The Secret Service has apologized to a salon owner in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, after agents entered the business during a Kamala Harris campaign event.
Alicia Powers, owner of Four One Three Salon, told Business Insider that investigators broke into her business on July 27.
This disturbing revelation about rogue agents comes after the CIA's shameful failure two weeks ago to thwart an assassination attempt on President Donald Trump.
Intrusion
Powers explained that investigators “were also in and out of here searching for the bomb squad. I completely understand what they had to do because of the nature of the situation,” so she closed the salon that Saturday.
The salon's cameras captured the agents at the scene: At 8:10 a.m., a diversity, equity and inclusion agent retrieved a chair from the porch, set it up under the camera and stood on it, covering the lens with tape.
Later, footage from an inside camera revealed more, showing two EMS personnel, a police officer and an agent, one of whom was seen grabbing what appeared to be candy from the counter while the other was laughing.
According to the audio, the store's alarm had gone off.
“There were several people coming in and out for about an hour and a half. They were just using my bathroom, the alarm went off and they were using the counter without permission,” Powers told BI.
Then, after their two hour restroom visit, they left, left my building without locking it, and didn't even bother to remove the tape from my camera.
Powers also told the website that emergency responders told him “personnel were telling people to go inside and use the bathroom.” The lock on the door appeared to have been picked.
“Anyone who was visiting, famous or not, I would probably open the door, bring them some coffee, some doughnuts and have a great afternoon,” Powers told BI, “but they didn't even have the audacity to ask permission and just went ahead and did it.”
A former agent told the website that agents may cover cameras with tape to record Harris' actions and prevent her from revealing her location, but “we're not going to go in and confiscate them” unless there's a threat or a crime being committed.
Calling the salons “partners in the business community,” a spokesperson told BI: “Our employees do not enter premises without the owner's permission, and we do not instruct our partners to enter.”
Nevertheless, the Secret Service's top agent in its Boston field office has apologized, Powers told the website.
“He told me everything that had been done was very wrong,” Powers said. “I should not have had my camera recording without my permission, I should not have been allowed into the building without my permission.”
Powers said Secret Service agents offered to clean the salon and pay the alarm company's fees for the day, and also offered to visit and meet her for coffee to apologize in person.
Powers said he would accept it.
“I want him to see the salon, I want him to know what I'm doing for the community, I want him to know what I'm in this space for, and I want him to understand that one little wrong move could have ruined this,” she said.
Second black eye
But this intrusion is less embarrassing than the department's inexplicable failure to protect Donald Trump at a campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, two weeks ago.
The once-stellar reputation of the police department has been smashed by one revelation after another, most shockingly by then-Chief Kimberly Cheatle’s absurd explanation for the decision not to station agents or local police on the rooftop where Thomas Matthew Crooks fired shots at Trump.
“That building in particular has a sloped roof on the highest point,” Cheatle told ABC News.
So, you know, the safety factor was taken into account because you don't want people on a sloping roof, so the decision was made to protect the building from the inside.
Video footage showing Crooks running across rooftops to get into position contradicted a widely mocked explanation.
The revelation that Cheatle placed an emphasis on hiring female agents was another embarrassment. Video of the assassination attempt showed one agent unable to holster a gun; another dancing around as if he had no idea what was going on; a third fiddling with his sunglasses and adjusting his coat.
Cheatle resigned after a damning speech before the House Oversight Committee.
The Washington Post has published yet another damaging piece of reporting after repeatedly refusing requests for increased security from the Trump campaign, subjecting Trump to similarly unsafe conditions at his South Carolina rally.
Republican Senator Charles Grassley also released text messages and photos from local police, which showed officers exchanging photos of Crooks at 5:38 pm and that an officer found Crooks at a picnic table at 4:27 pm.
Missouri Republican Representative Josh Hawley revealed information from a whistleblower that most of the agents protecting Trump were not from the Secret Service, but from Homeland Security Investigations.
Secret Service agents encountered Crooks three hours before the assassination, as he entered the scene carrying a golf rangefinder, CNN reported. To make matters worse, the network reported, a counter-sniper was spotted peering at Crooks through the rangefinder. “While he was looking at them, they were looking at him,” a top law enforcement official told the network.
A bullet fired from Crooks' AR-15 grazed President Trump's ear. Crooks killed firefighter Corey Comperatore and injured firefighters David Duch and James Copenhaver. In a bizarre twist, Copenhaver recorded video of Crooks running across a rooftop too steep for investigators to pass.
