The Secret Service apologized to a salon owner in Massachusetts who alleged that individuals broke into her business to use the bathroom during the agency’s security work for a nearby Veep Kamala Harris fundraiser.
Berkshires businesswoman Alicia Powers says someone picked the lock and broke into her store for the bathroom — after a Secret Service officer covered a camera outside her salon with tape.
The people who proceeded to use the bathroom included a pair in emergency medical uniforms, a person in camouflage law-enforcement gear and someone in a dark suit and white shirt similar to a Secret Service officer who guarded the door, Powers said, citing footage.
A Secret Service rep was adamant that agents would not break into buildings like that — but did not deny that an officer covered her camera with tape, an act that was captured by surveillance footage, and appeared to cop some sort of mea culpa in a statement.
“The Secret Service has since communicated with the affected business owner. We hold these relationships in the highest regard and our personnel would not enter, or instruct our partners to enter, a business without the owner’s permission,” Secret Service spokesperson Melissa McKenzie said.
Powers said the head of the Secret Service’s Boston-based field office called her to apologize, according to Business Insider.
