The Secret Service Adds a New Sex Scandal to Its Growing List of Problems

The Secret Service is in hot water. Again.

Adding to a growing list of scandals that have plagued the agency in recent years, the service charged with protecting the president and his family announced that Xavier Morales, a manager in the security clearance division, told a female agent he loved her and wanted to have sex with her at a party to celebrate his promotion to the field office in Louisville. The 48-year-old agent has been suspended without his badge and gun as the service investigates.

Morales’s actions would be surprising if they weren’t another example of breaches of protocol that are now common within the Secret Service. Last month, the agency botched a bomb threat outside of the White House. That night, two agents who had been out drinking hit a barrier near the presidential residence with their car. But reports of drinking and womanizing date back to the 1990s, and the latest incidents have emboldened critics on both sides of the aisle of the House Oversight Committee, which is responsible for keeping the service in line.

In the latest instance, Morales, while attending a party in his honor at Capitol City Brewing Company in Washington on March 31, confessed his love and carnal desires — topped off with a failed kiss — to one of his subordinates. This account of the incident has been corroborated by two witnesses, according to the Washington Post, who said the encounter ended in a scuffle between Morales and his object of desire. Washington, D.C., police are also investigating the incident.

His words are likely to do nothing to stop the growing anger at recently appointed agency chief Joseph Clancy, a longtime veteran of the service who was brought in to clean house after security breaches at the White House in 2014 and prostitution scandals in 2012. Unfortunately for the onetime point man on President Barack Obama’s presidential detail, Morales was one of the people he brought in to fill a position that determines whether agents should lose their jobs for questionable conduct.

“The Secret Service is an agency that demands that our employees conduct themselves with the highest level of integrity,” Clancy said in a statement. “These allegations as reported are very disturbing. Any threats or violence that endangers our employees in the workplace is unacceptable and will not be tolerated.”

His words are likely to do little to quell anger about these scandals on Capitol Hill. A recent series of hearings ended with some on the House oversight panel openly questioning whether Clancy was up to the job. So far, Clancy’s biggest critics, including oversight chairman Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) — who, in a strange twist, may or may not be harboring a personal grudge against the service for rejecting him as an agent — have been silent. Look for that to change when the House reconvenes next week.

Photo Credit: Mandel Ngan/AFP