Secret Service chief James Murray leaving to take Snapchat security job
July 7, 2022
Secret Service Director James Murray will leave the agency at the end of this month for a top job with social media giant Snapchat’s parent company, The Post has confirmed.
The Secret Service announced in a Thursday statement that Murray would retire effective July 30 after 32 years in government service, 27 of them with the agency.
“We’re thrilled to welcome Jim Murray to Snap and look forward to him joining our team on August 1st,” a Snap, Inc. spokesperson said in an email.
Murray, who was named director of the Secret Service in May 2019, will become Snap’s new chief security officer and report directly to the company’s CEO and co-founder Evan Spiegel.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden said in a statement that Murray “embodies the meaning of service over self, and protected the families of U.S. Presidents like they were part of his own.
“We are incredibly grateful for his service to our country and our family,” the Bidens added.
A New Jersey native and former Army Reserve officer, Murray joined the Secret Service in 1995 after five-year stint as an investigator with the Transportation Department. He cut his teeth as a special agent in the service’s New York Field Office investigating “cyber-enabled financial crimes,” the agency said.
In the final months of Murray’s tenure as director, the Secret Service has found itself under scrutiny due to several controversies.
In May, two workers were sent home from South Korea after drunkenly tussling with a cab driver. The duo were off-duty at the time of the fight, but had been sent to Seoul to prepare for a visit by Biden.
The service has also faced questions after it was revealed in April that taxpayers were spending more than $30,000 a month to rent an estate in Malibu for agents protecting Biden’s son Hunter. The agency had faced similar questions under former President Donald Trump, as the Secret Service provided taxpayer-funded protection at Trump-owned resorts and accompanied his children on their overseas travel.
Earlier this year, the service dubiously claimed it had “no records” of any visitors to Biden’s two Delaware homes in response to requests from The Post.
The agency has also found itself entangled in the House Select Committee hearings looking into the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot.
Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified last month that Trump made a “lunge” at his protective agent and tried to grab the steering wheel of the presidential SUV after he was told he could not accompany his supporters to the Capitol that day.
Agency officials responded by pledging to make an on-the-record response to Hutchinson’s allegations, but have yet to do so.
Sauce: https://nypost.com/2022/07/07/secret-service-chief-james-murray-leaving-to-take-snapchat-job/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_M._Murray