It doesn’t look like it’s some nefarious plot. It’s not a Deep State move, though one could probably argue otherwise. Why is Ronald Rowe, the former acting director of the Secret Service, still on the agency’s payroll? Susan Crabtree had a lengthy piece about this odd non-departure. It turns out that he could be using sick leave, which has no payout, to stay on at the Secret Service. However, there are also regulatory protections in place for senior political appointments that are set to expire after 120 days.
Either way, it’s a painful reminder of how this agency failed miserably to protect Donald Trump at his rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, last July, where no one was fired or disciplined, leading to a circus act by the agency that, in a few weeks, made a case for its dissolution due to its incompetence. The curious case of Mr. Rowe sticking around has rubbed the uniform division and other agents the wrong way for this phantom role (via RCP):
News that Rowe has not fully retired and left the agency nearly three months after Trump elevated Sean Curran, his protective detail leader during the campaign, to the director position is fueling concerns about the new leadership’s commitment to truly cleaning house and implementing much-needed agency reforms.
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Rowe may be staying on the payroll while burning through accrued vacation days and sick leave, but it’s the title of senior adviser that is irritating agents and Uniform Division officers in the Secret Service community. Secret Service agents are questioning whether Rowe is providing advice to Curran and other agency leaders, and whether the agency has established a departure date for Rowe and when that will take place.
Rowe, 51, has 25 years and 10 months of federal service and has been eligible to retire since November, two sources tell RCP. In the Secret Service, unused annual leave has a cash value and is typically taken as a lump sum upon departure or forfeited. Unused sick leave doesn’t have any cash value, so people planning to leave usually burn it off before officially retiring, these sources say.
“There is no legitimate reason to keep him on the payroll, and every day he is kept on and allowed to telework as a ‘senior advisor,’ he is accruing more sick leave and annual leave and federal service time towards a bigger pension, which is costing the taxpayers more money,” one source complained.
[…]
In late January, when Trump elevated Sean Curran, his protective detail leader during the campaign, to the director position, Curran initiated a house-cleaning, telling 10 senior officials, including Rowe, to resign, retire, or face being reassigned, several Secret Service sources told RCP at the time.
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One viable explanation for Rowe remaining on the payroll is that he is a member of the senior executive service, a classification in the federal civil service equivalent to a general officer or flag officer in the military. When Trump moved Rowe out of the position of acting director, which was a political appointment that a president can replace, he moved back into his SES role as deputy director. Under federal law, there is a 120-day moratorium on involuntary removals of career appointees.
That 120-day rule protects Rowe and several other Secret Service leaders put in place under Cheatle’s and Rowe’s leadership, until the end of May. The same rule applies to Volpicelli, whom Rowe elevated to the acting deputy director role when he was acting director, and several other holdover assistant director and deputy assistant directors appointed during the Biden administration.
We still don’t know anything about the shooter, Thomas Matthew Crooks. The list of unanswered questions by Rowe stretches the entire length of Route 66. Kimberly Cheatle, Jill Biden’s friend and former agency head, was forced to resign after a disastrous congressional hearing regarding the Butler failures. Rowe succeeded her, but neither of them ever answered any real questions about this fiasco.
It must be nice having all these protections. You can almost get the president killed and not get fired.
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