Secret Service Director Kimberly A. Cheatle took responsibility Monday for the security failures leading to the assassination attempt that nearly killed former President Donald Trump but rejected bipartisan pressure to resign during a congressional hearing on Monday.
Two of Utah’s all-Republican congressional delegation called on Cheatle to step down in statements given to the Deseret News.
Rep. Burgess Owens, of Utah’s 4th Congressional District, said Cheatle failed “to answer basic questions about how a 20-year-old gunman was able to shoot the former president of the United States” during her tense four-hour question-and-answer session with the House Oversight Committee on Monday morning.
“Even more serious than Director Cheatle’s lack of cooperation is the extent to which the Secret Service failed in its duty to protect not only the former President but also the leading candidate in the 2024 election,” Owens said. “I join my colleagues on both sides of the aisle in calling on Director Cheatle to resign and asking for full cooperation and transparency from the Biden administration as the House begins its lawful oversight of the most significant Secret Service failure in modern American history.”
Utah 2nd District Rep. Celeste Maloy said the united criticism of Cheatle “proves we can still be bipartisan in Washington when the answer is embarrassingly clear. She needs to resign.”
“The American people deserve more transparency and accountability,” Maloy said. “I support the House’s investigation to ensure these failures never happen again and every presidential candidate has the full protection of the Secret Service.”
Utah Sen. Mike Lee, who posted live commentary of the hearing on X, said, ”The American people deserve answers for the worst Secret Service failure in decades—one that left an innocent man dead, others wounded, and almost killed President Trump.”
“Unfortunately, they aren’t receiving much information from Director Cheatle, who is dodging more questions than she is resolving,” Lee said. “In light of her colossal failure of leadership she should do the right thing and resign. If her resignation is not received, she should be fired. Congress needs to address and dissect every factor that led to this attack and their failure to protect President Trump.”
What did the Secret Service director tell Congress?
Cheatle — who has served as director of the Secret Service, tasked with protecting the nation’s leaders since 2022 — was berated by Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight Committee on Monday morning over what she 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. “We must learn what happened and I will move heaven and earth to ensure an incident like July 13 does not happen again.”
But nine days after a gunman fired multiple shots at Trump rally, injuring the former president’s right ear, killing one attendee and seriously injuring two others, the director of the Secret Service had little to say about what went wrong that day.
This was a pattern that continued during Monday’s hearing.
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 stood in Butler County, Pennsylvania.
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.
Calls for Secret Service director to resign
Several lawmakers present, from one partisan extreme to the other, called on Cheatle to step down from her position.
Rep. James Comer said it was his “firm belief” that Cheatle should resign. But “in complete defiance, director Cheatle has maintained she will not tender her resignation.”
Comer was joined by the top Democrat on the committee, Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., in an official statement following the hearing demanding for Cheatle’s resignation. But Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., may have contributed the most forceful example of bipartisan condemnation.
“I just don’t think this is partisan,” Khanna said. “If you have an assassination attempt on a president, former president or a candidate, you need to resign.”
Khanna told Cheatle that following Reagan’s assassination attempt, the then-Secret Service director resigned and that she should follow suit. The Democratic congressman said Cheatle’s resignation was necessary because the country is so divided and needs institutions it can trust.
“We’ve got to have agencies that transcend politics,” Khanna said. “Do you really believe the majority of the country has confidence in you right now?”
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.