Trump assassination attempt: Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigns

After hours of questioning from lawmakers on Capitol Hill about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has resigned.

Her resignation comes almost a week and a half after a gunman was able to open fire on Trump, wounding the former president during a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. One spectator was killed and two others were wounded.

Her resignation was announced to employees at the Secret Service via a letter, The Associated Press reported.

The letter read in part, “I take full responsibility for the security lapse. In light of recent events, it is with a heavy heart that I have made the difficult decision to step down as your director.”

Cheatle was questioned, or as the AP described, “berated,” by Democrats and Republicans on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the failure to protect a former president. She called the attempted assassination the agency’s “most significant operational failure” in decades. But while she took responsibility for the failure, she did not answer questions about the ongoing investigation.

Cheatle called the security issues at the rally on July 13 as “significant” and “colossal,” CNN reported.

She challenged the calls for her resignation, telling lawmakers on Monday, “I think I am the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time,” CNN reported.

Shortly after the assassination attempt, Cheatle had been adamant that she would not resign, despite the agency, in her words, being “solely responsible” for the security plan at the rally. She had said that the agency would fully cooperate with the investigation by Congress and other agencies into what happened.

Thomas Crooks was perched on top of a building within 135 meters of Trump. Several rally attendees had alerted security to the gunman on the roof but he was still able to fire several shots at Trump, hitting him once in the ear.

Crooks’ motive still has not been discovered, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Cheatle admitted that the gunman had been called suspicious more than an hour before he pulled the trigger, the newspaper reported.

She did not give any additional details including how Crooks got on the roof or if anyone approached him after they had been alerted.

Cheatle did suggest that Trump’s security did not know there had been an active threat at the rally when he took the stage, The Wall Street Journal reported.

“I’m not going to get into specifics of the day, she said to the panel on Monday, according to NBC News. “There was a plan in place to provide overwatch, and we are still looking into responsibilities.”

Both Democrats and Republicans called her actions “incompetence” and that she gave “lame excuses.”

After her testimony concluded, Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., and Rep. Jaimie Raskin, D. - Md., told Cheatle in a joint letter, “Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures,” NBC News reported.

They added the committee and the country “demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing.”

Both sides of the aisle had called for Cheatle’s resignation, CNN reported. Some Republicans had said they intended to file impeachment articles against her.

Before being appointed to the post by President Joe Biden, Cheatle, who was the 27th Secret Service Director, had been the Senior Director of Global Security at PepsiCo. Before that, she had spent 27 years in the Secret Service. her last position prior to being named director was Assistant Director of the Office of Protective Operations and had been the Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office.

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