Former Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle and other top agency leaders wanted to cover up and destroy evidence related to the cocaine discovered in the White House last summer, three sources in the Secret Service community told Real Clear Politics.
On July 2, 2023, while the Biden family was at Camp David, a Secret Service Uniformed Division officer found a bag of white powder, later identified as cocaine, inside the White House.
The investigation into the incident ignited a media firestorm but concluded without identifying a suspect 11 days after the substance was found "due to a lack of physical evidence." Now, sources report there were behind-the-scenes sentiments indicating that high-level officials did not want the investigation to continue.
When the cocaine was first discovered, Cheatle reportedly knew it would start a media frenzy since President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who has a known history of drug addiction and abuse, was at the White House the week before the cocaine was found.
Typical procedure, three sources told Real Clear Politics, when the first family’s Secret Service details find illegal substances in the White House would be to dispose of the contraband without notifying the public. A member of the agency’s Uniformed Division, not someone in Biden’s regular detail, tasked with protecting facilities for presidents and other agency protectees, discovered the substance in the White House and alerted authorities.
"A decision was made not to get rid of the evidence, and it really pissed off Cheatle," a source in the Secret Service community said in an interview.
The Secret Service sent the substance to the FBI for DNA analysis.
The FBI found some DNA material and "got a partial hit," meaning they found DNA matching a blood relative of a limited pool of people. But, under pressure from Cheatle and other agency leaders, they chose not to run additional searches for DNA matches or conduct interviews with the 500-plus people who work in the White House complex, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.
"That’s because they didn’t want to know, or even narrow down the field of who it could be," a source stated. "It could have been Hunter Biden, it could have been a staffer, it could have been someone doing a tour—we’ll never know."
During the investigation, Matt White, who supervised the vault containing the cocaine evidence, received a call from Cheatle, or someone speaking on her behalf, urging him to destroy the cocaine because Secret Service leaders wanted to close the case, according to two sources in the Secret Service community.
"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 Real Clear Politics. "It became a big to-do."
Cheatle, who resigned in disgrace due to bipartisan pressure over the July 13 assassination attempt against former president Donald Trump, became close to the Biden family while serving on then-vice president Joe Biden’s protective detail. Biden tapped Cheatle for the director job in 2022, partly because of the relationship she fostered with first lady Jill Biden during her time with the family, Real Clear Politics reported.