In a rare moment of agreement, the Democratic and Republican leaders on the House Oversight Committee signed a joint letter today calling upon Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign.
GOP Chairman James Comer of Kentucky and Ranking Minority Member Jamie Raskin of Maryland published the letter on X in the aftermath of the five-hour, brutal beating Cheatle took as one member after another called upon her to quit.
Cheatle testified before the committee today to answer questions about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. Would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks murdered firefighter Corey Comperatore and wounded two others.
The director confessed that the Secret Service’s permitting Crooks to fire at Donald Trump from a rooftop less than 150 yards away was a “colossal failure.”
The Letter
Cheatle’s appearance came two days after The Washington Post revealed that her agency had repeatedly turned down requests for more security for two years before the attempt on Trump’s life on July 13.
That didn’t help her case, and the letter from Comer and Raskin was blunt.
“On July 13, 2024, the United States Secret Service under your leadership failed to protect former President Donald Trump from an assassination attempt that took the life of Corey Comperatore and seriously injured at least two other people,” they wrote:
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. In the middle of a presidential election, the Committee and the American people demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing. We call on you to resign as Director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people.
Cheatle has thus far refused to resign.
The Hearing
In one of the spiciest moments of the hearing, GOP Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina asked Cheatle if she wanted to write her resignation letter then and there.
Cheatle, of course, refused.
Mace asked a series of yes-or-no questions and forced Cheatle to admit that the agency’s performance at the rally was a “colossal failure” and that the assassination attempt was “preventable.”
Asked about the leak of her opening statement to multiple media outlets, Cheatle answered, “I have no idea how my statement got out.”
“That’s bullsh*t,” Mace replied.
“You’re full of sh*t today, you’re being completely dishonest,” Mace said following questions about the agency’s cooperation with the committee.
Under questioning from Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Cheatle admitted that she did not have a timeline with specifics that would enable her to answer questions.
Committee members laughed at her answer, and Greene said, “you’re a failure at your job.”
The Roof
This afternoon, Florida GOP Representative Carlos Gimenez released video to disprove Cheatle’s ridiculed claim that the roof from which Crooks shot at Trump was too steep to safely station a protective squad.
“I’m standing on the roof in Pennsylvania where Thomas Crooks attempted to assassinate President Trump,” Gimenez wrote on X. “I’m 70 years old, if I was able to get on this roof — anybody can.”
In a similar video, GOP Representative Eli Crane of Arizona, a former Navy SEAL, also climbed to the roof. “It was clear to me that many security measures were dropped making Pres. Trump extremely vulnerable,” he wrote.
The video shows several people easily traversing the roof. Crane pointed out a water tower behind him. Had the Secret Service placed countersnipers there, he said, Crooks couldn’t have attempted to assassinate Trump.
Even AOC!
Such is the outrage over the performance of Cheatle and her agency that even hate-Trump leftist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hammered the disgraced director.
“This is about the safety of the most highly targeted and valued targets internationally and domestically in the United States of America,” the New York Democrat said:
So, the idea that a report will be finalized in sixty days … is simply not acceptable.
Ocasio-Cortez continued, asking Cheatle to explain the agency’s perimeter protection. Cheatle admitted that Crooks fired from about 200 yards, which was outside the perimeter. Ocasio-Cortez lowered the boom.
“The individual used an AR-15 in order to act out his assassination attempt,” she said:
An AR-15 has a range of about 400 to 600 yards. My question is, why is the Secret Service protective perimeter shorter than one of the most popular semi-automatic weapons in the United States?
And so, what I’m hearing is that a perimeter was not established outdoors in an outdoor venue that would prevent an AR-15, which is one of the most common weapons used in mass shootings, from being able to be within the range of Secret Service protection.
The Post cited anonymous sources to report about the Secret Service’s repeatedly denying requests for more security around Trump.
The newspaper also revealed that more protection was denied for an equally dangerous rally venue in Pickens, South Carolina.
