Report: Less Than 24 Hours After Nielsen Resignation, Trump Sets His Sights on Secret Service Director
President Donald Trump is continuing a shakeup in the top ranks of the Department of Homeland Security with the removal of Secret Service Director Randolph “Tex” Alles.
“United States Secret Service director Randolph ‘Tex’ Alles has done a great job at the agency over the last two years, and the President is thankful for his over 40 years of service to the country,” White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said in a statement, according to a White House media pool report.
“Mr. Alles will be leaving shortly and President Trump has selected James M. Murray, a career member of the USSS, to take over as director beginning in May,” she said.
Words that Alles was leaving came less than a day after the departure of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, who resigned Sunday. Alles reported directly to Nielsen.
Trump has said he plans to replace Nielsen with Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Kevin McAleenan.
Alles was told two weeks ago that Trump was looking to change directors, and was asked to remain in his position until someone else could be appointed, CNN reported.
An Associated Press report on Bloomberg portrayed the departure of Alles as the result of a “personality conflict within the agency,” according to an official who was not named in the report.
The source told AP that Alles’s departure was not related to that of Nielsen.
CNN, however, cast the action in a different light.
“There is a near-systematic purge happening at the nation’s second-largest national security agency,” a source identified only as “one senior administration official” said.
CNN also pictured Trump aide Stephen Miller as being the lead White House official orchestrating the changes at DHS.
In its reporting on the departure of Alles, ABC said U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Francis Cissna and Office of the General Counsel’s John Mitnick are also expected to leave soon.
AP’s report also said Cissna was likely to depart.
“By the end of the week, more than half of the department’s agency heads could be gone with the positions vacant or with acting (staff),” ABC quoted what it said was “one senior administration official.”
AP indicated that the changes within DHS began when Trump withdrew the nomination of acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Ron Vitiello to serve permanently.
Alles, who formerly served as the acting deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection, was nominated in April 2017 to lead the agency. He was the first director in a century not to come from within the Secret Service, NBC reported.
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