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Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle admitted Monday her agency failed to protect Donald Trump from an attempted assassination at a campaign rally, calling it the “most significant operational failure ... in decades.”
Cheatle was grilled by House members at a contentious hearing over the blunders that allowed a a 20-year-old gunman wielding his father’s AR-15 assault-style rifle to scale a roof and open fire. Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have come out demanding Cheatle step down as the agency’s leader.
The tense hearing at times veered into outright hostility, with one GOP legislator calling Cheatle “full of s***.”
In her opening statement, Cheatle, a 27-year veteran of the Secret Service, told members of the House Oversight Committee, “The assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on July 13 is the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades, and I am keeping him and his family in my thoughts.”
Cheatle told the panel that she takes “full responsibility for any security lapse,” and said she will “move heaven and earth to ensure that an incident like July 13th does not happen again.”
Former federal agents have since ripped the agency for allowing the shooting to occur.
U.S. Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, the Republican committee chair, told Cheatle that he believes she should resign over the incident, which he called “one of the darkest days in American political history.”
Others, including Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California, along with Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, the committee’s ranking member, joined Comer in his calls for Cheatle to step down.
“Squad” member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also surprised many by fiercely joining the criticism of Cheatle, saying that the proposed 60-day target for producing an investigation report was “not acceptable.”
“I think it’s very important to understand that this is not about theater, this is not about jockeying – this is about the safety of some of the most highly targeted and valued targets internationally and domestically in the United States of America,” she said.
In his own opening remarks, said he and Comer are “determined to get to the bottom of the stunning security failures.”
In response to a question from Raskin about the events leading up to the shocking assassination attempt, Cheatle said that if Trump’s security detail “had been passed information that there was a threat, the detail would never have brought the former president onto the stage.”
Congress members also grilled Cheatle about why the rally was not paused despite significant security concerns from bystanders at the event, in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Democratic Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi of Illinois displayed footage of rally attendees pointing to the shooter on the roof.
“Ma’am, that doesn’t look like suspicious behavior, that looks like threatening behavior to me," he said. "And the rally wasn’t paused at the point either, correct?"
Cheatle responded by saying that the moment that the agents surrounding the president were aware of the threat, they moved.
"Was there ever a moment when the Secret Service actually considered pausing the rally?" Krishnamoorthi asked.
"The Secret Service would have paused the rally had they known there was an actual threat," Cheatle replied.
"The answer is no," Krishnamoorthi said.
Democrats sought to tie the shooting of the former president to assault weapons.
“Does the ubiquity of guns make your job more difficult today?” Gerry Connolly, a Democrat from Virginia, asked Cheatle during the hearing.
“I think the job of the Secret Service is difficult every day, and we need to make sure that we are mitigating all threats,” she replied, leading Connolly to fire back: “That isn’t my question.”
The inquiry echoed Raskin’s opening salvo, in which he called the Trump shooting “a double failure—the failure by the Secret Service to properly protect Donald Trump and the failure of Congress to properly protect our people from criminal gun violence.”
“It is time to pass universal background checks and build on the Biden-Harris administration’s work to ensure that we permanently close the loopholes in the Brady law for gun show purchases, on-line purchases, and private sales to prevent these weapons from getting into the hands of people whom we know to be a threat to themselves or others,” Raskin said.
“But what happened in Butler, Pennsylvania, shows why even closing these loopholes will not keep assault weapons out of the hands of potential assassins and mass murderers.
“Under federal law, and in the vast majority of states, even young people who cannot legally buy a beer yet can legally purchase and own these weapons of war and even carry them in public.”
Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the number-two Democrat on the Oversight Committee, chastised Cheatle for saying that a report would be available in 60 days when an election was a little more than 100 days away.
“We have to make policy decisions and we have to make them now,” she said. “That may require legislation. That may require policy that we must pass in the immediate term, we are flying blind.”
Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina at one point savaged Cheatle over her testimony, saying, “You’re full of s*** today.”
As the hearing continued, some Republicans attempted to link the shooting to the increase of women in the Secret Service. GOP Rep. Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin asked about Cheatle’s proposed goal to hire more women. (Women presently comprise a little less than 25 percent of the agency’s ranks.)
“I am hiring the best qualified candidates that put in an application that want to work for our great organization,” Cheatle responded.
After the hearing, Comer and Raskin released a joint letter sent to Cheatle, which lambasted her for having “failed to provide answers to basic questions” about the shooting, and being unable to “reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures.”
“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 letter said. “We call on you to resign as Director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people. “
The agency has long been plagued by security scandals. In 2012, agents reportedly brought sex workers to a hotel in Colombia during former president Barack Obama’s visit. In 2014, a man jumped over a fence and made it into the White House, And in 2015, two Secret Service officials drunkenly interfered with a crime scene involving a bomb threat at the White House.
At the time, the House Oversight Committee released a report recommending more staffing. The Secret Service is roughly 8,000-strong but needs about 9,500 employees to properly carry out its mission, Cheatle said on Monday.
