Michael LaRosa, the former press secretary for First Lady Jill Biden, tried to bring a date up to his secured hotel room while accompanying her to the NATO Summit in Madrid, Spain, in June 2022.
Sources reveal that LaRosa attempted to do so twice during the trip, which was part of a pattern of behavior leading to his resignation the following month. The incident was confirmed by a Secret Service source, who expressed concern over the safety of the First Lady.
“When he left, White House officials publicly feted him for his 18 months of service in the East Wing. But privately, sources tell DailyMail.com, colleagues were anxious to see him gone with no fuss,” reports DailyMail.com. Colleagues expressed fear over LaRosa’s “chaotic behavior, outbursts, unreliability, unpredictability, and lack of judgment” in the last six months before his departure.
LaRosa denied the accusations and claimed that he had only tried to bring one person to his room, a male staffer from a foreign delegation he met at the conference. He stated that he left the White House on good terms and moved to the private sector, as revealed in his statement. However, the incident continued to haunt him, and he became a vocal critic of the Biden administration on social media and cable news.
LaRosa blamed the Biden administration’s struggling poll numbers on staff for not responding to negative media coverage and calling for a shake-up. “Changing his team now will look like he actually cares+sees the same #’s we do,” LaRosa tweeted on Nov.7. He presented himself as a former high-level staffer with in-depth knowledge of the Biden administration’s inner workings on various media platforms, including MSNBC and CNN.
The Secret Service considered the incident a serious breach of security protocol and expressed its concern over the safety of the First Lady. LaRosa’s behavior was part of a larger pattern that concerned colleagues.