Erin Glynn, a reporter for The Cincinnati Enquirer, had her reporting notebook searched by Secret Service agents during a security screening ahead of an event with the vice president in Lima, Ohio, on June 24, 2025.
Glynn told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she was on assignment covering an Ohio Republican Party fundraising dinner for which Vice President JD Vance was the headline speaker.
Upon her arrival at the convention center in downtown Lima, Glynn said she met an event organizer outside who led her to the normal media security line.
“Two secret service agents searched my bag, like they did with everybody, and they confiscated some nail clippers that were too pointy to bring in, which makes sense,” she said. “Then they pulled out my reporter’s notebook, and really spent a long time on it, flipping the pages and reading it and passing it back and forth to each other.”
Glynn said that after approximately five minutes of reviewing her notebook, one of the agents asked what the notes were about. She replied that they were about stories she was working on from Hamilton County, her normal beat.
“I’m a local government reporter and I didn’t know if they were reading it to see if I had written anything about Vance, but I don’t normally cover him,” she said. “I was annoyed, because it was about stories that hadn’t come out yet and I almost wanted to say, ‘You should buy a subscription.’”
The agent then put the notebook back in her bag. Glynn told the Tracker that, while she thought the interaction was “strange,” she still went in and covered the event. When she told her editor what had happened the following day, she said he was upset by it.
“So I texted another reporter that I knew there and asked if he had experienced anything similar, and he said no,” she said.
Glynn said she had spoken with an attorney for the Enquirer, and they were still determining what, if any, next steps to pursue.
“It was a fundraising dinner so it wasn’t open to the public,” she added. “Under different circumstances I might have said something to the agent, but I was concerned they’d be like, ‘Well, you can’t go in’ and I wanted to cover it.”
Secret Service spokesperson Special Agent Matt Young told the Tracker on Aug. 4 that he was previously unaware of the incident, and he was unable to provide additional information or comment as of press time.