Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle sat for a tense, heated testimony before the House Oversight Committee, where she was grilled over the agency’s failure to prevent an assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania earlier this month.
In her opening statement, Cheatle called the shooting “the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.” Cheatle also said she takes “full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.”
The shooter, identified as 20-year-old Matthew Crooks, was able to gain access to a seemingly unsecured rooftop with a direct line of sight to the stage where Trump was speaking. Armed with an AR-15-style rifle, Crooks managed to fire off multiple rounds before being killed by Secret Service snipers.
In the aftermath of the shooting — which injured Trump, killed a rally attendee, and critically injured two others — Cheatle has refused bipartisan calls for her resignation. She was confronted over the incident by both attendees and lawmakers at last week’s Republican National Convention. “This was an assassination attempt! You owe the people answers. You owe President Trump answers!” Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) shouted at Cheatle as the director walked silently through the convention.
The tone of the hearing on Monday was no less intense, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) tore into Cheatle. “Because Donald Trump is alive and thank god he is, you look incompetent. If he had been killed you would have looked culpable,” Turner said. “Not only should you resign, but if you refuse to do so President Biden needs to fire you because his life, Donald Trump’s life, and all the other people which you protect are at risk.”
“Not only should you resign, if you refuse to do so President Biden needs to fire you,” Turner added.
Cheatle didn’t answer some basic questions from the committee — including how many agents the Secret Service assigned to Trump on the day of the shooting, or whether Secret Service had agents positioned on the roof used by the shooter. She did note that the FBI told the Secret Service that Crooks used a drone to case the area ahead of the shooting.
Some Republicans on the committee seemed more related to their own grievances about President Joe Biden and their issues with diversity programs than the failures that led to the shooting. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), for instance, demanded to know if Cheatle had been in communication with First Lady Jill Biden or any member of the White House communications staff, which Cheatle denied.
The grilling came from all sides, though, especially as Cheatle declined to provide answers about what happened, noting that she won’t know until an investigation can take place.
Members of both parties called on her to resign.
“I just don’t think this is partisan,” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Minn.) said. “If you have an assassination attempt on a president, a former president, or a candidate, you need to resign.”