On Thursday last week, Secret Service agents groused among themselves as they prepared to deliver another perk to Vice President JD Vance’s family: join a military helicopter crew to fly his young son to his golf lesson.
The planned trip on Marine Two, the call-sign for the U.S. Marine Corps helicopter that carries the vice president, was canceled at the last minute due to severe thunderstorms and high winds in the Washington, D.C., area that day, according to two people with knowledge of the flight plans. Vance planned to travel with his son on the flight to Joint Base Andrews — which includes a secure, world-class golf center — according to two other administration officials with knowledge of his schedule.
But the Secret Service staff’s complaints about a planned chopper ride for an elementary school student reflects a building morale problem inside the team of agents assigned to shield Vance and his young family, according to the two people and another person familiar with the agents’ frustration.
Agents have shared concerns internally about Vance and his office pressing them for trips and assignments that some agents consider an inappropriate or even unprecedented use of government resources compared to prior vice presidents, they said.
The agents pulled in to protect Vance and his family have also become “fed up” with the last-minute travel demands that Vance and his wife, second lady Usha Vance, frequently place on the security team, according to the two people and an additional source with knowledge of their travel who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. The Vances are the first family to reside at the Naval Observatory with young children since former Vice President Al Gore and his family, more than 25 years ago.
There’s no formal Secret Service policy prohibiting the use of a government helicopter for transporting a vice president’s child to a local event, but former and current Secret Service supervisors agreed the request for a chopper for this purpose has no precedent. They told MS NOW that prior vice presidents eschewed using such expensive government perks for the convenience of their children’s schedule, and agents typically drove children locally in sports utility vehicles.
The vice president’s office provided the following statement in response to MS NOW’s questions:
“The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction,” it read. “While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day.”
The White House Military Office, which reports to the president, would have to authorize the use of the helicopter for the golf lesson. Operating the helicopter costs taxpayers between $16,000 and $24,600 per hour of use, according to 2022 Defense Department budget estimates.
“That is RIDICULOUS,” one person with knowledge of the planned golf trip said in a message. “Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that.”
The Vances recently required several last minute chopper trips to the region around Middleburg, Virginia, so they could hunt for houses to buy or rent there for their expanding family. The couple — who have three children, ages nine, six and four — announced earlier this year that the second lady was pregnant with their fourth child and is expected to deliver late this month.
Previous vice presidents and other protected administration officials traditionally warned the Secret Service of their intended travel days in advance, especially for their family, and sought to provide at least several hours’ notice of changes.
“They change everything,” one of the people said. “They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs shit-tons of taxpayer money.”
Such hastily arranged trips, known within the Secret Service as “off the record” movements, require agents to cancel their days off, drop other plans and often race to the location they are needed. It also forces agents to come up with security plans in a hurry, according to numerous current and former Secret Service personnel. The repeated pattern of off the record movements can quickly and understandably erode morale on a protection detail, current and former agents told MS NOW.
“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR,” said one person familiar with the detail’s frustration. “He [Vance] thinks he can still move around like a U.S. Senator. “
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn issued a statement in response to MS NOW’s questions, emphasizing that protecting the nation’s leaders requires constant vigilance and allows no room for compromise.
“When U.S. Secret Service Special Agents choose to join a protective detail, they understand the commitment required: long hours, frequent travel, and the need for constant flexibility,” the statement read. “Nights, weekends, and holidays are part of the job. Our agents work tirelessly to ensure protectees’ safety and security, while also preserving normalcy to the extent possible. We are committed to supporting our personnel, which requires around the clock dedication and discipline. This is a job that requires absolute dedication and discipline.”
Chronic understaffing at the Secret Service has long dogged the law enforcement agency and has often led agents to work excessive overtime to secure the administration leaders and family members they are legally required to shield. It has also forced the Secret Service to put inexperienced staff in charge of some security assignments, such as the 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where an assassin came close to killing then-candidate Donald Trump.
A second person aware of Secret Service complaints about the Vances added, “The issue is they are trying to live a normal, ‘organic’ life.”
The frustration over the last minute asks has boiled over to the point that agents have made custom coins and stickers to mock the frequency of the vice president’s and his family’s last-minute travel, using Vance’s Secret Service code name, “Bobcat”, according to images reviewed by MSNOW.
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Featuring an image of a bobcat’s head, the coins and stickers read: “Bobcat OTR Survivors Club.” The logo includes the motto, “Advance. OTR. Repeat.,” suggesting agents must repeatedly prepare for one set of planned trips, then later find all their advance preparatory work wasted as they rush to protect Vance on a new set of last-minute trips.
Obtained by MS NOW.
Obtained by MS NOW.
The Secret Service chose “Bobcat” as Vance’s code name to reflect his early roots. The bobcat is the mascot for both Ohio University, which is in the state where Vance was raised, and Breathitt County High School in Jackson, Kentucky, where Vance spent considerable time with his grandmother and which he details in his best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy.”
Within the Secret Service, the unofficial custom pins, challenge coins and stickers have become a beloved tradition to share inside jokes and blow off steam about arduous assignments and to foster camaraderie and mutual trust within these close-knit protective units of agents and officers. Agents design and sell the tokens, which mirror a long-standing custom of military and law enforcement units to trade custom patches and coins to mark their shared experiences.
Vance’s plans for foreign and domestic trips change on short notice, after the White House staff have already mobilized staffing and protection resources, one source told MS NOW.
An administration official with knowledge of Vance’s travel confirmed that there are last minute shifts in his plans, but that is simply the nature of the vice president’s job and often can’t be avoided. The person, who asked to speak anonymously about sensitive internal discussions, also said Vance’s family may present new challenges for some Secret Service agents.
“The vice president is a father who dedicates as much time as possible to his young and growing family,” the official said.
“Most past presidents and vice presidents have not had young children, and therefore the detail has not been presented with this nature of protective mandate,” they continued.
The Secret Service has a statutory duty to protect the vice president and his family at their official residence at the Naval Observatory and wherever they travel. That includes when they go on vacation or stay at a secondary residence. But the level of security and resources deployed for grown or young children of the vice president is normally far less than for the vice president himself and typically is limited to a small team of Secret Service agents to shuttle them in an SUV when they need to travel locally.
A second person said the family’s expectations that the taxpayers should pay to accommodate their children’s schedules is “way more excessive than Pence and Harris.”
“It’s all the time,” the person said, noting the “manpower drain.”
In a July interview on the Mike Rowe podcast, “The Way I Heard It,” Vance jokingly remarked about how the level of creature comforts he enjoys has risen dramatically since he became Trump’s vice president.
“I think what ‘Mamah’ would be worried about, and it’s something I’m worried about, too: My life is — dude, totally transformed. People go to the grocery store for me,” he said. “I don’t have to cook anymore because I have an army of people willing to cook my food. No more TSA lines for me.”
But he also noted in the interview that, with this job, you have to watch yourself or you could become “an entitled asshole.”
In a June interview with CBS, the second lady talked about the need to pivot family plans to attend church, sometimes to minimize the impact on those around them.
“A motorcade just shuts down streets, right? It means sometimes people can’t get into Mass when they arrive. It means that you have people trickling in after the start because they’re being put through magnetometers, and so we try, especially, we try with timing of mass and location and everything to mitigate all of these discomforts for all the other people who are just trying to live their lives.”
Carol Leonnig
Carol Leonnig is a senior investigative reporter with MS NOW.
Vaughn Hillyard
Vaughn Hillyard is a senior White House reporter for MS NOW.
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