Secret Service director faces bipartisan Congressional calls to resign
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Members of Congress on Monday heaped scorn on U.S. Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle during more than four hours of angry questioning and louder bipartisan calls for her to step down because of security failures involving the July 13 assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump.
House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) and ranking Democrat Jamie Raskin (Md.) were among the Congress members who urged Cheatle to resign during the first congressional hearing since the attack on Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa.
“Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures,” the lawmakers wrote in a letter published after the hearing.
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“In the middle of a presidential election, the Committee and the American people demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing.”
The hearing capped a tumultuous period of just over a week during which Trump survived the first direct attack on a U.S. leader in more than 40 years, an embattled President Biden ended his quest for a second term, and Vice President Harris launched her presidential campaign with barely 100 days left before the November elections.
Both parties are facing an uncertain and tense final campaign stretch. But lawmakers said the candidates, and their supporters, deserve to feel confident in the agency charged with safeguarding the country’s democracy from political violence.
Raskin said both parties were united in their “bafflement and outrage” over the stunning failures that led to the shooting. He lamented the “extraordinary communications gap” between Cheatle and Congress during the hearing.
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Cheatle spoke calmly and remained stoic as lawmakers with the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability accused her of dodging questions, and mocked her at times.
“This is the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades,” she said in opening remarks. “I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.”
Cheatle, who was sworn in as director on Sept. 17, 2022, has said she will not resign. She is the Secret Service’s 27th director and the second woman to lead the agency.
She has spent more than 25 years in the Secret Service in various roles, including running the Atlanta office and then becoming assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, the first woman in that role. Cheatle served on Biden’s protective detail when he was vice president.
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The lawmakers questioned why Trump was allowed to take the podium about 15 minutes after officers at the fairgrounds in Butler sighted a suspicious individual, later identified as the 20-year-old gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks.
Crooks gained access to an unsecured roof less than 150 yards from the stage of Trump’s campaign rally, from which he opened fire with an AR-style rifle, injuring Trump, killing one man in the crowd and seriously wounding two others. He was killed at the scene by a Secret Service countersniper.
Under repeated questioning Monday by Rep. Jake LaTurner (R-Kan.), Cheatle confirmed that the Beaver County emergency services unit noticed Crooks on the roof and photographed him nearly 20 minutes before Trump took the stage.
Cheatle also confirmed that Crooks arrived at the rally with a range finder, a tool used to gauge outdoor distances for use in photography, surveying and shooting. But she said that a “range finder is not a prohibited item” and that carrying one did not necessarily make him a threat.
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LaTurner replied: “If that same individual with the range finder is found on a rooftop, is that still just suspicious, or is that considered threatening?”
“That could be termed still as suspicious,” she said.
Cheatle sought to make a distinction between suspicious behavior and a direct threat, saying the Secret Service would have “paused the rally had they known there was an actual threat.”
The elite agency’s failure to grasp the threat worried lawmakers in both parties, who said the agency’s 60-day internal investigation would take too long to deliver answers.
“I think you need to reflect,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), one of several Democrats calling for Cheatle to resign, told her. “You cannot go leading a Secret Service agency when there is an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Cheatle that 60 days is “not acceptable.”
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“It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States regardless of party,” Ocasio-Cortez told Cheatle. “There need to be answers.”
The internal report is in addition to the FBI’s criminal investigation and other probes of the attack.
Cheatle told the panel she does not personally review the security plans for thousands of events attended by the 36 people under the agency’s protection. Those reviews are conducted by a team of Secret Service officials, she said.
She offered some details of the ongoing investigation into the shooting, which is being led by the FBI. She told lawmakers that the FBI found explosives in Crooks’s possession and is investigating who may have shown him how to make them. She said a detonator device was found with Crooks’s body. And she reiterated that he appeared to have acted alone.
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Cheatle would not say how many agents were assigned to Trump that day but said the number was “sufficient.”
Cheatle also did not say whether the Secret Service deployed a drone to monitor the area. She said the agency provided “overwatch,” the Secret Service term for aerial surveillance, without going into detail.
Cheatle declined to answer questions about how Crooks was able to get his rifle onto the roof. She also did not say when the area would have been “swept,” or inspected, before the rally.
As the tone of the hearing grew more heated, one exasperated Republican lawmaker, Rep. Pat Fallon (Tex.), derisively told Cheatle to “go back to guarding Doritos.”
Cheatle worked as a top security official at Pepsi Co. North America, which manufactures the snack food, beginning in 2021 before she was sworn in as Secret Service director in September 2022.
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) grew impatient with Cheatle as he cited a Washington Post report that the Secret Service has repeatedly turned down the Trump campaign’s requests for additional protection at campaign events.
Cheatle said no specific requests were rejected for the Trump rally in Butler.
Some Republican members started shaking their heads and audibly saying “no” when Cheatle declined to say whether Secret Service agents were positioned on the roof used by the attacker.
Republicans said the lack of answers from Cheatle increased their concern the security flaws exposed at the Pennsylvania rally are ongoing.
Cheatle said her agency has boosted security for candidates, and she signaled that she intends to stay.
“I think I am the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time,” she said in response to questioning from Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) that cast doubt on her leadership qualifications.
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The hearing marked Cheatle’s first time testifying before Congress in nearly three decades with the agency.
During closing remarks, Raskin praised the rare bipartisan unity over the response to the shooting, but said the hearing revealed a broader congressional failure to pass gun legislation.
The night of the Trump rally, he said, there was a mass killing at a nightclub in Alabama that killed four people and injured at least 10.
“It’s true the president, the former president, the handful of people who get this Secret Service protection are the only people in America we thought were safe from an AR-15 attack,” Raskin said. “It’s clear that they’re not safe, either.”
“The whole country is living like this, in fear and in terror of assault weapon attacks in movie theaters, churches, synagogues, mosques, supermarkets, Walmarts ... any place where an audience or a public gathers,” Raskin said. “All of us are vulnerable, all of our families are endangered by this, and the rest of the world doesn’t live this way.”
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