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Republican senators got into a heated confrontation with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle on the floor of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee on Wednesday as they demanded answers about the agency’s response to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
In a video posted to X by Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn, a posse of GOP lawmakers are seen rounding on Cheatle and pursuing her through the Fiserv Forum while voicing their outrage over the shooting.
“You put him within less than an inch of his life,” Wyoming Senator John Barrasso yelled at Cheatle, presenting her with an ultimatum: “Resignation or full explanation.”
The director declined to answer their questions and was seen trying to leave, before Barrasso, Blackburn, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota gave chase.
The lawmakers followed Cheatle along a corridor and up a flight of stairs before she managed to duck into a bathroom with her agents blocking the door.
Barrasso later explained that the senators had not been satisfied with what they had heard from Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray on a briefing call about the shooting earlier on Wednesday.
“We were trying to get to the root of what had happened, how the shooter was on the roof by himself and able to get off the shots,” he said, dismissing the briefing as a “cover-your-a** call”.
Trump miraculously escaped the attack at his campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, with only a minor injury to his ear, however rallygoer Corey Comperatore was killed shielding his family from the gunfire.
Two more attendees were also injured before the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, was shot dead by Trump’s security detail.
Since then, the Secret Service has been inundated with criticism for allowing Crooks to scale a nearby rooftop with an AR-15 rifle and open fire before he was stopped.
Cheatle gave an interview to ABC News earlier this week in which she described the episode as “unacceptable” and admitted that “the buck stops with me” but stopped short of resigning – saying the would-be assassin’s vantage point was outside of her agents’ remit and the responsibility of local law enforcement.
“It was obviously a situation that as a Secret Service agent, no one ever wants to occur in their career,” she said.
“The buck stops with me... and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
Cheatle is now expected to testify about what happened before the House Oversight Committee on July 22.
Bloody but unbowed, Trump will deliver the closing night address to the RNC on Thursday as he formally accepts the party’s presidential nomination.
The Republican has called for “unity” since surviving the shooting and claimed he has torn up the “humdinger” of a speech he planned to give in favor of a more moderate tone – in agreement with President Joe Biden’s call to “lower the temperature” of political rhetoric surrounding the election.
