US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday, a week after the attempted assassination of Republican leader Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
Cheatle acknowledged before a congressional committee on Monday that the incident was the agency’s “biggest operational failure” in decades. and took “full responsibility” for his agency’s lapse in “security.”
“The attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13 is the largest operational failure by the Secret Service in decades,” she said in her opening remarks before the committee, to which she had been summoned by the Republicans who control the House of Representatives.
The Republican opposition had called for Cheatle’s resignation as head of the agency responsible for Trump’s security.
Trump was shot in the ear while attending a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The shooter had climbed onto a roof about 150 yards from the former president, though outside the security perimeter.
Witnesses had warned two minutes before the shots of the suspicious presence of the attacker, a 20-year-old man whose motives are still unknown and who was shot dead by Secret Service agents.
Donald Trump, after the attack.
During the hearing, Republicans protested Cheatle’s refusal to answer most of their questions. claiming that there are several ongoing investigations that the Secret Service is collaborating with to clarify what went wrong in the operation.
Committee Chairman James Comer, a Republican, asked Cheatle: “Did the Secret Service ever have an agent on the roof?” To which she replied: “We’re only nine days into this incident and there is still an ongoing investigation.”
“Can you explain why they didn’t put an agent on that roof?” Comer asked again, to which Cheatle replied, “We’re still investigating.”
Cheatle used a similar response to the committee’s ranking Democrat, Jamie Raskin, who asked: “How can a 20-year-old kid, with his dad’s AR-15 assault rifle, get on a rooftop with a direct 150-yard line of sight to the speaker’s podium without being stopped by the Secret Service or local police?”
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which oversees the Secret Service, announced on Sunday that it had launched an independent investigation into what happened to members of both parties, at the behest of President Joe Biden, which must be completed within 45 days.
The investigation will include, among others, Janet Napolitano, former Secretary of Homeland Security under Barack Obama (2009-2017); and Frances Townsend, former National Security Advisor to George W. Bush (2001-2009).
Source: www.huffingtonpost.es
