Watchdog group blasts Secret Service for attempting to delay whistleblower case

Empower Oversight announced it has filed a response in a whistleblower retaliation case after the United States Secret Service (USSS) attempted to postpone the case until 2025. 

"The employee blew the whistle on the USSS’s lowering of standards for applicants in 2018, which the whistleblower believed could contribute to a lack of readiness at the agency," said Empower Oversight's news release about its latest actions. 

"The whistleblower, who was also a source for Congress’s 2015 report on the USSS, was unable to have his case heard by the three-person Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB or Board) for four years because of a lack of quorum at the agency," the group added.

Empower Oversight said it is representing the whistleblower, given that the MSPB revived the whistleblower’s case after "finding a lower MSPB decision had incorrectly dismissed the claims."

The whistleblower has waited four years for a hearing, the group said, but the USSS filed a motion to delay the case for four months.

The group said USSS cited "internal reviews after the attempted assassination of President Trump and the fact that some agency employees 'may be called on' to participate in congressional or other investigations of the agency" but an MSPB administrative judge denied the request. 

The group argued the agency is trying to "delay accountability."