Secret Service head to answer on Trump's security after assassination bid

By Ellen M. Gilmer

The US Secret Service’s embattled leader is about to field a barrage of questions from hostile lawmakers who want her out of a job after the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump.
 

Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is set to appear Monday at a congressional hearing that will examine how the shooter eluded security and wounded Trump, the first public airing of what went wrong at the 2024 candidate’s Pennsylvania campaign rally on July 13.

Critics have dubbed the shooting a catastrophic failure for the Secret Service, the primary agency assigned to protect US political leaders and their families. It’s now facing congressional probes, independent investigations and an internal review.

Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee that’s holding the hearing, said Cheatle can expect roughly a six-hour session with “hundreds of questions.”

“We’ve got to instill confidence in the American people that we have a Secret Service that’s up to the job,” Comer, a Kentucky Republican, said on Fox News Sunday. “And right now, I don’t think we have that.”

US officials have said 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks climbed up on a roof within sight of the outdoor stage at Butler, Pennsylvania, and fired an AR-556 style rifle, injuring Trump, killing an attendee and wounding two others. A Secret Service sharpshooter then killed Crooks.

Top areas of congressional inquiry include how the shooter got access to a rooftop with a clear line of sight to Trump, why the rally proceeded after law enforcement identified the shooter as suspicious before the former president went on stage, whether the Secret Service provided all the protection Trump’s team requested and whether agents moved quickly enough to evacuate him.

Cheatle pledged cooperation with all investigations into the agency and said she’ll do what’s needed so the Secret Service “emerges from this stronger.” The agency “is continuing to take steps to review our actions internally,” she said in a statement Sunday evening.

Questions about the Secret Service’s ability to protect candidates and government officials are even more urgent as political threats increase and this year’s campaigns reach full swing ahead of the November elections.

Combative committee

The oversight panel has pummeled Biden administration officials in contentious hearings since Republicans took control of the House in 2023, but concerns about the Secret Service’s performance span the political divide.

“While we often have passionate disagreements about policies and investigative priorities, we are united in condemning all political violence and ensuring that America will prevent such a horrific event from ever happening again,” Comer and the committee’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland, said in a joint statement last week.

The panel’s almost four dozen members poised to interrogate Cheatle on a series of security lapses at the Trump rally include conservative firebrands Marjorie Taylor Greene and Jim Jordan. 

It was the most serious assassination attempt of a US president or major party presidential candidate since 1981, when a gunman seriously wounded President Ronald Reagan. 

Cheatle has resisted demands from House Speaker Mike Johnson and other lawmakers that she resign.

Johnson said he also plans to launch a task force to investigate the Secret Service’s failures. Other probes are launching in the Senate.

“This will be a bipartisan task force with subpoena authority to strike quickly, get right to the heart of the matter and get the answers, accountability, make sure this never happens again,” Johnson said Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.

In both chambers, lawmakers have committed to bipartisanship in their efforts. Yet skeptics question whether they can avoid typical partisan pitfalls.

“If Congress of the past few years is any judge, it’ll become a politicised whine fest,” former Homeland Security official Paul Rosenzweig said.

DHS’s inspector general, an internal watchdog, has launched its own series of investigations into the Secret Service’s missteps surrounding the Pennsylvania rally, and President Joe Biden ordered an independent review by experts outside of government.