And before you ask, no. It’s not Kamala Harris. (At least not yet.) The media was making a big deal over the past week about how the Secret Service would have to escort Donald Trump to his court appearance in Manhattan and the “unprecedented” nature of the event. But while it’s true that the Secret Service has never had to do this with any previous president, they did have to do it with a Veep. In October of 1973, agents had to escort Spiro Agnew to the federal courthouse in Baltimore, Maryland where he would plead guilty to a single count of tax evasion and resign from office as part of a plea deal that had been worked out. The agents who escorted him were ordered to remain silent about it and not even tell their superiors. Jerry Parr was one of those Secret Service agents and he later told the story many decades later. (Associated Press)

The last time Secret Service agents escorted a U.S. leader to face criminal charges, they kept their mission a secret — even from their own bosses.

It was Oct. 10, 1973, and just a few agents knew the history they would make in ensuring that Vice President Spiro Agnew appeared in a federal courtroom to enter a plea and resign from office.

“It was a big day for the country, and a sad day,” said Jerry Parr, one of those agents, in a 2010 interview. “And we didn’t tell anyone it was happening. For better and worse.”

Parr’s story is a good one and probably worth your time to read because it contains all sorts of nuggets from a turbulent era in American political history. In 1973, Agnew was in some serious hot water. He had been under investigation for corruption during his time as Maryland’s governor. He had been accepting bribes and dodging his taxes. Those practices allegedly continued after he became Nixon’s Vice President. The Department of Justice let him know that they would be pursuing charges, but they agreed to the plea deal mentioned above provided he would immediately resign from office.

Not everything Parr reveals about Agnew is negative. He reported that Agnew was a far kinder and more thoughtful person in private than his “attack dog” persona that he displayed for the media. He tells a story of how the Secret Service was hosting a company Christmas party one year and Agnew and his wife insisted on attending the party so that the agents on duty that evening wouldn’t miss it.

So what happened to Agnew in court? The political corruption charges against him were dropped, but he was fined $10,000 and sentenced to three years of probation. He was also disbarred in Maryland. And all of this took place with almost nobody knowing about it. His departure opened the door for Gerald Ford to be appointed as Veep and eventually to become the President after Nixon’s resignation.

It seems unlikely that we’ll see anything that dramatic coming from the current charges against Donald Trump. But there are plenty of differences between the two events. For one thing, nobody was going to keep Trump’s arrest secret. The media has been salivating over it since the moment it was announced. And Trump will almost certainly not go into retirement in disgrace as Agnew did. To the contrary, he’ll probably turn the charges against him into an ongoing fundraising campaign and talk about the way he’s being treated non-stop until the election.