After a baggie of cocaine was discovered in the White House last summer, former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other top agency officials allegedly tried to pressure the Forensics Services Division to destroy the evidence, RealClearPolitics’s Susan Crabtree reported Monday.

Three sources in the Secret Service community told Crabtree that the Secret Service Forensics Services Division, along with the Uniformed Division, ultimately rejected the push to ditch the evidence, leading to possible retaliation against one of the officers involved in that decision.

The “dime bag” of cocaine was found on July 2, 2023, while Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland for the weekend. While “former” cocaine addict Hunter Biden was not in the White House at the time of the discovery, he had recently been there.

At least one Uniformed Division officer was initially assigned to investigate the cocaine incident. But after he told his supervisors, including Cheatle and Acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe, who was deputy director at the time, that he wanted to follow a certain crime-scene investigative protocol, he was taken off the case, according to a source within the Secret Service community familiar with the circumstances of his removal.

The packaging was sent to the FBI’s crime laboratory for  “advanced fingerprint and DNA analysis” and while no fingerprints were detected, the FBI lab did find some DNA material, according to Crabtree’s Secret Service sources. The FBI reportedly ran the DNA material against national criminal databases and “got a partial hit,” meaning they found “DNA matching a blood relative of a finite pool of people,” RCP reported.

“The Congressional oversight committees need to put White under oath and confirm the ‘partial hit,’” a source told RCP. “Then the FBI needs to explain who the partial hit was against, then determine what blood family member has ties to the White House or what person matching the partial hit was present at the White House that weekend.”

Under pressure from Cheatle and other top agency officials, however, the US Secret Service (USSS) “chose not to run additional searches for DNA matches or conduct interviews with the hundreds of people who work in the White House complex.”

“That’s because they didn’t want to know, or even narrow down the field of who it could be,” a source told RCP. “It could have been Hunter Biden, it could have been a staffer, it could have been someone doing a tour – we’ll never know.”

The USSS announced on July 13, 2023 that it had concluded its investigation into the White House cocaine incident and was unable to identify a suspect.

“Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered,” the USSS said in a statement. “At this time, the Secret Service’s investigation is closed due to a lack of physical evidence.”

Normally, the discovery of cocaine or another illegal narcotic in the Biden White House complex or in and around the Bidden family and their staff would not have come to light at all, the sources told Crabtree, because the Bidens’ inner-most ring of Secret Service agents “would simply dispose of illegal drugs or other ‘contraband’ found in the White House, personal residences, or other private areas of the president, his family, and White House staff.”

But it wasn’t a member of President Biden’s regular detail who found the bag of cocaine just two days before the July 4 holiday last year. Instead, a member of the agency’s Uniformed Division, which is charged with protecting the facilities and venues for presidents and other agency protectees, discovered the substance in the White House complex while conducting routine rounds of the building.

The exact location where the officer found the bag changed several times during the first weeks of media reports on the incident. Initial reports said the cocaine was found in a reference library. Later reports indicated it was in a “work area” of the West Wing, which is attached to the mansion that houses the president and his family, the Oval Office, the cabinet room, the press briefing room, and offices for staff. CBS News, citing law enforcement sources, then reported it was found in a facility used by White House staff and guests to store phones.

The officer who first found the stash initially flagged it as a potentially hazardous substance, as a bag of white power could contain deadly anthrax or ricin. The District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department was called in, and they evacuated the White House complex while they tested the white substance on site.

At this point, it was impossible to conceal the discovery because the press was included in the evacuation, so “Secret Service leaders quickly shifted to crisis communications mode,” RCP reported.

At some point early in the investigation, according to sources, Cheatle and other top officials tried to force the Forensics Services Division to destroy the evidence. Cheatle or someone speaking on her behalf, called Matt White, the vault supervisor and “asked him to destroy the bag of cocaine because agency leaders wanted to close the case,”  according to two Secret Service sources.

“Protocol is, whether you act on the [DNA] hit or not, we still have to maintain evidence for a period of up to seven years,” a source told RCP. “It became a big to-do.”

White’s superior, Glenn Dennis, the head of the Forensics Services Division, then conferred with the Uniformed Division chief about what to do.

“A decision was made not to get rid of the evidence, and it really pissed off Cheatle,” a source in the Secret Service community told Crabtree.

Cheatle has been a close friend of the Biden family since she served on Vice President Joe Biden’s protective detail during Barack Obama’s presidency.  Biden reportedly tapped Cheatle for the director job in 2022, in part because of her close relationship to Jill Biden.

The acting chief of the Uniformed Division at the time of the cocaine discovery was Richard Macauley, a distinguished black officer who had taken the place of Alfonso Dyson Sr., a 29-year veteran of the agency, RCP reported.

Despite Cheatle’s push to hire and promote minority men and women, Macauley was passed over for the job of Uniformed Division chief in what many in the agency view as an act of retaliation for supporting those who refused to dispose of the cocaine, according to several sources in the Secret Service community.

In 2018, Macauley was named the Secret Services Uniformed Division Officer of the Year. In an interview with Federal News Network, a news talk show focused on issues of interest to federal government workers, a host lauded Macauley for receiving the award and credited him with tightening operations, increasing diversity, boosting officer training, and improving working conditions, “all while taking care of his own shift operations.” Macauley would go on to serve one year, from February 2022 to January 2023, as deputy assistant sergeant at arms at the U.S. House of Representatives.

Last summer, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi stated that the agency concluded its investigation because it had determined that interviewing hundreds of people would put a strain on resources, infringe upon civil liberties, and would likely be inconclusive without corresponding physical evidence linking a person to the drugs.

“On July 12, the Secret Service received the FBI’s laboratory results, which did not develop latent fingerprints, and insufficient DNA was present for investigative comparisons,” Guglielmi said at the time. “Therefore, the Secret Service is not able to compare evidence against the known pool of individuals.”

“There was no surveillance video footage found that provided investigative leads or any other means for investigators to identify who may have deposited the found substance in this area,” Guglielmi continued. “Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.”

The USSS has come under fire over the past month for the colossal security failures that led to the assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump that killed one supporter and critically injured two others during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

As RCP points out, Guglielmi was recently forced to issue a correction after he erroneously stated that the agency did not deny repeated requests for additional security assets from Trump’s staff in the months leading up to the assassination attempt.

Guglielmi did not immediately return RCP’s request for comment.

Cheatle resigned on July 23, 2024 amid intense bipartisan pressure and condemnation after the July 13 assassination attempt.