Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned from her post Tuesday, the day after she faced scorn, fury and bipartisan calls for her termination at a hearing Monday before the House Oversight Committee.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) responded to the resignation with relief. “Look, our reaction, the immediate reaction to her resignation is that it is overdue. She should have done this at least a week ago. I’m happy to see that. I’m happy to see that she has heeded the call of both Republicans and Democrats,” he said, adding that it is now important to “pick up the pieces” and “rebuild the American people’s faith and trust in the Secret Service as an agency.”
That may be a tall order.
The outrage stemmed from Cheatle’s calm responses to four hours of outraged questions over her agency’s operational failure to protect America’s 45th president, Donald Trump at a July 13 rally in Pennsylvania where he was nearly killed by a shooter on a rooftop.
Cheatle, who entered her post on September 17, 2022, said at the start of the hearing that she took “full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency,” calling it the “most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.”
But it wasn’t nearly enough.
In a bipartisan letter following the hearing, House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) urged the disgraced Secret Service director to resign.
“Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures,” the two lawmakers wrote.
Would-be Trump Assassin Eliminated; 1 Bystander Killed, 2 Wounded
The former president, who is currently running as the Republican nominee for president this November, sustained a gunshot at the top of his ear when 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire with an AR-style assault rifle from an unsecured rooftop less than 150 yards from the stage where Trump was speaking.
Cheatle failed to adequately address the issues of why the rooftop was unsecured, why security personnel had allowed him to enter the venue with a range finder and why Secret Service agents ignored the multiple audience members who saw the would-be assassin and tried to warn them, instead allowing Trump to take the stage.
One man was killed and two other audience members were seriously wounded as Crooks fired over and over, trying to kill the former president and current GOP Republican presidential candidate.
Crooks was killed with a single shot by a Secret Service sniper positioned on a separate rooftop, whose view was obscured. The government sniper could only see the would-be assassin’s gun scope and the top of his eye and forehead, because the lip of the roof blocked a clear view.
