Secret Service helter-skelter

Look out! Helter-skelter!

-Paul McCartney and the Beatles, et al

The phrase “helter-skelter” has a storied history (not that we’re burdened by the past, anymore). For centuries it meant something like “confused, disorderly and hurriedly.”

In my lifetime, it was the name of a heavy-metal song by an overrated pop group out of Liverpool with mop hair and skinny pants. A weird, murderous cult figure misinterpreted their song as a prediction of race war in America, maybe because it was on an album that came to be called the “White Album.” (Yes, “White” was capitalized, and they never did produce a “Black Album” or even a “black Album.”)

In short, the meaning of “helter-skelter” over the years has been, well, helter-skelter.

Helter-skelter perfectly describes today’s Secret Service.

Until recently, the head of the Secret Service was a close friend of “doctor” Jill named Kimberly Cheatle. She believed the mission of the Service was to be “diverse.”

Cheatle recruited people with the right sex, right skin shades, and right bedroom habits. She recruited at Gay Pride parades, boasted that she was “striving to be the gold standard of DEI,” hosted a seminar on “the respectful use of pronouns,” and dragged - er, bragged - that her efforts had resulted in “more transgender people” joining the Service.

To get women into the Service, they lowered the physical strength requirements for them. For example, a man must be able to do 11 chin-ups, while a woman need do only 4. Since the lighter women on average are "chinning up" only about 70% of the weight that men are, that means their raw chin-up strength is a small fraction of the men's. It also means that not only women, but also men pretending to be women, need meet only the much lower women’s standards.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

The Service shot itself in the foot on a routine mission to protect President Trump at a modest campaign rally in semi-rural Pennsylvania. A messed-up would-be assassin with his dad’s gun climbed onto an obvious rooftop vantage and shot the President. The bullet tore through the President’s ear, missing his cranium by a fraction of an inch.

That rooftop within easy rifle range of the podium – even for a 21-year-old kid with no training – had never been secured. Moreover, agents of the Service had seen the shooter well before he fired, and were suspicious, but failed to confront him and failed to warn the President.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

When Trump fell behind the podium with the bullet wound to his ear, about two minutes passed before the Service agents were finally able to get him to his feet and off the stage. At least one of those agents was a woman who was not tall enough to shield the President, and evidently not strong enough to help him off the stage quickly.

Fortunately, the shooter had already been neutralized, else the President would have been a sitting duck. As it was, a person right behind the President was killed and another was seriously injured.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

This all occurred after the Trump campaign had requested additional Service protection. In a decision that almost certainly was made by Cheatle (and probably endorsed by the intern du jour who is running the White House), the request was denied.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

That was also after they had denied additional protection for Robert Kennedy, Jr., who is running against the Democrats this year. (Maybe the denial was because they weren’t aware of the fate of his father and uncle. Or maybe it was because they were.)

Look out! Helter-skelter!

Cheatle in subsequent testimony to Congress equivocated, lied, and cheatled. Er, cheated. In a rare display of bipartisanship, politicians of both parties decided she was not competent to protect politicians. She was pushed out of the Service.

It’s interesting how even Democrats suddenly believe in merit over diversity when it comes to protecting their own hides.

Since then, it has come out that Cheatle had a role in another incident. Cocaine was found last year in the White House not long after a visit by Hunter Biden. DNA tests on the area produced a ‘partial hit” with DNA that the Service had on file. That suggested that the perp was not the person whose DNA they already had on file, but was a relative of that person.

This isn’t Sherlock Holmes stuff. The obvious inference is that the perp was Hunter – a known cocaine user – and the relative whose near-matching DNA was on file was that of his father, Joe.

Cheatle (a Friend-of-Jill, you’ll recall) asked that the DNA evidence be destroyed along with the contraband cocaine. You don’t want to follow-the-science if it leads to places you don’t want to go.

Her underlings refused to destroy the evidence – an act that could constitute the crime of obstruction of justice. But the Service at her direction refused to pursue any further investigation. The excuse was that it would require interviewing some 500 persons who had been to the spot in question over the preceding weeks.

But that’s not true. They had established through the DNA tests that the person was a relative of a particular person whose DNA was on file. There could not be many suspects. The only suspects would be the relatives of the person whose DNA was a near-match, who had been on-site recently.

It’s highly likely that the person whose near-matching DNA was on file was Joe, and the relative was Hunter. So only one interview was necessary – an interview of Hunter. In fact, they could dispense with even that interview by simply asking Hunter for a cheek swab to check his DNA against the DNA they’d found.

But that would incriminate the criminal. And a mere interview would incriminate him further because he would deny it, thereby committing the additional crime of lying to the investigators.

To protect Hunter, they dropped the investigation.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

A few weeks ago, there was a campaign rally for Kamala Harris. Understandably, local retail businesses were asked to close down briefly for security purposes. Less understandably, the Service broke into one of the stores, put duct tape over the business’ security cameras, and used the bathroom for their own purposes. When they left, they failed to re-lock the store, and left the cameras duct-taped.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

Just today, an agent at a Trump rally abandoned her post to breast feed her baby that she’d apparently brought along with her.

Look out! Helter-skelter!

There might almost comedy in all this. But someone is apt to get killed.