Trump’s credibility shredded; Secret Service purge imperative

The Jan. 6 select committee continues to wreak havoc on former president Donald Trump’s credibility in trying to overturn the 2020 election, which he lost by more than 7 million votes to President Joe Biden. The latest salvo was delivered during the committee’s eighth hearing Thursday night. The testimony and evidence pointed to virtually all members of the White House staff opposing the rioters’ march on the Capitol, and many pleaded with Trump to call off the dogs. He wouldn’t — and Trump staffers have now come forward to testify against their former boss.  

In coming forward, they’ve demonstrated Trump’s lost credibility. They seem not to have bought into his canard that the riot was an unplanned, spontaneous response to an unfair election. Not only would Trump not put out the conflagration he’d ignited, he poured gasoline on it, according to more than one of the former White House witnesses. Trump’s tweet at 2:24 p.m. that day saying that “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage” to aid and abet Trump’s scheme to stop the certification was, for some, the final straw.

Credibility has long been the currency in Washington for determining one’s ability to govern.

What militates against credibility is political chicanery and illicit acts. Since the spring before the 2020 election, Trump had already begun a self-inflicted erosion of his credibility when he started saying if he lost the upcoming election it must be rigged. When it came time to prove the rigging in courts of law, his outside band of misfit lawyers led by Rudy Giuliani whiffed 60 times out of 61; their only victory pertained to “curing” ballots with proper identification in Pennsylvania and affected few votes in a state Biden won by 81,660 votes.

Despite batting near zero in court, Trump and his misfits continued the claims of fraud as he set in motion what the committee’s vice chair, Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), described as a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the election.

During the earlier hearings, the committee revealed evidence and testimony of six of the seven schemes. Thursday’s hearing revealed the final one — that Trump ignored multiple pleas to stop the violence.

The accumulated evidence marshaled by the committee has provided a road map for federal prosecutors, but it has also shown that the elements of credibility have been totally stripped away from Trump’s efforts. Those in his administration and his own White House who have credibility are testifying against him. Trump had already lost the confidence of his DOJ brass, the military brass, the former vice president and his staff, and his own campaign’s legal staff — but now it’s clear he’d also lost his entire White House staff, including the White House Counsel’s office.

All Trump has left on his side are a bunch of misfits and “crazies” with a demonstrated lack of credibility and a zealous willingness to join the grift.

As the committee moves forward, there is clearly a need for more hearings. One issue just begging for attention is the behavior of Secret Service agents and the agency itself.

Reports are abundant of agents being part of a pro-Trump faction, currying favor with Trump and dividing the service, causing morale problems. At least two of the pro-Trump agents, Tony Ornato and Bobby Engel, have reportedly lawyered up following the DHS inspector general’s revelation that its investigation into missing Secret Service text messages is now a criminal investigation. That should be a red flag for the committee. Lawyering up like that — when DOJ lawyers are available to defend them — could be a sign that they intend to resist providing testimony.

Ornato was loaned out from the service to the White House as deputy chief of staff for operations in the Trump White House, a political appointment. He would later return to the service as an assistant director. This is a bad conflict and a prescription for controversy, as it injected an industrial strength shot of politics into an otherwise apolitical agency. How did this unprecedented and ill-advised arrangement come about? 

James Murray, the current director of the Secret Service, reportedly was close to Ornato and reportedly was Ornato’s choice to be director when the position became vacant in 2019. At the time, Ornato was the head of Trump’s security detail. Eight months later, Ornato — who’d moved to Secret Service headquarters — became a political appointee at the White House in the eyebrow-raising move.

Other reports say former vice president Mike Pence and his staff were acutely aware that Ornato and Engel were pro-Trump. That awareness may have played a role in Pence’s deep suspicion on Jan. 6 that the service might be trying to send him on a frolic and detour, away from his constitutional duties at the Capitol.

Meanwhile, the DHS inspector general might give the committee pause for concern. The IG, Joseph Cuffari, himself a Trump appointee, has come under fire from career investigators for interfering in investigations of the Secret Service. He is also being investigated by the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency’s (CIGIE’s) Integrity Committee. With Cuffari under a cloud, the committee might want to ask CIGIE to appoint a “disinterested,” or independent IG to conduct the investigation instead.

That investigation needs to probe pro-Trump political connections within the service and root it out. And the Biden White House may want to consider replacing Murray with someone from outside the service when he retires on July 30. 

There’s still plenty of work to be done by this select committee if accountability is to be had.

Kris Kolesnik is a 34-year veteran of federal government oversight. He spent 19 years as senior counselor and director of investigations for Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa). Kolesnik then became executive director of the National Whistleblower Center. Finally, he spent 10 years working with the Department of the Interior’s Office of Inspector General as the associate inspector general for external affairs.