By Nathaniel "Beltway" Steele
According to two anonymous sources cited by NBC News, the Secret Service's chief spokesman is off the job while the agency investigates his conduct. This newspaper has not independently confirmed that account.
Anthony Guglielmi, the agency's communications director, has been placed on administrative leave, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News on Wednesday. NBC News did not state why those two sources spoke without attribution — a gap we could not close in our own reporting. The sources described the inquiry only as centering on "potential misconduct," and NBC News reported that other, unnamed officials have also been sidelined as part of the same review.
This account rests on two anonymous sources at a single outlet, NBC News, which did not state why they spoke without attribution; the Press could not independently confirm the nature of the alleged misconduct or that Guglielmi did anything wrong.
Beyond that, the public record is thin. NBC News did not specify what conduct triggered the inquiry, who is conducting it, or what, if any, discipline might follow. The Secret Service has not issued a detailed public statement describing the allegations, and there is no on-the-record confirmation that Guglielmi committed any wrongdoing.
Guglielmi has been one of the more visible faces of an agency that has spent the past two years under sustained congressional and public scrutiny, following security failures that drew bipartisan criticism on Capitol Hill. Any leadership shake-up in the communications office lands against that backdrop, whether or not this particular matter turns out to be connected to those earlier failures.
This is a developing story built on limited, anonymously sourced reporting from a single outlet. We do not know the nature of the alleged misconduct, and no one — the agency, investigators, or NBC's sources — has publicly confirmed that Guglielmi did anything wrong. Given the single-source, anonymous nature of this reporting and the unexplained need for anonymity, we are holding on treating any of it as confirmed fact. Readers should do the same until the agency, investigators, or a second outlet provide an on-the-record accounting. The American Times will follow the inquiry as more details become public.
Read the footnotes. The story's always in the footnotes.
— Compiled from reporting by NBC News.
The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."