A new report states that Secret Service members will receive taxpayer-funded, tailored suits after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem expressed dissatisfaction with the attire of a protective detail.
According to CNN, graduates from protective detail training will receive two navy blue suits with their names embroidered on the inside of the jackets, per a public contract solicitation from the Department of Homeland Security. The solicitation states that the suits must be entirely made in the U.S.
Sources told CNN that Noem was not comfortable with the suits a protective detail had bought for themselves, raising the need for the new suit solicitation.
One of the sources told the platform that the Secret Service had to find funding for the suits inside its current budget.
It remains unclear if the solicitation for suits can move forward amid a partial government shutdown that began February 14 after Democrats and the White House were unable to reach a deal on legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“This does not have to do with optics,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said to CNN about the new suits. “This is to fix the inequity that non-uniformed (officers) have to pay for their uniform,” she added, noting that while the Secret Service’s Uniformed Division (dress in protective vests and dark) doesn’t have to pay for its on-duty clothes, agents in protective details do.
Former Illinois Congressman Adam Kinzinger mocked the new move. “DHS has so much money (thank GOP) that now new secret service detail agents get two new tailored suits each!” he wrote on X.
The move has surprised some agency veterans. A former senior law enforcement official said this is the first time plainclothes Secret Service agents are being provided with suits.
“With all the resource challenges the Secret Service has, this seems like an odd expenditure,” said former agent Jon Wackrow, a CNN contributor.
New graduates from protective detail training are the only ones to be given the suits. Such agents usually make between $70,000 and $90,000 per year, including benefits, a Secret Service official told CNN.
