Lawmakers from both parties ask Secret Service chief to quit

WASHINGTON — Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle on Monday faced bipartisan calls for her resignation, after a disastrous hourslong congressional hearing in which she declined to answer basic questions about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.

Cheatle declined to say how many agents were protecting Trump when a gunman shot at him at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on July 13, or who decided to leave a nearby rooftop out of the event’s security perimeter.

Nor would she tell members of the House Oversight Committee why Secret Service agents were not aware until the last seconds that people in the crowd had seen a gunman on that roof.

At times, Cheatle seemed less informed than the lawmakers quizzing her. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., asked for a detailed timeline of events, Cheatle said she did not have one.

“I have a timeline that does not have specifics,” she said, eliciting laughter from the room.

By the hearing’s end, many of the committee’s Democrats — usually defensive of their party’s appointees — had also swung sharply against Cheatle.

Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., the committee’s top Democrat, said he “didn’t see any daylight between the members of the two parties today at the hearing, in terms of our bafflement and outrage.” Raskin joined the committee’s Republican chair, Rep. James Comer of Kentucky, in calling for her resignation. “The director has lost the confidence of Congress, at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of the country,” Raskin said.

During the hearing, 15 lawmakers — 12 Republicans and three Democrats — suggested that Cheatle should resign or be fired.

Cheatle said repeatedly that she did not intend to resign, and that she was the best person to lead the agency during a period of intense scrutiny.

“I believe that the country deserves answers,” she said. “And I am committed to finding those answers.”

The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the Secret Service, did not respond to a request for comment about the hearing.

Trump’s ear was bloodied in the assault and a rally attendee was fatally wounded. Two other attendees were injured. A Secret Service sniper shot and killed the gunman, later identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania.

Cheatle spent more than two decades at the Secret Service, left in 2019 to take a job at PepsiCo, and then returned in 2022 after President Joe Biden appointed her director of the agency.

Her task Monday: explain what she called the “single greatest operational failure” of the Secret Service in decades. It was a difficult job from the start. Cheatle sat alone at the witness table, confronting a committee that included several members who had already called for her to step down.

“I will be transparent as possible when I speak with you,” Cheatle said in her opening remarks.

But rather than quell the concerns about her ability to handle the crisis, she frustrated lawmakers from the first question by declining to give details about the Secret Service’s preparation for the Butler rally.

Comer, going first, wanted to know about the warehouse roof that the shooter used to target Trump. “Can you answer why the Secret Service didn’t place a single agent on the roof?”

She did not.

Other questioners ran through — and through and through — the biggest questions about that day.

How many agents were there to protect Trump? Who chose to keep the warehouse roof outside of the security perimeter, despite its obvious advantages for a would-be sniper? Why did the Secret Service not notice Crooks when he climbed atop that roof with a gun?

Each time, Cheatle declined to say.

She also declined to answer more minor questions. How many times did the gunman fire? How did Crooks get his rifle on the roof? Those kinds of questions, she said, should be directed to the FBI, which is handling the criminal investigation.

Cheatle even appeared unwilling to answer questions about herself, such as how long she had prepared for the hearing.

“I’m not sure of the date that I got the letter asking me to be here,” Cheatle said.

© 2024 The New York Times Company