Recap: Secret Service director faces calls to resign at hearing

The hearing has concluded.

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Criticisms over Cheatle not visiting the site of the shooting came up again when Rep. Michael Waltz (R-Fla.) admonished the Secret Service director for attending the Republican National Convention last week.

“But you weren’t originally even going to go there. Where were you originally scheduled to go, besides the RNC, a national special security event?” Waltz pressed.

Cheatle said she had always been scheduled to go to the RNC before Waltz cut her off.

“Mr. Chairman. I would like to enter into the record that the director was scheduled to go to Aspen, hobnobbing around with, I don’t know who, what liberal elites go to Aspen. That was where you were originally scheduled to go, to speak at a forum,” he said.

Cheatle calmly replied that she had indeed been scheduled to go to the RNC, but that she was to have left for 24 hours to speak at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado before returning to the convention in Milwaukee, Wisc.

— Ellen Mitchell

House Oversight Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) joined calls demanding the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle at the close of Monday’s hearing.

“I don’t want to add to the director’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but I will be joining the chairman in calling for the resignation of the director just because I think that this relationship is irretrievable at this point,” Raskin said.

“And I think that the director has lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of the country. And we need to very quickly move beyond this.”

— Rebecca Beitsch

While Cheatle testifies before the Oversight panel, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) is leading a bipartisan group of the panel’s members to tour the site of Butler, Pa. Trump rally.

Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.) posted a photo on the social media site X standing on the roof from where 20-year-old suspect Thomas Crooks fired at former President Trump.

“I’m 70 years old, if I was able to get on this roof — anybody can,” Gimenez said.

It was an apparent reference to a comment Cheatle made in an ABC News interview last week, in which she said agents were not stationed on the roof due to safety concerns about its slope.

— Emily Brooks

Cheatle revealed that the Secret Service deemed the shooter a threat only “seconds” before he opened fire on Trump.

“When did he transform from suspicion to threat? Because they’re treated very differently. People can be suspicious, but they’re not a threat until a certain point in time. So when did that happen?” asked Rep. Russell Fry (R-S.C.).

“I believe that it was seconds before the gunfire started,” Cheatle answered.

“Seconds, my gosh, we actually have a few questions that we got answered today,” Fry said.

Cheatle also said that it was approximately five minutes between when individuals relayed to the Secret Service there was “an issue being worked at the 3 o’clock of the president,” and the gunfire.

“It was not phrased as a threat, it was just that something was being worked,” she said.

— Ellen Mitchell

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) asked the House Oversight Committee staff to review if Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle had perjured herself during the hearing.

“I feel that you have perjured yourself in some instances, and so I am going to ask for a full review of the transcript by staff,” Luna said.“And if you find that to be the case, I ask that you bring perjury charges against the director,” Luna added.

Luna also floated holding Cheatle in “inherent contempt” of Congress, referencing that she forced a vote to do the same against Attorney General Merrick Garland earlier this month.

“We brought a vote on inherent contempt against Garland for essentially blocking a Congressional investigation, and I don’t think that you should be any different,” Luna said.

— Emily Brooks

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told lawmakers Monday that she apologized to former President Trump after the shooting at his campaign rally.

Cheatle answered, “yes, I did,” when asked by Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) whether she directly apologized to Trump.

“I appreciate that. You recognize that this was your failure,” Boebert responded.

— Rebecca Beitsch

Expressing frustration with Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle’s repeated lack of specifics, Rep. Lisa McClain (R-Mich.) asked her if she is suffering from a condition affecting her mental acuity.

“What are you sure of? Are you sure the color of your hair, are you sure the color of your suit?” McClain said.

“You don’t even know when you started preparing for this hearing? I mean, the biggest hearing of your life, and you have no clue, you can’t remember when you started preparing for this hearing?”

Cheatle began responding: “I assure you, the moment I received notification –”

“But you can’t remember it,” McClain said. “You got a little alzheimer’s, dementia going?”

Cheatle responded: “I have several active investigations going on and an operational agency to run.”

— Emily Brooks

Lawmakers gave audible, exasperated laughs after Cheatle said she did not have a specific timeline of how events unfolded on July 13.

“Why didn’t you bring the timeline with you today to answer our questions?” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) asked Cheatle.

“I don’t have all of the answers on the timeline based on the criminal investigations,” she replied.

Pressed further by Greene on whether she was prepared enough to answer lawmakers’ questions, and if she “had a timeline at all, from any of the day?” Cheatle answered: “I have a timeline that does not have specifics.”

The reply drew the laughs from several lawmakers on the panel, with Greene saying: “That’s shocking. That is absolutely unacceptable. That means you are a failure at your job.”

— Ellen Mitchell

Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) told Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle that she was a “DEI horror story,” taking an apparent swipe at her gender with the reference to diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

“Ms. Cheatle, you said that ‘the buck stops with me,’ and I agree. I don’t think you should resign, I think [you] should have been fired,” Burchett said at the end of his questioning.

“Ma’am, you are a DEI horror story,” Burchett said. “I’ve told my daughter multiple times … about how she’ll succeed in life. She’ll succeed in life by achieving. Ma’am, you have not achieved today. You have let the American public down.”

Cheatle has nearly 30 years of experience working for the Secret Service, including as the special agent in charge of the Atlanta field office and as the assistant director of protective operations.

Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas) jumped off Burchett’s comment with her questioning, asking: “Was the incident on July 13th due to DEI, or rather systemic failures in communication and potentially safety protocols?”

“The incident on the 13th has nothing to do with DEI,” Cheatle said. “The incident on the 13th has to do with a failure or a gap in either planning or communication.”

In wake of the shooting at the Trump rally, conservatives have highlighted a diversity goal that Cheatle outlined in a CBS interview last year: to have 30 percent female recruits to the agency by 2025.

— Emily Brooks

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told members of Congress that the agency received anywhere from two to five warnings about the shooter who would ultimately fire at former President Trump.

“I don’t have an exact number to share with you today, but for what I’ve been able to discern somewhere between two and five times there was some sort of communication about a suspicious individual to the Secret Service,” Cheatle said in response to questioning from Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.).

The warnings to the agency were pointed out by multiple lawmakers, including Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) who played a video of rallygoers calling out about shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks’s location on the roof.

For his part, Frost listed a series of warnings about the shooter or his location.

“According to reports, the shooter was photographed twice by security officers prior to the shooting. A police officer saw the shooter on the ground and reported him with a photograph as a suspicious person. Multiple local law enforcement officers identified the shooter, radioed that he was acting suspiciously near the event’s magnetometers. A local law enforcement tactical team saw the shooter on a roof and notified other security services and also photographed him. One police officer who photographed the shooter saw him scoping out the roof and carrying a range finder,” Frost said.

“Why wasn’t the event paused right then?”

— Rebecca Beitsch

Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) joined calls for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign during Monday’s House Oversight Committee hearing, becoming the third Democrat to do so.

His addition to the members of Congress calling for her resignation in light of the assassination attempt on former President Trump came after he asked whether Cheatle, after a review of the security failures is complete,  is prepared to fire any Secret Service personnel who were on the ground who made poor decisions.

Cheatle responded that she was “prepared to take the actions necessary.”

“That’s nonsense,” Moscowitz said, continuing to press on that point. “How can there be accountability if you’re not prepared to fire someone?”

“And the reason why your name is going to be the person who’s held accountable, and the reason why members of this committee are calling for resignation — and I join in that — or for the president to fire you, is because you’re saying there’s going to be accountability, but you can’t commit that people are going to get fired.”

Earlier in the hearing, Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) became the second House Democrat, and the first during the hearing, to call for Cheatle’s resignation.

Scores of Republicans, including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), have called for Cheatle’s resignation.

— Emily Brooks

Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), who owns an AR-15, said he shot it over the weekend to “recreate the events” of July 13.

“I own an AR-15 and last time I shot it, I shot it one time my whole life, was six years ago. That is until Saturday, where we recreated the events, in Savoy, Texas, we recreated what happened in Butler,” Fallow said.

“I was lying prone on a sloped roof at 130 yards at 6:30 at night. You know what the result was? Fifteen out of 16 kill shots!” he yelled. “And the one I missed would have hit the president’s ear. That’s a 94 percent success rate, and that shooter was a better shot than me.”

Fallon further admonished Cheatle for not speaking with the Secret Service members the day of, and for not visiting the rally site after the shooting.

“Nine days and you have not visited the site,” Rep. Pat Fallon said. “You should have been there that night.”

He later added: “The shooter has visited the site two more times than you have,” referring to the knowledge that Crooks had visited the site of the rally ahead of the shooting.

Fallon called for Cheatle to be “fired immediately.”

— Ellen Mitchell

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) unloaded expletives on Cheatle in Monday’s hearing.

“You’re full of shit today. You’re just being completely dishonest,” Mace told Cheatle.

Mace had just asked Cheatle if she had provided all the audio and video recordings in her possession to the House Oversight Committee as the panel had requested, and Cheatle had told Mace that she would have to get back to her on answering that questioning.

Though Mace was the most aggressive of the members with her questioning up to that point, her demeanor reflected widespread frustration among the panel’s members about lack of specific answers about the shooting.

“These are important questions that the American people want answers to, and you’re just dodging, and talking around it in generalities,” Mace said.

Earlier in her questioning, Mace asked Cheatle: “Would you like to use my five minutes to draft your resignation letter, yes or no?”

“No, thank you,” Cheatle responded.

— Emily Brooks

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) grumbled that Cheatle answered more questions during an ABC interview than she has before lawmakers Monday.

Cheatle sat for an interview with the outlet just days after the July 13 shooting.

“You’ve answered more questions with an ABC reporter than you have with members of Congress. We have a lot more questions. The American people are demanding that we get answers to those questions. And that’s what the purpose of this hearing is today,” Comer said.

— Rebecca Beitsch

Rep. Pete Sessions (R-Texas) repeatedly demanded Cheatle tell lawmakers what went wrong in the Secret Service’s security plan that allowed a gunman to climb a roof and fire several shots at Trump.

“Tell us what went wrong. . . . Tell us, and don’t try and play a shell game with us. Do you have the ability to effectively, as the director of this agency, to understand what went wrong and at least tell us, ‘I do or don’t know what I’m doing?’” Sessions said.

Cheatle, as she has at many points during the hearing, maintained that the agency must fully know the details to understand how the incident occurred, with multiple investigations ongoing.

“I am asking those same questions, sir, and I assure you, when I have a full and complete report of exactly what happened, there will be accountability, and we will make changes,” she said.

No Secret Service employee has yet been disciplined or fired for the security breach.

— Ellen Mitchell

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) told Cheatle that the projected 60-day timeline of an initial report about the security breakdowns that led to the assassination attempt against former President Trump is “not acceptable.”

Cheatle had just told Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) that an internal mission assurance investigation is targeted to be complete within 60 days.

“We are currently in the midst of … an especially concentrated presidential campaign,” Ocasio-Cortez said, referring to President Biden dropping his reelection bid and Vice President Harris launching one on Sunday. She also noted that elections across the country are happening in about 100 days.

“So the idea that a report will be finalized in 60 days, let alone prior to any actionable decisions that would be made, is simply not acceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States, regardless of party. There need to be answers.”

“This is not a moment of theater. We need to make policy decisions, and we need to make them now. We do,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “That may require legislation … that we must pass in the immediate term. And without that, we are flying blind.”

Cheatle told Ocasio-Cortez that she is not waiting on a report to take action.

— Emily Brooks

Cheatle said a Secret Service team was deployed to interview Thomas Crooks at the Trump rally once he was identified as a suspicious individual shortly before the ex-president took the stage.

“There were teams that were sent to identify and interview that individual,” Cheatle told Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.).

“They were sent to interview the individual who’s scampered up in camo on top of a roof within 130 yards of his target,” Biggs responded. “And did they? Did your team get there? When did your team get there to conduct that interview?”

Cheatle said she didn’t have additional details on the “timeline” of those efforts.

— Colin Meyn

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) became the second House Democrat, and the first during Monday’s hearing, to call for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s resignation, saying the stance is “not political.”

“I just don’t think this is partisan. If you have an assassination attempt on a president, a former president, or a candidate, you need to resign,” Khanna said during questioning of Cheatle.

“You cannot go leading a secret service agency when there is an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.”

Cheatle has rebuffed calls for her resignation.

“I am dedicated to finding the answers to what happened. And like every secret service agent, we don’t shirk from our responsibilities. I will remain on and be responsible to the agency to this committee, to the former President and to the American public,” she told Khanna.

Khanna expressed disbelief that Cheatle didn’t have more to say.

“Do you really genuinely in your heart believe that you being in this role is what’s right for America at this moment? I mean, do you think there are people who are Trump supporters who have confidence in you? …We’ve got to have agencies in this country that transcend politics, that have the confidence of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives, conservatives,” he said.

— Rebecca Beitsch

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) grew visibly frustrated after Cheatle repeatedly evaded his questions on whether the ubiquity of guns in the United States has made her job more difficult.

“I asked a simple question, which deserves a simple answer, the ubiquity of guns, dangerous weapons in America, like AR-15s, has that made your job — that is to say the mission of the Secret Service — easier or more difficult?” Connolly asked.

Cheatle replied that the threat environment for protecting individuals “is always difficult, and that’s dynamic, and it’s always evolving.”

But Connolly was unhappy with that reply, accusing Cheatle of dodging the question.

“You’re not making my job easier in terms of assessing your qualification for continuing on as director,” he said, his voice rising in exasperation. “

Please answer the question, you’re the head of the Secret Service. You’re speaking on behalf of 8,000 members who put their lives on the line. We just had a failure by your own admission. Do guns make your job easier or harder?”

But Cheatle again declined to answer directly, instead saying: “I think the job of the Secret Service is difficult every day, and we need to make sure that we are mitigating all threats.”

— Ellen Mitchell

Rep. Josh Brecheen (R-Okla.) introduced a bill in the House on Monday that would mandate “sex-neutral” assessments for Secret Service agents, as some Republicans zero in on women in the agency after an attempted assassination of former President Trump.

Brecheen’s “Secret Service Readiness Act” would change the agency’s fitness standards to be the same for all agents.

“Enough with all the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives — we need our Secret Service agents to be fully prepared and trained to do their jobs,” Brecheen said in a statement.

Conservatives quickly latched onto DEI initiatives as a contributor to the agency’s security failures, specifically the prevalence of female Secret Service agents, with some claiming that female agents are less able or that their inclusion is “woke.”

— Nick Robertson

House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said that Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle looks “incompetent” rather than “culpable” only because former President Trump survived the assassination attempt.

“Because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent. If Donald Trump had been killed, you would have looked culpable,” Turner said, reiterating his call for her resign or for President Biden to fire her if she does not.

Earlier, he tore into Cheatle over the Secret Service’s assessment of threats given reports that other intelligence agencies had warned about threats to former President Trump from Iran.

Turner asked Cheatle if the Secret Service’s own threat assessments preparations were sufficient given “the specific and generalized threat to Donald Trump’s life from Iran.”

Cheatle said she believed it was.

Turner said that FBI Director Christopher Wray told him that he was “shocked” that the threat assessment about Iran was not “baked in” to the Secret Service’s security footprint and threat assessment.

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) gave Turner a fist bump after his questioning.

— Emily Brooks

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) came in hot with his questioning of Cheatle, slamming the Secret Service director over the agency’s recent acknowledgement that it had previously denied some requests from the Trump campaign for more security.

The revelation comes after the Secret Service previously said such assertions were “absolutely false.”

“Were you guessing or lying when you said you didn’t turn down requests from President Trump’s detail?” Jordan asked Cheatle.

Cheatle replied that it was “neither,” and that for the event in Butler, “there were no requests that were denied.”

She added that “it is important to distinguish between what some people may view as a denial of an asset or a request.”

The New York Times reported Sunday that the Secret Service had denied earlier requests from the Trump campaign for additional federal resources.

— Ellen Mitchell

Republicans are getting antsy in this hearing right off the bat. Comer asked why a Secret Service agent was not stationed on the roof from which the shooter fired.

When Cheatle said that the agency is still looking into the security preparations for the rally, Republicans on the panel groaned: “No, no.”

Cheatle later addressed her previous comments from an ABC interview in which she said that Secret Service agents were not on the “sloped roof” due to safety concerns.

Cheatle said she “should have been more clear” in that interview, and that “there was a plan in place to provide overwatch,” but that the agency is still looking into how responsibilities were assigned.

— Emily Brooks

During the hearing, Republicans are displaying a poster print of the instantly iconic image of former President Trump taken moments after he was injured in a shooting at his rally.

It shows him pumping his fist with blood across his face in front of an American flag.

The poster images is set up behind House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer and House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan.

It was also displayed behind Trump as he spoke at the Republican National Convention last week.

— Emily Brooks

House Oversight Committee Chair ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) used his opening remarks to rail against gun violence, pressing Congress to pass stricter gun laws.

“Mass shootings have become so frequent that we don’t even hear about them anymore. Since the mass shooting in Butler, there have already been at least 10 additional mass shootings in America, two of which took place the same day that former President Trump was targeted,” Raskin said in his opening remarks at the panel’s examination of the attempted assassination of presidential candidate.

The gunman that shot at Trump on July 13, Thomas Matthew Crooks, used his father’s AR-15.

Raskin said Congress must “ask hard questions about whether our laws are making it too easy for potential assassins to obtain firearms, generally, the AR-15.”

— Ellen Mitchell

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told lawmakers Monday that the agency “failed” in its mission to protect the president after former President Trump was wounded earlier this month during a campaign rally.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed. As the Director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse,” Cheatle planned to say, according to prepared remarks.

“We must learn what happened and I will move heaven and earth to ensure an incident like July 13th does not happen again. Thinking about what we should have done differently is never far from my thoughts.”

Cheatle began what is sure to be a contentious hearing – one Chair James Comer (R-K..Y) noted came under subpoena and as Secret Service requested a private hearing – by saying she “may be limited” in responding to some questions, citing ongoing investigations as well as protective strategies.

Cheatle’s remarks also sought to combat accusations of political bias within the agency.

“Our mission is not political. It is literally a matter of life and death, as the tragic events on July 13th remind us. I have full confidence in the men and women of the Secret Service. They are worthy of our support in executing our protective mission,” she said.

— Rebecca Beitsch

House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) called the Secret Service the “face of incompetence” in his opening remarks at the panel’s examination of the attempted assassination of former President Trump, featuring Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle.

“The Secret Service has a zero-fail mission. But it failed on July 13th and in the days leading up to the rally,” Comer said. “The Secret Service has thousands of employees and a significant budget, but it has now become the face of incompetence.”

“Americans demand accountability, but nobody has yet been fired for this historic failure,” Comer later added.

Comer explained that he subpoenaed Cheatle to appear at the hearing after lack of communication from the Secret Service.

He noted that the Department of Homeland Security had suggested to hold the hearing later in the week, and revealed that the Secret Service had suggested that the hearing occur without media presence.

— Emily Brooks

Speaker Mike Johnson is now here in the hearing room, greeting House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.), as well as House Judiciary Committee Chair Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), and House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-Ohio), who are also present.

Johnson left the hearing room as the hearing started.

— Emily Brooks

Secret Service Director Kim Cheatle had arrived for the House Oversight Committee hearing.

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) is outside the hearing room speaking to reporters.

— Emily Brooks