Kimberly Cheatle is considering stepping down as director of the U.S. Secret Service after facing pressure from lawmakers who called for her resignation following the assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump.
Four sources familiar with the matter confirmed Cheatle’s plan to resign.
On July 13, Trump was speaking at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a gunman opened fire from the roof of a building overlooking the crowd and the stage. The gunman, later identified as a 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks from Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, killed a participant and injured two others.
Trump was wounded by a bullet that grazed his right ear. He appeared several times at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee the following week with a bandage over his ear.
The Secret Service quickly came under intense scrutiny, and questions mounted about how the assassination attempt could have happened at such a high-profile event. Security and law enforcement officers from several different agencies were present at the rally and, according to multiple sources, were alerted to the suspect’s presence. from 20 minutes before the shots were actually fired.
Cheatle said the Secret Service was responsible for organizing and managing the overall security protocol for the rally, and when She testified before Congress On July 22, it acknowledged that it was a “significant operational failure.”
“The solemn mission of the Secret Service is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” she said.
Tierney L. Cross/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Following his testimony before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, Chairman James Comer and Ranking Member Jamie Raskin issued a joint statement calling on Cheatle to resign.
Calls for Cheatle’s resignation began to mount as details about the shooting emerged in the days following the rally, with House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell joining other Republican voices, including Eric Trump, the former president’s son, and several Democrats, including Rep. Ro Khanna of California, who serves on the Oversight Committee.
At the Republican National Convention, Days after the shooting, a chaotic scene unfolded as a group of Republican senators, including Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso, followed Cheatle through the convention center and bombarded her with questions.
“The American people deserve answers from the Secret Service,” Blackburn wrote in a social media post, in which she also shared a video of the encounter.
The House Oversight and Accountability Committee formally subpoenaed Cheatle to testify about the assassination attempt several days after it occurred.
“Director Cheatle must be held accountable to Congress and the American people for the historic failure that occurred under her leadership,” the committee spokesman said.
In her testimony, Cheatle told lawmakers she took full responsibility.
But his reluctance to directly answer specific questions about security and the circumstances of the shooting — such as why Trump was allowed on stage once law enforcement identified a suspicious person, or why there were no officers on the roof — has led to growing frustration among panel members on both sides of the aisle.
Cheatle told them she could not yet provide a detailed timeline of events or how they unfolded, and repeatedly referred to the FBI’s ongoing criminal investigation when asked to discuss the shooter’s actions leading up to the shooting.
There are several ongoing investigations into the circumstances of the shooting. In addition to the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has opened two investigations to assess the Secret Service’s process for securing an event and to determine how prepared the agency’s counter-sniper team is to respond to threats. Officials said the inspector general may also decide to open additional investigations.
Meanwhile, President Biden announced he would lead an independent review of the security situation of the gathering to determine what happened.
Cheatle said in a statement after Mr. Biden’s announcement that the Secret Service would “participate fully” in the independent investigation and was “working with all relevant federal, state and local agencies to understand what happened, how it happened and how we can prevent an incident like this from happening again.”
Who is Kimberly Cheatle?
President Biden nominated Cheatle to serve as Secret Service director in 2022, after she served 27 years in other roles within the agency.
Before being appointed director, Cheatle served as deputy director of the agency’s Office of Protective Operations, where she worked with multiple divisions, including technical security, “to research, develop and deploy technologies that reduce risks to protected individuals, protected facilities and protected events,” according to the Secret Service. Cheatle also served on Mr. Biden’s security team during his tenure as vice president under the Obama administration.
According to the agency, Cheatle was working as senior director of global security at PepsiCo when Mr. Biden nominated her to lead the Secret Service.
Nicole Sganga contributed reporting.
