Secret Service lies today about GannonGuckert White House access

The US Secret Service lied to members of Congress today in a letter responding to concerns about GannonGuckert's access to the White House.

In the letter, as reported by Raw Story, "there was no deviation from Secret Service standards and procedures" in order to give GannonGuckert access to the White House.

But this a flat out lie.

1. GannonGuckert (GG) had a "day pass" to the White House, not a "hard pass." A day pass gives you one day access, a hard pass gives you repeated, unlimited, ongoing, and regular access to the White House.

2. But using a day pass, GannonGuckert in fact received repeated, unlimited, ongoing and regular access to the White House for over a two year period, even though he never was given a hard pass. I.e., GG was given a de facto hard pass without going through the proper rigorous background check required for such a pass.

3. Why does this matter? It matters because there must be some national security reason why hard pass reporters are required to get 3-month FBI background checks. Presumably the reason is that hard pass reporters, unlike day pass reporters who only go to the White House once (or at best, once in a very blue moon), will be spending a lot of regular time in the White House, mingling with senior officials as high as the president, over an extended and ongoing period. That gives hard pass reporters the kind of access that could make them a security risk if we didn't know for a fact that they're good people. That's why hard pass reporters are required to get the 3-month FBI background check. To make sure there's nothing in their background, or present, to suggest they could be, or have been, compromised, or in any other way pose a threat.

4. But GG got the same kind of ongoing, regular and intimate access to the White House as any hard pass reporter - and thus GG posed the same potential risk to national security as any hard pass reporter - yet GG was never forced to get a hard pass, and thus never required to get the hard pass 3-month FBI background check (during which the Secret Service would have found that GG was involved in an ongoing criminal enterprise (prostitution) and that he had a $20,000 default tax judgment against him from the state of Delaware (both things that could make him a security risk)).

5. So, in conclusion, GG got hard pass access to the White House simply using a day pass.

- Either there's a legitimate security reason why hard pass access requires a 3-month background check, and if so, the White House seriously breached security by giving GG hard pass access without requiring the extensive background check.

- Or, there is no legitimate reason why hard pass reporters are required to get the 3-month background check, since GG had the same ongoing, regular and intimate access to senior members of the White House as any hard pass reporter, yet the Secret Service now says such a 3-month FBI background check was not necessary in order for GG to have the access he did.

Then what kind of White House access would GG have to have in order to make him a security risk who would need the kind of background check that hard pass journalists are required to get? If the Secret Service says no such clearance was necessary for GG, then they need to explain how GG's ongoing, regular and seemingly unfettered access to the White House and senior officials as high as the president differed from the access any hard pass journalist has, a journalist who somehow poses a risk that GG does not.

The bottom line is that GG was given a de facto hard pass to the White House, even though he only applied for a day pass. And if the Secret Service is now going to tell us that this is following procedures, then Congress and the media should demand an immediately investigation of just what those procedures really are. Because GannonGuckert was permitted to metaphorically "walk around the metal detectors" of the White House, and someone should be asking why.