Pence Secret Service Agent Arrested On Prostitution Charges

A Secret Service Agent assigned to Vice President Mike Pence, who refuses to eat dinner alone with a woman not his wife, reportedly was suspended after the agent allegedly was spotted leaving a prostitute’s room at a Maryland hotel. CNN reported the agent was arrested and charged by police after the hotel manager reported suspicious activity in one of the rooms.

The alleged incident, which is being investigated by the Office of Professional Responsibility, occurred last week when the agent was off duty. He didn’t tell arresting officers he was a Secret Service agent, police told CNN.

Read: Secret Service Requests Additional $60M Budget Raise

A spokesman for the Secret Service said the agent has been placed on administrative leave, required to surrender his weapon and other equipment. His security clearance and access to Secret Service facilities also were suspended, CNN said.

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The incident is the latest in a series of Secret Service embarrassments, the most recent of which was the theft of an agency computer, lapel pins and radio from an agent’s vehicle in New York. Politico reported the laptop contained information about the layout and evacuation routes in Trump Tower.

In March 2015, a pair of inebriated agents celebrating the retirement of the agency’s spokesman hit a White House security barrier that had been set up as part of an investigation of a suspicious package. They may even have driven over it.

Read: Secret Service Arrest Man Who Drove To Security Check Point

In September 2014, a knife-wielding Iraq War veteran leaped the White House fence and made it through an unlocked door of the executive mansion and got through most of the bottom floor before agents stopped him.

Earlier that year, three agents were sent home from a presidential trip to the Netherlands. They had been found passed out drunk in an Amsterdam hotel lobby.

The most spectacular Secret Service scandal involved a group of agents sent to Cartagena, Colombia, in advance of a trip by former President Barack Obama in April 2012. The scandal came to light when a group of prostitutes complained nine Secret Service agents refused to pay them an agreed-to $800.

One of the prostitutes, identified as Dania Suarez, told Caracol News in Cartagena when she asked for payment the morning, the agent said: “Let’s go, bitch. I’m not going to pay you,” and pushed her out of the room. Two years later, one of the agents who investigated the Cartagena shenanigans was forced to resign after he was caught up in a prostitution investigation in Florida.