the leave took effect on Tuesday, August 25.

Three Communications Officials Lost Their Clearances

A Secret Service spokesperson said the three were placed on leave “pending an investigation into potential misconduct,” and that the Office of Professional Responsibility is handling the file “per policy.” The agency did not name them and did not describe the conduct under review.

People familiar with the decision said all three work in the communications office and that Guglielmi, the director of communications, is among them. Those accounts also said the three lost building access to work systems along with their clearances, which the agency did not confirm on the record.

Some of those accounts described the three as walked out of headquarters earlier in the week and listed as barred from the building. The Secret Service has not confirmed that walkout, the timing, or a “do not admit” designation. What it has said, in a short statement, is that they are not law-enforcement personnel.

That line is doing more work than it looks. The people now sitting at home are the ones who talk about protection failures, not the agents who run the details. The alleged misconduct, whatever it is, still has no public description.

Who Anthony Guglielmi Is at Headquarters

Guglielmi is the chief of communications for the agency, responsible for media relations plus employee and strategic communications. He joined the Secret Service in late March 2022 after running public affairs for three large police departments.

GUGLIELMI’S PUBLIC-SAFETY POSTS

• Baltimore: He was director of public affairs for the Baltimore Police Department before moving to Chicago.
• Chicago: He was chief spokesman there from 2015 to 2020, including an Emmy-winning content team and the Jussie Smollett case.
• Fairfax County: He later led the Public Affairs Bureau for Virginia’s largest local police force.
• Secret Service: He took the federal post in March 2022 and became the agency’s public voice through Butler, later plots, and this year’s travel fights.

His own lawyer has now spoken for him, which is how his name moved from unnamed-source accounts onto the record. Gregg Bernstein, a Maryland attorney and former Baltimore City State’s Attorney, said Guglielmi is cooperating.

He is a professional of deep integrity whose decades-long public record advocating for local, state and federal agencies speaks for itself. He holds profound respect for the mission and work of the United States Secret Service and is cooperating fully with everything being asked of him.

Gregg Bernstein, attorney for Anthony Guglielmi, statement

The other two officials remain unnamed. People familiar with the inquiry put them in the same communications shop. Until the agency or those staffers speak, that is as far as the identification goes.

The Agency Recites a Zero-Fail Mission

The spokesperson’s statement ran longer than the facts it disclosed. After naming the leave, the office, and the refusal to comment, it returned to the language the Secret Service uses after every ugly week.

The U.S. Secret Service is committed to upholding the highest standards of professionalism and integrity in fulfilling our zero-fail mission of protecting the President and other high-level government officials. Our critical work demands that our workforce maintain an unwavering commitment to duty, honesty, and courage in all aspects of their jobs. We will continue to pursue the level of excellence that is worthy of the mission which has been entrusted to us by the American people.

U.S. Secret Service spokesperson, agency statement, August 25, 2026

The statement does not say whether the three are accused of a leak, a policy breach, a workplace case, or something else. It also does not say whether any protection assignment was touched. The only operational fact it offers is that they were not in law-enforcement jobs.

That silence is being filled anyway. The louder reading on the right-hand side of the internet is a leak crackdown tied to a vice-presidential travel story and to President Donald Trump’s covert exit from Turkey. The agency has not said that, and no charging document has been released.

Hilton, Turkey, and a Vance Detail Leak

The leave arrived in a year when the protective mission has been in public view for the wrong reasons. The communications shop is the office that has had to explain those days. It is also the office now sitting at home.

THE 2026 PRESSURE ON THE SERVICE

1. April 25, 2026: Cole Tomas Allen, 31, of Torrance, California, a guest at the Washington Hilton, charges toward the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner with a shotgun, a handgun, and knives. He exchanges fire with agents in the lobby. Trump is rushed off the stage unharmed. One agent is hit in a vest and survives. Allen is later charged with attempting to assassinate the president.
2. July 2026: The Secret Service confirms that an agent on Vice President JD Vance’s detail is under investigation over a suspected news leak. The inquiry followed a July report on agents’ frustration with last-minute travel by Vance and his family. That agent was placed on leave. The case was still open when the communications staff were pulled.
3. August 2026: Trump confirms he left Turkey on a different military aircraft after the Secret Service and the military wanted him off the older Air Force One because of an Iranian threat. Staff, agents, and journalists flew on the visible jet. He had been urged off the Qatari-gifted plane as well. Justice Department subpoenas to New York Times journalists over related security reporting were later withdrawn.
4. August 25, 2026: Three non-law-enforcement communications officials, including Guglielmi, go on administrative leave. Clearances and devices are pulled, according to people familiar with the inquiry. The Office of Professional Responsibility opens its review and the agency declines to name the conduct.

A separate leak hunt already existed around the Turkey flight, with FBI Director Kash Patel described as helping stand up an initial probe from inside the White House. That is a different file from the one the Secret Service has acknowledged around Vance’s detail. Neither file has been publicly tied to Guglielmi by the agency.

Treating last week’s leave as the next chapter of those leak stories is the easy narrative, and it may yet be the right one. It is not the one the Secret Service has put on paper.

Administrative Leave Is the House Procedure

Pulling people off the floor, freezing their clearances, and handing the file to the Office of Professional Responsibility is how this agency has handled ugly personnel cases for years. The 2012 Cartagena trip is the version that still sits in the inspector general’s record.

After Secret Service employees were accused of soliciting prostitutes ahead of a presidential visit to Colombia, the agency placed 11 employees on administrative leave and suspended their security clearances while the Office of Professional Responsibility’s Inspection Division ran the case. Inspectors interviewed hundreds of people, reviewed thousands of emails, and ran polygraphs. Later tallies put 13 employees in the net: three returned to duty, others resigned, retired, or lost their clearances.

That episode involved agents and Uniformed Division officers on a protective advance, not a communications shop in Washington. The procedure rhymes anyway. Leave first, clearances next, public detail later if at all.

The difference this time is the job description. Cartagena was a conduct case on a foreign advance team. Last week’s action, on the agency’s own wording, is a conduct case against people who were not in law-enforcement roles. The protection failures of 2024 and 2026 remain a separate public argument.

Curran Leads More Than 8,200 People

Sean M. Curran, the 28th director, took office on January 22, 2025. He is a 2001 Newark Field Office hire who later ran the Donald Trump protective detail and, in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July 2024, helped move Trump off the stage after the shooting. Trump then put him over the whole service.

The director’s official page says he leads more than 8,200 special agents, Uniformed Division officers, technical law-enforcement officers, and mission-support staff. The careers site splits that force into about 3,600 special agents and 1,600 officers in the Uniformed Division, plus more than 2,000 administrative, professional, and technical support staff. Communications sits in that last group, the slice the agency was careful to name.

HOW THE FORCE BREAKS DOWN

Curran is trying to make that force larger. In written testimony to a House appropriations panel on April 16, 2026, he said the service’s goal is to add nearly 2,000 law-enforcement personnel by the end of fiscal 2027, and that the president’s budget would hire 852 positions in the next budget, including 520 special agents, 256 Uniformed Division officers, 50 technical law-enforcement jobs, and 26 administrative, professional, and technical staff, backed by a $237 million increase.

Those hiring numbers are a protection story. Last week’s leave is a headquarters story. They collided in the same building because the people who explain the first story are now the subject of the second.

What the Investigation Has Not Disclosed

A week on, the Office of Professional Responsibility is still at the start of its review. No charging document has been released. No Secret Service official has tied the three communications staffers to the Vance leak file, the Turkey flight, or the Hilton breach. Bernstein has said his client is cooperating and has not described the accusation.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The action: Three non-law-enforcement Secret Service staffers were placed on administrative leave on August 25, 2026.
• The office: People familiar with the decision put all three in communications, including Guglielmi, whose lawyer has spoken for him.
• The extras: Those accounts say clearances and work devices were pulled, which matches how the service has handled internal cases before.
• The forum: The Office of Professional Responsibility has the file, and the agency says it cannot comment further.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The conduct: The Secret Service has not said what the three are accused of doing.
• The leak theory: No agency statement has called this a classified-leak case or named the FBI or CIA as partners on this file.
• The other names: The two colleagues besides Guglielmi have not been identified on the record.
• The walkout: Accounts of an escort from headquarters and a bar on re-entry have not been confirmed by the agency.

Guglielmi spent four years translating this agency to the public, including the weeks after Butler and the night at the Hilton. The service has now taken his clearance, his devices, and his ability to speak for it, and it has not said why. The inquiry will decide whether that is discipline or a holding pattern. Until then, the people who used to issue the statements are the ones the statements will not name.