Sean Curran led the president-elect’s security detail during two unsuccessful assassination attempts
Donald Trump will name Sean Curran, who currently leads his Secret Service (USSS) bodyguard detail, as the agency’s next director, as announced by the president-elect’s son. Curran was among the agents who protected Trump when a gunman attempted to assassinate him during a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Trump has faced several assassination attempts during his 2024 reelection campaign. The USSS leadership has come under scrutiny and criticism over security lapses following the attempt on Trump’s life in Butler, which culminated in the resignation of Director Kimberly Cheatle.
“President Trump will be naming Sean Curran, who heads his personal detail, to be Secret Service Director,” Donald Trump Jr. said in a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday. “Sean is a great patriot and will stop all the insanity once and for all. There’s not a better person for this position!” he added.
🚨 #BREAKING: President Trump will be naming Sean Curran, who heads his personal detail, to be Secret Service Director.
Sean is a great patriot and will stop all the insanity once and for all. There’s not a better person to be in this position! 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸 pic.twitter.com/HWdIxuidYI
In July of last year, in Butler, the gunman managed to get within 150 meters and fired several shots before being killed, grazing Trump’s ear, killing a member of the audience, and wounding two others. Another gunman was arrested in September after he set up an ambush at a golf course owned by Trump in Florida.
One of the main criticisms directed at the USSS, local police, and federal law enforcement agencies following the first assassination attempt was their ineffective communication, which allowed the gunman to breach security and get within 150 meters of Trump with a rifle. A USSS counter-sniper killed the would-be assassin, identified as Thomas Crooks, after he had already fired several shots.
“Trump wanted someone he could trust, and they clearly have developed a bond after Pennsylvania,” Bill Gage, a former USSS agent under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, told Fox News in an article published Saturday.
Despite mistakes made by the advance team, Gage noted that the agents assigned to Trump, including Curran, performed exactly as trained.
Meanwhile, CNN criticized Trump’s pick, citing anonymous sources who claimed that Curran lacks the managerial experience required to run a large and complex agency. Although he supervises around 85 people on Trump’s security detail, Curran has never managed a budget or operations on the scale of the thousands-strong US Secret Service, they said.
Curran would replace Ron Rowe, who took over after Cheatle’s resignation in July due to intense scrutiny of the agency’s lapses in the aftermath of the first assassination attempt on Trump.
