Secret Service leadership warn threats against the presidency are surging at an unprecedented rate.
Director Sean Curran and Deputy Director Matt Quinn sat down with Norah O’Donnell for a joint “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, offering rare public insight into the mounting dangers facing agents and those they protect. Curran, who served as the lead agent shielding Donald Trump during the first assassination attempt against him in 2024, put hard numbers to the crisis.
“It’s like we’ve never seen before,” Curran told O’Donnell. “The threats on our full-time protectees are up just over 40% than they were last year. That’s a massive increase.”
O’Donnell pressed the pair on what forces are fueling this spike. She singled out Trump himself as a possible catalyst, noting he ranks among the most polarizing political figures in American history. Curran deflected any partisan framing of the agency’s work.
“We are an apolitical organization. We’re here to protect who we’re sworn to protect,” Curran answered.
Quinn, 53, broadened the lens beyond electoral politics. He pointed to deteriorating mental health across the population as the primary driver pushing Americans toward violence against leaders they despise or idolize.
“Look, I would say there’s people on both sides of the aisle that either love or hate any president. I think the biggest factor we’re dealing with today is mental health issues for sure. And more people are being pushed over the edge in either direction,” Quinn added.
Curran echoed that the landscape has shifted dramatically from two decades past, with digital platforms fundamentally altering how individuals radicalize and express hostility.
“The world is different than what it was 20 years ago. You know, social media changes people,” Curran said.
The officials refused to categorize threats along ideological lines, explaining that the Secret Service does not “weigh” them as left-wing or right-wing in origin. They pointed to the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and the multiple assassination attempts against Trump as evidence that danger flows from across the spectrum.
The interview also touched on operational security measures that had drawn public attention. O’Donnell raised reports from August that Trump’s Air Force One flight had involved a last-minute aircraft switch, a tactic that left some agents aboard a decoy plane. Curran confirmed such maneuvers are standard practice but expressed frustration at the exposure.
“Look, that’s not the first time we’ve done that. We wish that wasn’t reported, ’cause that takes some of our tactics away from being able to do something similar again. Certainly wasn’t the first time where we did something like that,” Curran said. He stopped short of confirming whether a decoy plane had been deployed in any prior presidential travel.
Quinn defended the hierarchy of protection that leaves personnel behind when the president’s safety demands it.
“When you’re operating in any protective detail with the president of the United States, for any president, the priority is the president. Everyone else, staff, agents, media, personnel involved are not the priority, including our own personnel. As hard as that may be for some to understand, the mission is to protect the president of the United States,” Quinn said.
The leadership’s media appearance comes during a period of internal turmoil for the agency. Three Secret Service officials were placed on leave in August amid ongoing scrutiny over protective failures. That same month, the aircraft switch occurred as questions swirled about whether sufficient resources and protocols were in place to safeguard Trump.
Separately, the FBI has faced criticism for its handling of records related to the most serious security breach: the assassination attempt at Trump’s July 2024 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman opened fire, wounding the then-candidate in the ear and killing one attendee. Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, sued the Department of Justice for documents from the investigation. The organization’s president, Thomas Fitton, said that federal officials informed his group the processing timeline could stretch 12 years.
“They are telling us that, at current processing rates, the process will take 12 years. Under the FBI’s timeline, we won’t even be able to challenge what they withheld until 12 years from now. That is obviously unacceptable, and I would like to know what leadership at the FBI and DOJ think about that position,” Fitton said.
The Butler shooting marked the most significant attack on a major presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan was shot in 1981, and it triggered a cascading crisis of confidence in the Secret Service. A 20-year-old gunman managed to scale a nearby rooftop and fire multiple rounds before being killed by a counter-sniper team, exposing critical gaps in perimeter security and intelligence sharing that continue to reverberate through congressional oversight hearings and internal agency reviews.