Embattled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle was always going to have a rough time explaining to lawmakers how her agency allowed an aspiring assassin to get such an easy shot at Donald Trump at a July 13 rally in Butler, Pa. Somehow, she did worse than expected.
In hours of grilling from both Republicans and Democrats, Cheatle stonewalled and further highlighted the stunning incompetence at the top of an agency with a critical zero-fail mission. The failure in Butler was staggering. While Trump survived by only a fraction of an inch, the brave firefighter Corey Comperatore died protecting his family while two others were injured.
In the past several days, the Secret Service was exposed for several major lies and astonishing failures that set the backdrop for the Monday hearing.
The day after the assassination, Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesperson for the Secret Service, dismissed as “absolutely false” reports that the agency had rejected requests for more resources from the Trump security detail. But the Washington Post subsequently reported that top officials at the Secret Service “repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel” from the Trump team for the past two years. Guglielmi then revised the statement to concede that there were instances in which assets were denied.
Pressed on this by Representative Jim Jordan, Cheatle argued that there were no specific requests that were denied in advance of the Butler rally. She said that there are times at which requests that get characterized as “denials” are really instances of the Secret Service using other means — such as technology or local law enforcement — to secure an event rather than supply more personnel. But Cheatle refused to explain the number of requests that were denied or in what context, claiming that she could only respond “generically” — even though this issue was obviously going to come up during the hearing and she should have been prepared for it. She obfuscated similarly when other lawmakers revisited the repeated requests from the Trump campaign for more security.
In a prior editorial, we criticized Cheatle’s incredible statement that personnel were not posted on top of the roof where Thomas Crooks opened fire because it was “sloped” and therefore unsafe to put security up there, so they kept local law enforcement inside. But subsequently, local law enforcement said that they were not inside the building, and they told the New York Times that none of them were assigned to monitor that area.
When asked about this by House Oversight Committee chairman James Comer, Cheatle backed off the “sloped roof” claim, saying that she “should have been more clear” and that she was just making a general statement that they prefer “sterile rooftops” but that the matter in this specific instance was still under investigation.
Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, a Democrat, confronted her on the revelation that 20 minutes before the shooting (or roughly ten minutes before Trump took the stage), the Secret Service was notified of the suspicious Crooks and let Trump go on anyway — and they didn’t pull him off the stage despite frantic spectators shouting at them two minutes before the shooting to draw their attention to the roof. Once again, Cheatle said she would only respond “in generalities” that “the people in charge of protecting the president on that day would never bring the former president out if there was a threat that had been identified.” Krishnamoorthi noted, however, that there were three instances in the 20 minutes before the shooting in which a threat was identified.
During her testimony, Cheatle estimated the USSS was notified about Crooks’s presence “two to five times” before the shooting took place, and she admitted the rooftop was considered a vulnerability before the shooting. She also conceded that, nine days after the shooting, she still hasn’t visited the scene of the crime.
The hearing went so poorly that after it ended, Representative Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat on the committee, joined Comer in writing a letter to Cheatle demanding her resignation. This type of bipartisan condemnation of a witness is rare and a testament to how poorly Cheatle’s testimony went.
Were Cheatle to step down, it would not be an instant fix to an agency that has been plagued by security lapses and scandals for at least 15 years. Nor would it answer all of the questions that have arisen since the shooting. However, it would be a necessary first step to restoring competence to the agency.
At the hearing, Cheatle insisted that she won’t resign. If she holds to that, whenever President Biden emerges from isolation, his first act should be to fire her.