Secret Service Employee Put on Leave Over Kirk Comments

Anthony Pough, an employee of the protective agency, had shared a clip of Kirk suggesting that Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, former Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas), and others were “affirmative action picks” because they “weren’t smart enough to get in on their own.”

Pough previously posted in February that he was “proud of the work we do” in the Secret Service.

He also repeatedly ripped into the Trump administration, at one point appearing to mock the feud between the president and former Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) boss Elon Musk.

“Remember for the last ten years. You were saying ‘I’ve never seen this country so divisive.[‘] You meant black but it sounds racist so you said woke,” he wrote in March after Trump signed an executive order cracking down on “anti-American” content at Smithsonian museums.

“Now racism is in power or your aligned agenda. It’s Anti-Woke and Anti DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion],” he added. “You teach history so it doesn’t repeat itself. You delete it so it can…”

The Secret Service has been under heavy scrutiny due to a series of security blunders. Most recently, an agent was suspended after a club member brought a Glock into Trump National Golf Club Washington DC undetected late last month.

Last year, the protective agency took heat over two high-profile assassination attempts against Trump, including the Butler, Pa. rally in which a bullet drew blood from the president’s right ear and came within a quarter inch of killing him.