Cocaine cover-up: Former Secret Service Chief under fire

In July last year, Secret Service agents found a bag of white powder in the White House. Tests confirmed that the bag contained cocaine. An investigation was launched to determine how the drugs ended up in the building. In November last year, ABC News reported that although the FBI analysed the package, they could not find its owner.

The issue of the cocaine found in the White House has resurfaced and does not reflect positively on the former head of the Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, who resigned last month. According to TMZ, Cheatle reportedly asked the Secret Service Forensic Services Division and Uniformed Division to destroy the evidence before determining who the bag of drugs belonged to. However, her request was denied.

Cheatle wanted to close the case as quickly as possible because she feared a media frenzy surrounding the discovery. One of the reasons was that Hunter Biden was at the White House just before the cocaine was found. As TMZ reminds us, Joe Biden's son struggled with cocaine addiction in the past, although he claims he has been clean for years.

Cheatle's agency, according to the report, decided not to conduct additional DNA matching and did not interview anyone who worked at the White House. Cheatle later called the forensic team and asked them to destroy the cocaine and the bag it was found in, as the Secret Service wanted to close the case. However, Cheatle was told that protocol requires evidence to be kept for seven years, so her request was denied.

On 23 July, Kimberly Cheatle resigned. This was all related to allegations made against Secret Service agents following an attempt to assassinate Donald Trump during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.

Cheatle herself admitted that what happened in Pennsylvania was "the agency's greatest operational failure" in recent decades. The Secret Service chief took full responsibility "for any security breaches by the agency."