Frustrated Secret Service agents assigned to Vice President JD Vance and his family have become “fed up” with their “inappropriate” and last-minute tax-payer-funded travel demands.
According to an explosive MS NOW report, among the demands of the vice president was a request for a U.S. Marine Corps helicopter to transport his young son to a golf lesson.
Sources told the publication the vice president is demanding “royal treatment” for himself and his family from the under-resourced agents.
Vance, 41, had planned to travel with his son on the helicopter to the world-class golf center at Joint Base Andrews, according to administration officials with knowledge of his schedule.
The extravagant trip aboard Marine Two was canceled only because of severe thunderstorms and high winds in the Washington, D.C., area last Thursday, according to two people with knowledge of the flight plans.
Three sources told the publication the aborted helicopter ride for an elementary-school student reflects a “building morale problem” inside the team assigned to Vance and his family.
Agents also shared internal concerns about the vice president’s requests for trips that some consider an “inappropriate or even unprecedented” use of government resources, compared with those of previous vice presidents.
The Vances are the first family with young children to live at the Naval Observatory since former Vice President Al Gore more than 25 years ago.
Vance’s office told MS NOW in a statement, “The Vances are grateful to the men and women of the U.S. Secret Service who serve our country with distinction.”
It continued, “While protecting a Vice President with a large policy portfolio and a young and growing family presents a unique challenge, agents of the Secret Service do so with excellence every day.”
The Daily Beast has contacted Vance’s office for comment.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn told the Daily Beast in a statement, “When U.S. Secret Service Special Agents choose to join a protective detail, they understand the commitment required: long hours, frequent travel, and the need for constant flexibility. Nights, weekends, and holidays are part of the job. Our agents work tirelessly to ensure protectees’ safety and security, while also preserving normalcy to the extent possible.“
He added, “We are committed to supporting our personnel, which requires around the clock dedication and discipline. This is a job that requires absolute dedication and discipline. There is no room for compromise. Our mission is clear, and our standards are non-negotiable. The safety and security of our protectees depend on our constant vigilance, and we accept nothing less.”
The MS NOW story also included coins and stickers that read “Bobcat OTR Survivors Club,” a reference to Vance’s Secret Service code name “Bobcat” and his frequent “off the record” trips. They also include the motto “Advance. OTR. Repeat.”
“We were steered to look at some of these images because they’re basically now making fun of the fact that they are ‘survivors’ of working for JD Vance and his family,” the reporter who broke the story, Carol Leonnig, said on Deadline: White House on MS NOW on Wednesday.
She added: “We want to put our hands together for a father who wants to spend time with his children, but the agents maybe don’t want to do it at $26,000 an hour.”
Leonnig also pointed out that in her history of covering politics, “the Secret Service doesn’t complain a lot.”
She added, “When they’re angry in this way, it’s sort of a red alarm. They’re an overworked, under-resourced agency. And now they’re being asked to go on a military helicopter flight on Marine Two with the son of the vice president, to take him to a golf lesson from D.C., across town, to Joint Base Andrews.”
She added, “Usually, that kind of travel takes place in an SUV.”
The reporter said her sources said they “are feeling really strapped” by the Vance family’s travel demands.
“Some of them use the word ‘royal treatment.’ They’re not used to providing royal treatment to the children of a vice president,” she said.
The Vances have three children, sons Ewan, 9, and Vivek, 6, and daughter Mirabel, 4, with a fourth child expected later this month.
Operating the helicopter Vance wanted to use to transport his son costs taxpayers between $16,000 and $24,600 per hour of use, according to the Associated Press, citing 2022 Defense Department budget estimates.
“That is RIDICULOUS… Pence and Harris never pulled anything like that,” one person with knowledge of the golf flight told MS NOW.
The Vances have also made last-minute requests to use helicopters while house hunting in Middleburg, Virginia, the report added.
“They change everything,” a source told MS NOW of the second family. “They don’t stick to their schedules, and that costs sh--tons of taxpayer money.”
The Secret Service internally labels the eleventh-hour requests “off the record” (OTR) movements, which often require agents to cancel their days off and formulate security plans in a rush, according to current and former personnel, who told MS NOW that the increasingly regular rushed trips “understandably erode morale on a protection detail.”
“The detail is tired of them not giving notice on things and making everything an OTR,” one person familiar with the detail’s frustration said. “He [Vance] thinks he can still move around like a U.S. Senator.”
Leonnig noted that there has been an increase in “VIP helicopter travel” from the beginning of the Trump administration, adding it was a “presumption that anybody important could basically use a helicopter as an Uber.”
She added, “In this case, the Secret Service is kind of waving the flag, like, ‘Is this where we want to go with the use of our resources, which are pretty limited?’”
The VIP travel revelations follow Vance’s discussion of the dangers of his privilege on Mike Rowe’s The Way I Heard It podcast last week.
“My life is, dude, totally transformed,” Vance said. “I don’t go to grocery store anymore, people go to the grocery store for me… I don’t have to cook anymore because I have an army of people who are willing to like cook me my food.”
He added, “My life is so weird. I fly around on a [Boeing] 757. No more TSA lines for me and the kids. But it can become the sort of thing that if you internalize it, you start to be an entitled a--hole.”
