Sean Curran,

The photograph was immediately legendary: former President Trump together with his fist within the air, blood seeping from his proper ear and an American flag flying overhead.

Sean Curran was a principally nameless U.S. Secret Service agent that July day in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet clipped Mr. Trump’s ear, coming inside inches of his cranium. Within the photograph, Curran is the agent on the appropriate, sunglassed and unsmiling, after he and his crew sprang to the previous president’s facet to guard him.

“A part of me in all probability nonetheless hasn’t processed it. I have not — from that day to now — I have not stopped,” Curran advised CBS Information in his first information interview. “I felt like I could not let him out of my sight. To not the purpose the place I would be overworked, however to a degree the place I felt like I wanted to be with him to make sure that issues have been achieved the best way I wanted them to be achieved. I did not need to go away his facet. I feel he in all probability did not need me to go away his facet, both.”

His relationship with the president was cast over seven years of close to each day contact, together with two assassination makes an attempt and court docket hearings that numbered “too many to rely.” “I imply we — it is life-changing,” Curran stated. Simply after his second inauguration, Mr. Trump named him director of the Secret Service.

Curran declined to disclose what Mr. Trump stated on the best way to and from the courthouse or throughout his arraignments — or on any event — apart from to say Trump remained calm “each single day, and that is on and off digicam.”

The Secret Service made some preliminary plans for the best way to accommodate Mr. Trump if he have been convicted in his 4 prison trials and finally sentenced to jail time. 

“We had severe conversations about it, and I at one level advised him, he and I may be — getting quite a bit nearer,” Curran stated, which drew a chuckle from a pair staffers in his workplace with him on the eighth ground of Secret Service headquarters. 

However Curran was severe. “Look, if it got here to it, I would be sitting proper subsequent to him,” he stated. “That is how a lot I look after him. That is how a lot I felt that he deserved the extent of safety that any of our protectees ought to get. There’s nothing I might haven’t achieved for him.” 

Two federal instances towards Trump have been dropped throughout the post-election transition. A conviction in New York resulted in no jail time. Choices about Mr. Trump’s safety would have been made by then-Appearing Secret Service Director Ron Rowe.

“I feel we might have handled [prison] in all probability like a website, and we might have needed to in all probability personal a sure portion of that facility,” Curran stated. “It is nonetheless a regulation, you already know, whether or not somebody is in jail or not. The regulation nonetheless dictates that we’ve got to guard them.” 

Curran, who grew up in New Jersey, joined the Secret Service in 2001. He was assigned to then-Sen. Barack Obama as a part of the Secret Service’s dignitary safety division, then to Obama’s presidential safety element. Curran was acknowledged as particular agent of the 12 months in 2007. After a stint working for the assistant director of investigations, he was promoted to run the Secret Service protection of the 2016 presidential marketing campaign, and later, the protecting intelligence squad. Throughout Mr. Trump’s first time period, Curran grew to become deputy supervisor on Trump’s element, then, in 2021, one of many youngest particular brokers ever to be named agent in cost. 

When his first time period ended, Trump was persona non grata politically, and the Secret Service senior management crew was centered on defending then-President Biden. In response to different brokers accustomed to the scenario, headquarters primarily advised Curran to construct a post-presidential protecting element on his personal. 

Because the controversial former president equipped for his third White Home marketing campaign, Curran and his deputy, Matt Piant, tried to warn headquarters that they could not deal with Mr. Trump like an everyday former president. They believed a typical protecting footprint, just like the bands of safety supplied to former presidents Obama or Clinton, would not be sufficient to accommodate Mr. Trump’s schedule as he dashed between marketing campaign rallies and court docket hearings. 

Curran would not speak concerning the failures at Butler, or what occurred within the minutes after the taking pictures. However he prompt that too many leaders have misplaced contact with officers and brokers out within the subject. 

“Good concepts, massive concepts, have been hampered by individuals with in all probability much less expertise,” Curran stated, including hat leaders in the next place do not at all times perceive the fact of groups within the subject. “I perceive what individuals on the bottom want.” 

One current change throughout the company’s ranks has been to embed a crew of six attorneys inside Secret Service subject operations — not for oversight of the officers, however for help in coping with protesters or different circumstances. 

At a time when DOGE is reducing companies it considers bloated, Curran is looking for a bigger congressional appropriation. He stated it’s unclear whether or not Elon Musk will attempt to reduce workers from the Secret Service. Thus far, there is not any indication of that. 

Curran disagrees with a purpose set by former director Kimberly Cheatle to make the Secret Service a 30% feminine workforce by 2030 – a part of a nationwide marketing campaign to diversify the ranks of regulation enforcement. “If you spotlight a selected group or individual, you aren’t going to get the perfect certified candidates,” he stated, echoing Trump’s transfer away from range, fairness and inclusion or “DEI” initiatives. “My solely purpose is to place the appropriate individuals on the sector and get the perfect certified candidates for this job, it doesn’t matter what the place is and it doesn’t matter what they appear to be.” 

Richard Giuditta, a New Jersey lawyer introduced in by Curran as a authorized adviser, stated certainly one of Curran’s first actions, inside hours of being appointed director, was to go to the uniformed division’s midnight-shift roll name on the White Home. “Quietly, by himself,” Giuditta stated. 

In a break with company precedent, Giuditta is the primary political appointee to function senior adviser to the Secret Service. 

Not everybody contained in the company is for certain Curran is the appropriate man for the job — subject brokers aren’t usually chosen to steer the Secret Service and its greater than 8,000-member workforce. 

“I feel total, individuals see who I’m,” Curran stated. “They see that I am on the market. They see that I simply had a vest on a month in the past, and I am now up right here. Should you go searching traditionally, that isn’t what you have seen up right here. I’ve taken a distinct path. Individuals know that. Individuals are in all probability petrified of that, as a result of I am the unknown.” 

Curran, who has been at Mr. Trump’s facet on the golf course, on and off planes, out and in of conferences, acknowledges that his relationship with Trump could also be fodder for critics. 

“He has at all times proven respect to not solely me, however the division that protected him,” Curran stated. “Now we have a bond, in all probability for all times.” 

Any president chafes at restrictions on their freedom of motion, though Curran declined to call any particular incidents. “If I might broadly communicate on this, he and I’ve had lots of these robust conversations,” he stated. “He was at all times very respectful of my opinion and what we wanted to do, and he by no means as soon as pushed again.” 

The second in Butler, Pennsylvania — and the pictures — made Curran a public determine in a single day. His face is now plastered on guide covers, billboards, t-shirts, tattoos.  

Curran would like to not be acknowledged. “I am a non-public man,” he stated. “This place by nature — our position is to sort of be within the shadows. We aren’t to be a part of the image. Pun supposed, I assume.” 

Final week, Curran acquired a cellphone name from a former Secret Service agent who, maybe greater than anybody, understood that undesirable highlight. Clint Hill, 93, was finest recognized for leaping onto the again of President John F. Kennedy’s limousine after the president was shot. Hill died on Friday, simply sooner or later after reaching out to Curran. 

“I assume he looks like we had a connection,” Curran stated. “So he needed to speak to me. That was that.”