First photos emerge of cocaine found at the White House — but we still don’t know whom it belonged to
Photos have emerged of cocaine that was found last summer at the White House — before the Secret Service executed a quick investigation into the matter without arresting a suspect.
A small baggy containing roughly one gram of the white, powdery substance is visible in locker No. 50 near the White House’s West Executive entrance, according to photos the Daily Mail received after filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request with the protective agency.
The Secret Service concluded its probe just 11 days after the cocaine was discovered by an agent sweeping the West Wing on the night of Sunday, July 2, forcing a brief evacuation and a response by a hazmat team before the substance could be identified.
The agency said it was unable to find the culprit due to “lack of physical evidence” after FBI forensic testing failed to turn up fingerprints or sufficient DNA on the bag.
“Without physical evidence, the investigation will not be able to single out a person of interest from the hundreds of individuals who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered,” the Secret Service said in a statement.
Roughly 500 visitors were considered suspects, but Secret Service reps never disclosed whether any were interviewed. The cocaine was later destroyed.
Federal investigators told House lawmakers in a private July briefing that they could not determine who dropped the cocaine into the locker due to lack of footage at the holding area, which is located one floor beneath the Oval Office and steps away from the Situation Room.
President Biden and first lady Jill Biden had departed the White House two days before the drug’s discovery to spend a long weekend at Camp David.
The couple were accompanied by first son Hunter Biden, who has admitted to a history of crack cocaine addiction.
The Post confronted White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre about the dime-size coke bag during a July 7 briefing, requesting that she rule out the possibility of it coming from a Biden family member.
“Can you say once and for all whether or not the cocaine belonged to the Biden family?” The Post asked.
“You know, there has been some irresponsible reporting about the family,” Jean-Pierre said, while the Secret Service investigation was still ongoing. “And, uh, and so I’ve got to call that out here.”
“And I have been very clear, I was clear two days ago when talking about this over and over again as I was being asked the question, as you know, and media outlets reported this, the Biden family was not here,” she added, declining to answer the question put to her.
“They were not here. They were at Camp David. They were not here Friday, they were not here Saturday or Sunday, they were not even here Monday. They came back on Tuesday. So to ask that question is actually incredibly irresponsible, and I’ll just leave it there.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan also weighed in on the matter during the same briefing and suggested that construction workers who were working on the West Wing may have been responsible for sneaking the nose candy into one of the most secure buildings in the world.
As part of the July congressional briefing, the Secret Service also disclosed that marijuana had twice been confiscated from White House visitors trying to make it through checkpoints — but no arrests were made.
“No one was arrested in these incidents because the weight of the marijuana confiscated did not meet the legal threshold for federal charges or DC misdemeanor criminal charges as the District of Columbia had decriminalized possession,” a spokesman previously told The Post. “The marijuana was collected by officers and destroyed.”
White House staff are required to submit to drug testing, but visitors to the executive mansion are not.
