{"id":4011,"date":"2005-04-20T10:50:45","date_gmt":"2005-04-20T14:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/4011.html"},"modified":"2005-04-20T10:50:45","modified_gmt":"2005-04-20T14:50:45","slug":"udall-demands-answers-on-denver-three-from-secret-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/udall-demands-answers-on-denver-three-from-secret-service\/","title":{"rendered":"Udall demands answers on Denver Three from Secret Service"},"content":{"rendered":"

Who evicted the Denver Three from a public presidential event last month? It wasn’t an overzealous volunteer<\/a> — GOP officials investigated and found that neither the Colorado Republican Party nor its volunteers were involved. It wasn’t a national party staffer<\/a> — the Republican National Committee has categorically denied any role whatsoever. It also wasn’t an actual Secret Service agent<\/a> — the agency looked into it and said their agents were not involved.<\/p>\n

But therein lies the twist: the Secret Service knows exactly<\/i> who was responsible for this, but so far, has not shared the person’s name. A Colorado congressman is insisting that the agency identify the thug<\/a>. Now.<\/p>\n

Colorado Congressman Mark Udall insisted Tuesday that the Secret Service tell him the name of the man who appeared to be an agent and ousted three people from a speech by President Bush in Denver.<\/p>\n

Udall had requested a report from the agency in a letter March 28, a week after the speech. He received a reply Monday, and all it said was that the man wasn’t with the Secret Service.<\/p>\n

“The American people deserve answers,” the Boulder County Democrat said in a news release, after sending a more insistent letter. “The Secret Service is in the business of protecting the president, and not in the business of protecting the Republican Party.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Better yet, Udall’s letter to the Secret Service explained that cooperation isn’t exactly voluntary<\/a>.
\n<\/p>\n

“While it is certainly helpful to know that a Secret Service agent was not engaged in evicting a law-abiding member of the public from an event that was paid for and organized with tax payer dollars, and while I am relieved to know that the Secret Service was not engaged in a partisan purpose, I am still interested in knowing the identity of the individual involved, and more importantly, what your department did, if anything, to determine whether this person unlawfully posed as a law enforcement official,” said Udall in his letter to Mr. Conrad A. Everett, Deputy Assistant Director of the Secret Service. “If you cannot identify the person involved, I would like to know what provision of law prevents you from doing so.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Exactly. When Congress asks the Secret Service for an answer to a question, the Secret Service can either answer it or point to some legal protection (executive privilege?) that allows them to disregard the question. Udall wants one or the other.<\/p>\n

Now it’s possible, I suppose, that the Secret Service is itself investigating this matter as a possible crime. If a member of the White House advance team was pretending to be a Secret Service agent, the agency may want to pursue this independently. If so, great — but the agency should let Udall know that. Simply holding the identity of the guy, because they feel like it, won’t do.<\/p>\n

On a related note, Rep. Tom Tancredo (R) is the latest Colorado lawmaker to announce his concerns<\/a> about the scandal.<\/p>\n

“Kicking someone out for an event with the president should be decided by Secret Service on a case-by-case basis on who poses a threat,” said Carlos Espinosa, Rep. Tom Tancredo’s spokesman, speaking on behalf of the congressman. “We encourage the opposition to come to listen and be heard at Tancredo events, as long as they don’t disrupt the event.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

To date, eight of Colorado’s nine members of Congress, including three Republicans, have publicly criticized the eviction of the Denver Three.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Who evicted the Denver Three from a public presidential event last month? It wasn’t an overzealous volunteer — GOP officials investigated and found that neither the Colorado Republican Party nor its volunteers were involved. It wasn’t a national party staffer — the Republican National Committee has categorically denied any role whatsoever. It also wasn’t an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4011"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4011\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}