White House staff were left scrambling last weekend when the building was briefly evacuated after an unknown substance was discovered.

The substance in question turned out to be cocaine, and two former Secret Service agents say its presence races serious security questions. 

"It certainly could have been something else"

One of them is Robert McDonald, who currently serves as a criminal justice professor at Connecticut's University of New Haven.

"While this was cocaine, it certainly could have been something else that either went undetected or was somehow secreted in something that wasn’t able to be visible by the officers," The Daily Wire quoted him as saying in an interview.

"This will be an opportunity for the Secret Service to continue to better its procedures and protocols, to evaluate and reevaluate what they’re doing so that something like this doesn’t happen again," McDonald continued.

He went on to stress that agents employ search techniques which are "much more complex and robust" than is found at most public events and that they are typically "very, very good" at carrying out their jobs.

Agent notes that "a family member" could have avoided being searched

"We still need to figure out how this got in there, who brought it in. Once we figure out those answers, I think that’s going to be able to show us whether the Secret Service missed something here or if it was brought in by someone who potentially didn’t go through screening," McDonald concluded.

Charles Marino also worked as a Secret Service agent before going on to become CEO of Sentinel Security, and he said that the law enforcement agency should have short list of suspects fairly soon.

"Based on where the cocaine was found, I’m pretty confident that it was not there for a long period of time, based on the security measures, the sweeps of that area. So that gives the Secret Service some type of a time frame," he said.

"The investigation is going to determine here how this entered the complex. If you have, for example, a family member or a higher-level person that does not have to undergo such screening scrutiny, then that’s going to be one aspect that needs to be looked at," Marino explained.

Suspicions fall on Hunter Biden

One Biden family member who immediately fell under suspicion in the eyes of many was President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

Nothing to see here

Just a video of Hunter Biden allegedly doing a bump of cocaine at the White House in front of children

But don’t worry - the media said the bag of blow found at the WH wasn’t Hunter’s!
pic.twitter.com/Bt5hCT2ghf

— DC_Draino (@DC_Draino) July 5, 2023

The younger Biden has a long and well publicized history of drug abuse, something which was documented in videos and pictures found on his abandoned laptop.

He also managed to avoid jail time by entering into a controversial plea deal for illegally purchasing a firearm while addicted to crack.