🚨🚨Secret Service Director Sean Curran moves quickly to fill the leadership vacuum in the No. 2 spot after Deputy Matt Quinn announced his retirement on Friday, effective Nov. 7, citing family reasons. Mark Ryan is a 25-year veteran agent who has held several leadership roles, including the deputy Special Agent in Charge of the Special Services Division. He spent six years in the Presidential Protective Division. Quinn is stepping down amid a number of drone controversies, including conflict-of-interest questions about counter-drone contracts and his former employer, Fortem Technologies, the maker of the Secret Service's Drone Hunter. Curran and Quinn played up the Drone Hunter technology by displaying its capabilities to CBS News' 60 Minutes in a segment just days before Quinn announced his plans to leave the agency. The Department of Homeland Security just inked an up to $1 BILLION deal with Fortem in late August. What role, if any, did Quinn play in securing that deal for his prior employer? Was it competitively bid? Did Quinn have stock in Fortem that benefited from the deal-- is he returning to Fortem? Are there technological problems with the Drone Hunter platform that has prevented it from being fully implemented in the Secret Service other than for training purposes? The Secret Service is not responding to a series of questions that RealClearPolitics submitted about it the day before and the morning of Quinn's announced resignation on Friday. Here's my latest story in the link below about all the recent drone controversies and questions surrounding Quinn's departure.

🚨SCOOP: Sidelined Secret Service Comms Director Anthony Guglielmi's photo, name, and title have been removed from the agency website. Guglielmi was removed from the website several weeks after he was escorted out of the building and put on administrative leave, along with two other members of the Secret Service communications department. Yet, Guglielmi's personal social media accounts still identify him as the Secret Service communications director. Both the FBI and CIA are participating in the inquiry, pointing to a probe with more weight than a routine internal personnel matter. Multiple Secret Service sources tell @RCPolitics Guglielmi is not coming back to work at the agency, although the Secret Service and FBI leaders have not disclosed the allegations against him and are keeping the matter under tight control. Several agents believe it has something to do with the press reports on the Secret Service's use of a decoy plan to ferry President Trump out of Turkey. The Secret Service has not returned @RCPolitics press inquiries since LAST DECEMBER, when we reported on an FBI raid of an agent's home as part of a sprawling IRS allegation. The apparent black-listing of a reporter from receiving answers to pressing Secret Service questions occurred even though this reporter received the 2024 DAO Award for Investigative Journalism from her peers for her Secret Service reporting in the wake of the Butler assassination attempt against President Trump. Over the last year, RCP has submitted numerous dozens of inquiries to the Secret Service press shop that went unanswered. In just the last week, the allegations involve a friendly-fire drone takedown over the Army-Navy game last year first reported without sourcing and context by @60Minutes; whether outgoing Deputy Director Matt Quinn has conflict-of-interest issues with his former employer, Fortem Technologies, and a $1 BILLION contract for drone hunters that Fortem makes; whether that contract was competitively bid and whether his announced departure has anything to do with this conflict-of-interest or other allegations of Secret Service personnel taking kickbacks on other contracts. Other @RCPolitics inquiries that went unanswered include several agents' arrests, including one for indecent exposure and masturbating in a hotel hallway, another for a DUI, another for NYE charges involving the shooting and death of a half brother; and still another for a manslaughter charge for a near-fatal fraternity incident, and just last week, an inquiry into who is in charge of communications at the Secret Service with Guglielmi sidelined and under investigation. Do you think there's a legitimate reason why @RCPolitics has been blacklisted for Secret Service responses to my inquiries while 60 Minutes and other reporters who don't regularly cover the agency get invited to the agency's Rowley Training Center to do softball interviews? I'll include my story on Guglielmi's late August departure in the link below.