The Secret Service on Tuesday stood by the competence of its agents amid reports that one them had put into his government computer a thumb drive with “malicious software” that an accused Chinese spy was carrying at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago golf resort last month.
Nevertheless, the statement did not directly deny that the incident occurred.
“Assertions that U.S. Secret Service agents are incompetent to carry out forensic examinations on digital media (ie thumbdrives, laptops, cellphones, etc.) is outlandish and not rooted in fact,” a Secret Service spokesperson said in a statement Tuesday.
“Secret Service forensic examinations are conducted on standalone computers, equipped with specialized forensic software, which are not connected to Secret Service networks,” the spokesperson added.
The statement comes a day after Secret Service agent Samuel Ivanovich testified at the bond hearing of Yujing Zhang, the Chinese woman arrested at Mar-a-Lago, who is suspected of being a Chinese spy.
He alleged that another one of his colleagues inserted a thumb drive containing “malicious software” into his government computer and claimed the agent quickly attempted to stop the thumb drive’s content from taking over the computer after a bunch of “very out of the ordinary” files started to load onto his computer.
Zhang was arrested after breaching security at Mar-a-Lago in Florida last month.
Trump fired Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles on Monday.
