Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle resigned from her post Tuesday, a day after coming under bipartisan condemnation for the security failures that lead to the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.
Cheatle announced she would step down in a letter sent to members of the Department of Homeland Security agency that she has led since 2022, multiple sources reported.
The news comes 10 days after a gunman nearly killed the former president at a campaign rally in Butler County, Pennsylvania, and one day after Cheatle was berated by Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee for a lack of transparency on what Cheatle admitted was “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service” since the assassination attempt against President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” Cheatle said at the hearing. “We must learn what happened and I will move heaven and earth to ensure an incident like July 13 does not happen again.”
Cheatle previously rebuffed calls for her resignation, saying as recently as Monday that she thought she was “the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time.”
Following Monday’s tense four-hour question-and-answer session, where lawmakers from across the political spectrum called for Cheatle’s resignation, House Oversight Committee chair Rep. James Comer, R-Ky., and ranking member Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., issued an official statement demanding Cheatle to give up her post.
Utah Reps. Blake Moore, Celeste Maloy and Burgess Owens each called on Cheatle to resign in statements given to the Deseret News.
President Joe Biden thanked Cheatle for her public service in a statement on Monday morning.
“As a leader, it takes honor, courage, and incredible integrity to take full responsibility for an organization tasked with one of the most challenging jobs in public service,” the statement read. “The independent review to get to the bottom of what happened on July 13 continues, and I look forward to assessing its conclusions. We all know what happened that day can never happen again.”
What did the Secret Service director tell Congress?
During her congressional appearance on Monday, Cheatle had little to say about what went wrong that day.
Before she took questions from committee members, Cheatle said her ability to be “transparent” may be “limited” because of the “associated risks with sharing highly sensitive protective methodologies.”
Cheatle avoided responses about why there were not Secret Service agents on the roof where the would-be assassin was lying some 600 yards from the stage where Trump was scheduled to stand.
Cheatle said there was a plan to have surveillance on the roof but did not give details as to why the warehouse was not included in the Secret Service perimeter or why agents did not respond more aggressively to reports of suspicious figures shortly before Trump took the stage.
To the best of her knowledge, Trump’s Secret Service detail likely did not know the suspicious individual, Thomas Matthew Crooks, had a weapon when they were first alerted of his activity.
“If the detail had been passed information that there was a threat, the detail would never have brought the former president out onto stage,” Cheatle said.
Cheatle told lawmakers the Secret Service was conducting an internal investigation and was fully cooperating with investigations. The agency is also being investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security and a House congressional task force.