Dems Join In Call for Secret Service Chief To Resign
Director Kimberly Cheatle scrutinized after Trump shooting in Pennsylvania
Democrats on Capitol Hill are among those calling for the director of the Secret Service to step down in wake of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump.
Kimberly Cheatle, who has headed the federal agency in charge of the protection of US presidents and other dignitaries, has come under scrutiny after Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, of Bethel Park, Pa, gained entry to a Trump campaign rally in rural Pennsylvania earlier this month, at which he shot at Trump.
It was the first such assassination attempt against a current or former president since John Hinkley shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981.
Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper immediately after he took his shot at Trump, was allowed to be on the roof of a building with a line of sight of Trump.
Trump has been fine, and last week accepted the Republican presidential nomination.
Cheatle was called to testify about the Trump shooting on Capitol Hill Monday.
Two Democrats on the committee holding the session — the House Oversight Committee — joined calls for the resignation of Cheatle, who’s been on the job nearly two years.
“It has been an unusually encouraging hearing and an unusually depressing hearing. And what’s encouraging, Mr. Chairman, is that we came together to issue a strong statement deploring and categorically denouncing political violence in America, and I also didn’t see any daylight between the members of the two parties today at the hearing in terms of our bafflement and outrage about the shocking operational failures that led to disaster and near catastrophe on July 13, 2024,” Rep Jamie Raskin (D-Md) told committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky). “What is depressing is the extraordinary communications gap between the director of the Secret Service and Congress.
“And I don’t want to add to the director’s terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, but I will be joining the chairman in calling for the resignation of the director just because I think that this relationship is irretrievable at this point and I think that the director has lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of the country, and we need to very quickly move beyond this,” added Raskin, the top Democrat on Oversight.
Rep Ro Khanna (D-Calif) also told Cheatle that she ought to resign.
“Look, I’m not questioning your judgment. I just don’t think this is partisan. If you have an assassination attempt on a president, a former president, or a candidate, you need to resign. That’s what Stuart Knight did,” Khanna said, referring to the Secret Service director on the job when Reagan was shot outside of a Washington DC, hotel. “He was a Republican appointee and he took responsibility. And I think you need to reflect. This is not a question of you. It’s a question of the American people.
“You cannot go leading a Secret Service agency when there is an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.”
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