Mark Morgan, a former acting commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection in the Trump administration, suggested Thursday the Biden administration might be blocking the Secret Service's investigation into cocaine being found at the White House.
"An investigation like this is pretty straightforward. Everybody that enters the White House is manifested," Morgan told the Daily Mail. "They know who comes in, they know when they came in, they're checked, and there are video cameras everywhere."
He said the investigation shouldn't take long if the Secret Service used all the resources at its disposal.
A Secret Service agent found the dime-size bag of cocaine at the White House on Sunday night. Initial reports said the cocaine was found in a library on the ground floor of the executive mansion, but the Secret Service said the actual location was a cubby in the West Wing used to store cellphones by staff and visitors. President Joe Biden and his family were in Camp David for the holiday weekend.
Morgan told the Daily Mail he is familiar with the cubbies. He described the storage areas as lockboxes and said one would use a key to lock their items in the cubby when entering certain areas of the White House — such as the Oval Office or Situation Room.
He insists the investigation should already be wrapped up because there is "forensic evidence, controlled access, cameras, witnesses, the manifest of who actually is coming to the White House, and who's going through those areas, and a limited timeframe."
He said in top priority investigations, such as those he conducted during his decades at the FBI, "you get people, you download the tapes, you're reviewing the tapes, you're interviewing people.
"My question is, how much of that has been done?" Morgan told the Daily Mail, suggesting the Secret Service might be prevented by the White House from conducting procedures needed to investigate a "top priority case.
"And a lot of that could be influenced by the White House," he said. "This probably would go to the Deputy Chief of Staff's purview to work with the Secret Service to coordinate. ... Is the Secret Service saying, 'Hey, we need to interview XYZ.' Are they allowed to interview those people?
"Are they able to go in and pull surveillance tapes as they need? Are they able to talk to the people that they would normally need to talk to for this investigation without any roadblocks?"
The Daily Mail reported the Secret Service said it cannot comment on an ongoing investigation. The White House has referred all questions to the Secret Service.