Ousted Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other top officials wanted the cocaine discovered at the White House to be destroyed before further testing could take place, a new report claims.
Real Clear Politics reported Monday that multiple heated confrontations and disagreements occurred with members of the Forensics Services Division and Uniformed Division pushing back after the baggie of cocaine was found in a West Wing locker on July 2, 2023.
At least one Uniformed Division officer was taken off the case once he pressed to follow crime-scene investigation protocol, a source within the Secret Service community told RCP.
Cheatle, who resigned after the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, reportedly knew the cocaine discovery would bring a media firestorm with it due to the widely chronicled drug use of first son Hunter Biden.
Historically such a discovery wouldn’t have come to light as the inner-ring of protective agents assigned to the first family would dispose of ‘contraband,’ three sources in the Secret Service community told the news outlet.
President Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David taking in a pre-Fourth of July holiday during the time of the discovery and so it was a member of the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division who found the baggie in locker No. 50.
DailyMail.com exclusively reported on the first images of the bag of cocaine in November.
So instead of those agents finding the substance, it was discovered my a member of the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division.
The officer who found the bag flagged it as a potentially hazardous substance – like Anthrax – though in documents obtained by DailyMail.com that individual ‘was confident it was drug related.’
It’s unclear when the alleged pressure campaign to have the cocaine destroyed began.
The baggie ultimately was sent for ‘destruction’ on July 14, a day after the 11-day investigation wrapped up.
RCP reported that at some point during the investigation vault supervisor Matt White received a call from Cheatle or someone speaking on her behalf asking him to destroy the bag of cocaine because agency leaders wanted to close the case, two sources told the news outlet.
‘Protocol is, whether you act on the [DNA] hit or not, we still have to maintain evidence for a period of up to seven years,’ a source said. ‘It became a big to-do.’
Traditionally a Technical Security Division investigator would have been deployed to the scene to identify the substance, but the D.C. Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department was called instead.
The White House complex was then evacuated – something that tipped off the press.
The bag was initially sent to U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s National Biodefense Analysis and Countermeasures Center but then ended up at Quantico, at the FBI’s crime lab.
Three sources told RCP that while no fingerprints were detected, the FBI lab found some DNA material.
Sources said the agency ran the DNA material against national criminal databases and ‘got a partial hit,’ meaning that the DNA matched a blood relative of the person whose DNA was left on the bag.
‘The Congressional oversight committees need to put White under oath and confirm the “partial hit,”‘ a source told RCP. ‘Then the FBI needs to explain who the partial hit was against, then determine what blood family member has ties to the White House or what person matchin the partial hit was present at the White House that weekend.’