The director of the Secret Service took responsibility on Monday for staggering security lapses ahead of the assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald J. Trump, saying the deadly shooting was the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in four decades.
Kimberly Cheatle, facing mounting calls to resign, said the agency unequivocally failed in its duty the day a gunman shot and injured Trump as he spoke at a rally in Pennsylvania on July 13.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed,” Cheatle said, speaking in Washington, D.C., under subpoena.
“As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse.”
Cheatle was grilled by the House oversight committee on Monday with an intense line of questioning that focused on a singular theme: how an attempt on the life of a former president and current candidate happened under her watch.
Over the past several days, new information leaked by whistleblowers has revealed a number of staggering failures by law enforcement before Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, got a clear shot at Trump from a warehouse roof roughly 150 metres from the candidate’s podium in Butler, Pa.
Cheatle said the warehouse was not included in the agency’s established perimeter at the rally, though she did not answer questions as to why — specifically as to why there was no agent stationed on the same roof. When pressed about a report in the the Washington Post saying the gunman had flown a drone over the fairgrounds the day of the shooting, Cheatle said she could not say whether the Secret Service had conducted a similar flight.
Throughout her testimony, Cheatle repeatedly declined to provide specifics or answer questions outright due to the active FBI investigation into the shooting — a response met with groans, head-shaking and an interjection of “are you serious?” from committee members.
Calls for Secret Service director to resign
Republican Rep. James Comer, chair of the oversight committee, said “this tragedy was preventable” and that he firmly believed Cheatle needs to step down.
“The Secret Service has a zero-fail mission, but it failed on July 13 and in the days leading up to the rally,” he said during his opening statement on Monday. “The Secret Service has thousands of employees and a significant budget, but it has now become the face of incompetence.”
“Under Director Cheatle, we question whether anyone is safe. Not President Biden, not the First Lady, not the White House, not presidential candidates,” Comer said.
Cheatle later defended her competency.
“I think that I’m the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time,” she said.
Lawmakers have been expressing anger over how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded. Cheatle acknowledged the agency has denied some requests by Trump’s campaign for increased security at his events in the years before the assassination attempt.
Cheatle said the service did not deny such a request for the Butler rally.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has called what happened a “failure,” while several lawmakers, including Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson, have also said they believe Cheatle should resign.
Before the shooting, local law enforcement had noticed Crooks pacing around the edges of the rally, peering into the lens of a rangefinder toward the rooftops behind the stage where the president later stood, officials have told The Associated Press. An image of Crooks was circulated by officers stationed outside the security perimeter.
Witnesses later saw him climbing up the side of a squat manufacturing building that was within 135 metres from the stage. He then set up his AR-style rifle and lay on the rooftop, a detonator in his pocket to set off crude explosive devices that were stashed in his car parked nearby.
Trump injuries still unclear
The Secret Service has a history of changing its tactics after catastrophic mistakes. After then-president John F. Kennedy was fatally shot in 1963, open-top motorcades became out of the question for the nation’s leaders. After then-president Ronald Reagan was shot while walking back to his limousine in 1981, the service ended the practice of presidents simply walking down a sidewalk — everywhere they go must be cleared in advance.
The job of protecting the president was first assigned to the Secret Service in 1901, after then-president William McKinley was assassinated in Buffalo, N.Y. Before that, the agency had been an anti-money counterfeiting agency seen as incorruptible.
Authorities have been hunting for clues into what motivated Crooks, but so far they have not found any ideological bent that could help explain his actions.
Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, U.S. President Joe Biden and other senior government officials, and also found that he had looked up the dates for the Democratic National Conventional as well as Trump’s appearances. He also searched for information about major depressive order.
Briant Gant, a former member of the U.S. Secret Service, says an event like the assassination attempt on former U.S. president Donald Trump is the agency’s ‘worst nightmare.’ He says the independent review of the agency’s actions ordered by President Joe Biden should reveal the Secret Service’s original security plan for the building the gunman shot from and how he gained access to it.
Cheatle was appointed by Biden in late 2022, though the agency also faced criticism more than once during the Trump term. The Secret Service came under scrutiny after a Chinese woman was able to get through security checks at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida.
Democrats and others have raised concerns about the lack of information released publicly about the shooting. The Secret Service did not take part in media briefings in the hours after the shooting, as the FBI and local law enforcement officials did.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a neurosurgeon who appears on air for CNN, wrote on Friday that “a full public assessment of Trump’s injuries is necessary, for both the former president’s own health and the clarity it can provide for voters about the recovery of the man who could become president of the United States once again.”
“The concern is that gunshot blasts near the head can cause injuries that aren’t immediately noticeable, such as bleeding in or on the brain, damage to the inner ear or even psychological trauma,” Gupta wrote.