A bullet grazed Donald Trump's ear at Butler, Pennsylvania.
Now one of his new agents just got arrested at the nation's top federal law enforcement academy.
What this trainee was doing to his own roommate – someone who trusted him completely – should terrify anyone who cares about who's protecting Trump.
Joel Lara Canvasser was arrested at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia – the same campus where the Secret Service trains every new special agent it puts in the field.
Canvasser wasn't a fresh-faced applicant who slipped through the cracks.
Before enrolling in special agent training, Canvasser worked as a civilian analyst in the Secret Service's Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence – the unit that monitors threats to the president.
He had a cyber background.
And he used it.
Canvasser allegedly planted a camera hidden inside a phone charger beneath his suitemate's television, pointed directly at the bed.
Then he sent a weeks-long stream of harassing text messages from various numbers – messages designed to convince his roommate that a mysterious stalker was watching his every move.
When his roommate panicked and turned to Canvasser for help, Canvasser told him he was probably the victim of malware and offered to reset his phone.
After the reset, the roommate's phone had automatically connected to Canvasser's personal WiFi network.
The messages came back a week later.
One arrived right after the roommate used the bathroom.
That's when he knew it wasn't coming through his phone.
He pulled the borrowed charger from the wall, and the light caught the lens.
Canvasser was arrested and charged with unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance.
He posted a bond of $8,458 and was released.
Secret Service Deputy Director Matthew Quinn called the charges "deeply troubling" and confirmed Canvasser's access to all Secret Service sites and systems has been revoked while his security clearance is suspended.
The Secret Service Promised Reform After Butler and Then Hired This Man
Butler wasn't a one-time mistake.
The DHS independent review after the July 2024 assassination attempt didn't just find tactical errors – it found a broken agency that had stopped doing its job.
Reviewers documented a "surprising lack of rigor," a failure to think critically, and an agency that had grown "complacent and static."
They said it bluntly: "Without reform, another Butler can and will happen again."
That report came out in October 2024.
Canvasser joined the Secret Service one month later – in the fall of 2025.
He was already inside their threat intelligence office before anyone handed him a badge and a training slot.
He had access to presidential threat assessments.
Now he's facing felony charges for spying on a fellow trainee.
The House Oversight Committee declared a decade ago that the Secret Service's failures were "not a series of isolated events, but the product of an insular culture that has historically been resistant to change."
Prostitutes in Cartagena.
Drunk agents passed out in Amsterdam hotel hallways.
Supervisors crashing government cars into White House security barriers after drinking at a party.
A gunman on a rooftop 130 meters from Donald Trump while four agents knew and said nothing.
And now a creep who spent months reading threat reports on the president, planting spy cameras to film his roommate in the bathroom.
This isn't bad luck.
This is a pipeline problem.
The Secret Service is asking Americans to trust it with Trump's life while it cannot screen out someone who passed the background check, sat inside their most sensitive offices for months, and got halfway through special agent training before his own roommate caught him.
Trump survived Butler because of luck and the angle of a rifle.
His protection detail cannot run on luck forever – and the trainee arrested is proof the agency still hasn't fixed what's broken on the inside.
Sources:
- Sasha Pezenik and Josh Margolin, "Secret Service trainee accused of spying on roommate with hidden camera," ABC News, April 10, 2026.
- "Without reform to the Secret Service another Butler can and will happen again, DHS independent review finds," ABC News, October 17, 2024.
- "US Secret Service One-Year Update Following the July 13, 2024, Attempted Assassination of President Donald Trump," United States Secret Service, July 11, 2025.
- "United States Secret Service: An Agency in Crisis," House Oversight Committee, December 2015.
- "From Salahis to Cartagena: Timeline of Secret Service Controversies," Fox News, February 2015.
