House Republicans immediately took issue with Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s refusal to answer several questions, including why a Secret Service agent was not on the roof of the building where a shooter took aim at former President Donald Trump.
When asked by House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-OH) if there was an agent on the roof where Thomas Matthew Crooks allegedly shot and injured Trump and others at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Cheatle did not directly answer the question.
“Sir, I’m sure, as you can imagine, that we are just nine days out from this incident, and there’s still an ongoing investigation,” Cheatle said multiple times.
Hard-line members of the House GOP visibly began to get annoyed at the director’s answers.
“Why are you here then?” Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) said at one point while Cheatle was speaking, with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) arguing that Cheatle was here “for specifics.”
In her opening statements, Cheatle called the security breaches at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally the most “significant operational failure” in decades while testifying before the House Oversight Committee’s hearing on Monday. She said the Secret Service is “fully cooperating” with the FBI’s investigation into the shooting.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” Cheatle said in her opening remarks. “As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.”
Cheatle said that the roof where the shooter targeted Trump, grazing his ear with a bullet and killing one rallygoer, was outside the perimeter. The director of the Secret Service confirmed that a person was photographed and identified as “suspicious” before the shooting took place, but she told ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) that the Secret Service distinguishes someone as suspicious and, separately, someone as a threat.
She said that if someone had been considered threatening, “we never would have brought the former president onstage.”
“That is what we do and that is who we are. We are charged with protecting all of our protectees,” Cheatle said.
House Republicans have been vocal in calling on Cheatle to resign following the shooting. The director has said she is not planning to step aside.
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Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), who is the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, criticized Cheatle for not answering how many times she was briefed on the Secret Service telling Trump “no” for additional security at the event.
“You know what it looks like, director? It looks like you won’t answer some pretty basic questions,” Jordan said. “It looks like you got a 9% raise, and you cut corners when it came to protecting one of the most important individuals, most well-known individuals on the planet, a former president, likely the guy who’s going to be the next president. Looks like you guys were cutting corners. That’s what it looks like to me.”