Photo: Kent Nishimura/Getty Images
On Monday, the House Oversight Committee held its first hearing on the attempted assassination of Donald Trump just over a week ago in Butler, Pennsylvania. Members on both sides of the aisle grilled Secret Service director Kimberly Cheatle about the agency’s actions that day and several missed warning signs concerning the attack. Here are some of the key moments from the contentious hearing.
In her opening statement, Cheatle described the July 13 attack on Trump’s Pennsylvania rally as the “most significant operational failure” of the Secret Service in decades. “The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” she said. “As the director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse of our agency.”
Foreshadowing some of the tense exchanges to come, Cheatle made it clear at the outset that she wouldn’t be able to provide the members of Congress with all of the answers that they were seeking.
“I will be transparent as possible when I speak with you, understanding though, at times, that I may be limited in providing a thorough response in this open setting due to associated risks with sharing highly sensitive protective methodologies,” she said.
The hearing began with tough questioning from both Republican Oversight Chairman James Comer and Jamie Raskin, the ranking Democrat. Comer pressed Cheatle on whether the Secret Service had an agent on the roof where the shooter ultimately made his attempt, but the director, citing the ongoing investigation, was light on details in her response.
Raskin inquired how it was possible for the shooting to even take place, asking Cheatle, “How can a 20-year-old with his father’s AR-15 assault weapon climb onto a roof with a direct 150-yard line of sight to the speaker’s podium without the Secret Service or local police stopping him?”
Her response again offered no specifics. “I will say we are nine days out from this event, and I would like to know those answers as well, which is why we are going through these investigations to be able to determine that fully,” Cheatle said.
Both Comer and Raskin would both go on to say that Cheatle should resign from her post.
Cheatle confirmed to Representative Krishnamoorthi of Illinois that the rally was not paused after the Secret Service received warnings from Pennsylvania state police about a possible threat. During his questioning, the Democratic congressman played footage recorded by rally attendees two minutes prior to the shooting. In the clip, the shooter can be seen lying on the rooftop where he would later make his attempt on Trump’s life as rally goers nearby yell “He’s on the roof!”
“Ma’am, that doesn’t look like suspicious behavior. That looks like threatening behavior to me,” Krishnamoorthi said. “And the rally wasn’t paused at that moment either, correct?”
“I can tell you as I stated earlier, sir, that the moment that the shift surrounding the president were aware of an actual threat—” Cheatle began.
The congressman interrupted her. “That’s a threat! Right there! The guy’s on the roof and everybody’s yelling at him and directing the officers’s attention to him!”
Krishnamoorthi continued to press Cheatle for a straight answer on whether the Secret Service ever considered halting the rally due to security concerns, but the director said she could only speak in “generalities.”
“The people that are 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,” she said.
Krishnamoorthi responded, “Well, they did because we’ve now identified three points in the twenty minutes before the shooting that the threat emerged.”
Cheatle was briefly stumped on a history question posed to her by Representative Khanna of California, who asked her what Secret Service director Stuart Knight did following the attempted assassination of then-President Ronald Reagan.
“He remained on duty,” she answered.
“He resigned. He resigned,” Khanna rebutted.
The congressman took it even further, saying bluntly that he felt that Cheatle herself should step down from her post. “If you have an assassination attempt on a president, a former president or a candidate, you need to resign,” Khanna said. “That’s what Stuart Knight did. He was a Republican appointee and he took responsibility.”
Khanna as well as the committee leadership were joined by Congressman Jared Moskowitz of Florida who also believes Cheatle should resign:
New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that an AR-15 was used in the attempt against Trump, noting that the weapon’s range is anywhere between 400 and 600 yards. “My question is why is the Secret Service’s protective perimeter shorter than one of the most popular semi-automatic weapons in the United States?” she asked Cheatle.
The Secret Service director began by saying that the agency did advance work prior to the rally and that there are a variety of different factors that are considered in establishing a perimeter including terrain and available resources.
Ocasio-Cortez’s also criticized Cheatle’s intent to release a report on the attack within 60 days, despite the ongoing election cycle, saying that it’s “simply not acceptable.”
“This is not theater. This is not about jockeying. This is about the safety of some of the most highly-targeted and valued targets internationally and nationally in the United States of America,” she said. AOC’s pointed criticism received praise from conservatives on social media.
