The Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny ever since it failed to prevent an assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump last month that left one of his supporters dead.

Yet the agency faced yet more controversy this week amid allegations that it engaged in a cover up after cocaine was found in the White House.

Sources say Secret Service director wanted evidence destroyed

That claim was put forward in an article this week from Real Clear Politics contributor Susan Crabtree, who recalled how a Secret Services Uniformed Division officer found a bag of powder on July 2, 2023.

That discovery led to the White House being evacuated amid fears of a potential biological terror attack before the substance was confirmed to be cocaine.

The White House was briefly evacuated Sunday evening while Biden was at Camp David after the Secret Service discovered a suspicious powder in a common area of the West Wing.

A preliminary test showed the substance was cocaine, officials said. 😳
pic.twitter.com/a8IHzz1qxf

— No Jumper (@nojumper) July 4, 2023

However, Crabtree cited "three sources in the Secret Service community" who indicated that former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle and other senior figures sought to destroy the material before it could be tested.

They recalled how the agent who was initially assigned to investigate the matter was taken off the case for wanting to follow standard "crime-scene investigative protocol."

Partial DNA hit was not followed up on

Rather than have the Secret Service's Technical Security Division analyze the powder, someone in the Secret Service called in the District of Columbia Fire and Emergency Medical Service Department who determined that it was in fact cocaine.

Both the cocaine and the bag it was in were subsequently sent to the crime laboratory for fingerprint and DNA analysis.

Although no fingerprints were found, Crabtree's sources indicated that a special agent in the Forensics Services Division privately remarked that "a partial hit" was found when the bag was checked for DNA.

"The term 'partial hit' is vague in this context, but in forensics lingo usually means law enforcement found DNA matching a blood relative of a finite pool of people," Crabtree noted.

Secret Service source: "It could have been Hunter Biden"

Yet instead of following up with further analysis, "pressure from Cheatle and other top agency officials" led the Secret Service to drop its investigation.

"That's because they didn’t want to know, or even narrow down the field of who it could be," an unnamed source was quoted as saying.

"It could have been Hunter Biden, it could have been a staffer, it could have been someone doing a tour – we’ll never know," the source added.