The United States Secret Service has allegedly deleted the video of Joe Biden’s dog attacking an agent to the point of drawing blood.
According to the Daily Caller, the incident in question saw the dog, a three-year-old German Shepherd named Commander, bite an agent so hard that public tours through the East Wing had to be temporarily halted due to the presence of blood on the floor. The incident report mentioned that there was video footage of the attack, but a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Secret Service by the Daily Mail was met with a response saying that the video file had been deleted.
“Due to Secret Service retention standards, the above mentioned file(s) has been destroyed,” Secret Service FOIA Officer Kevin Tyrrell said in response to the request. He went on to say that the agency follows “federal records retention schedule that defines when certain types of records can be archived, destroyed, etc.”
“Based on that response, I am assuming the record in question is no longer available because of the expiration of record retention,” Tyrrell continued.
The incident took place when an agent entered one of the White House gardens, where Commander was not on a leash.
“Video of the incident shows [the agent] enter the Kennedy Garden while Commander, who was off the leash and on the opposite side of the garden at the time, run at a high rate of speed towards [the agent and] jump towards [the agent] and take [them] to the ground,” the report details. One agent “sustained an injury to [their] left arm (‘deep bite’) that reportedly needed stitches.”
“East Wing Tours were stopped for approximately 20 minutes due to blood from the incident being on the floors in the area of the [lobby connecting the East Wing to the White House],” the report notes.
Commander was finally removed from the White House premises in October of 2023, after 11 different attacks took place at the White House and Biden’s vacation home. Since then, an additional 24 attacks have taken place as of February of 2024. At least three of the attacks were directly witnessed by Biden himself.
The consistent pattern of attacks and otherwise poor behavior by Commander has led to widespread criticisms of Biden’s ownership and failure to properly train the dog.
“I’d say [the dog] is probably lacking some direction and lacking some good leadership, but I don’t know how conducive that would be, given the environment that he’s in, for it to be successful with this individual dog,” said David Tirpak of Miracle K9 Training. “German shepherds experience stress when they are controlled by an individual who isn’t the initial person they created a bond with.”