Top members of a House panel investigating the Secret Service are hauling the head of the agency in for a hearing this week — and they don’t want him to show up alone.
House Oversight and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, and top Democrat Elijah Cummings of Maryland complained to Secret Service Director Joseph Clancy that they are “very disappointed” he plans to be the agency’s sole representative at Tuesday’s hearing.
In a letter sent to Clancy on Sunday, the two said they’d invited additional witnesses “to answer fundamental questions” that Clancy hasn’t been able to about a March 4 incident in which two Secret Service agents drove a government car near an active bomb investigation at the White House. The agents had also been reportedly drinking at a staff goodbye party earlier in the evening.
Chaffetz and Cummings wrote that Clancy’s failure to turn over video footage of the incident “has further limited the committee’s understanding” of what took place.
The panel had asked for four other Secret Service officials to testify on Tuesday, but said Clancy wrote back that he’d be the only one doing so — without explaining why.
“Your position is not acceptable — both because of the public interest in transparency with respect to the agency’s ability to protect the President and his family and because you have not answered our questions adequately to date,” they wrote.
The Secret Service on Sunday declined to comment on the letter.