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Secret Service Director Says Agency ‘Failed’ Its Mission at Trump Rally Shooting

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Secret Service Director Says Agency ‘Failed’ Its Mission at Trump Rally Shooting
U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee about the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, at the Capitol in Washington, Monday, July 22, 2024. AP Photo/Rod Lamkey, Jr.
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The director of the Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny as well as calls to step down since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. NTD will have live coverage of Kimberly Cheatle’s testimony before Congress today.

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenaed Ms. Cheatle last week, and promised the hearing would be extensive and detailed. Ms. Cheatle will be asked how her agency failed to stop the attempt on former President Trump’s life on July 13. It will be her first time before Congress since the assassination attempt. The Secret Service has pledged complete cooperation with Congress.

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Snipers stand on a roof at Republican presidential candidate and former President Donald Trump's campaign rally in Butler, Pa., on July 13, 2024. (Glen Van Tryfle/TMX via Reuters)
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United Sates Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle testifies before the House Oversight and Accountability Committee during a hearing at Capitol on July 22, 2024. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
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Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told a House Oversight panel Monday that her agency is still investigating questions about why a Trump rally was allowed to continue even though members of the crowd saw Thomas Matthew Crooks on the roof of a building.

“We are still combing through communications and when communications were passed,” Ms. Cheatle said, adding that the Secret Service would have stopped the rally if they knew there was an actual threat to former President Donald Trump on July 13.

She added, “I don’t know all of the communications” on that day, adding officials are “going back and looking at communications to know when the information about a suspicious person was passed to Secret Service personnel.”

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Sen. Ron Johnson’s (R-Wis.) investigation into the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump found that the various groups tasked with protecting him, including snipers, SWAT teams, and the Secret Service, had no direct communications with each other and were operating on separate channels.

The attempt to assassinate former President Trump took place on July 13 at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The event was put under the protection of various agencies, including the Secret Service, Butler County Emergency Services (Butler ESU), snipers from Washington County and Beaver County, and local SWAT teams, a July 21 report from Mr. Johnson said.

Communications between the different entities at the rally were “siloed,” meaning they talked mostly among themselves and were cut off from each other, local law enforcement officials told Mr. Johnson’s office.

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U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle is seen in a file photo. Kamil Krzaczynski/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The director of the U.S. Secret Service told a House panel on Monday that her agency failed during the assassination attempt targeting former President Donald Trump.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed. As the Director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security lapse,” Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told the House Oversight Committee in prepared remarks after she was subpoenaed, adding that the shooting was the “most significant operational failure in decades.”

During the July 13 incident at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, a gunman fired at the former president, striking him in the right ear as well as killing one person and wounding two others.

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U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle speaks during a press conference at the Secret Service's Chicago Field Office in Chicago, on June 4 2024. Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said Sunday that she is “eager to cooperate with the independent security review” of the agency’s failure in preventing the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump on July 13.

In a statement, Ms. Cheatle expressed her full support for an independent review conducted by a “Blue Ribbon Panel” that will add to investigations by Congress, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Inspector General over the Secret Service’s actions after former President Trump came within an inch of being assassinated by a 20-year-old male shooter in Pennsylvania.

“I look forward to the panel examining what happened and providing recommendations to help ensure it will never happen again,” the director said.

Live Special Coverage: Oversight of the Secret Service and the Trump Assassination Attempt
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The director of the Secret Service has faced intense scrutiny as well as calls to step down since the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump. NTD will have live coverage of Kimberly Cheatle’s testimony before Congress today.

House Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) subpoenaed Ms. Cheatle last week, and promised the hearing would be extensive and detailed. Ms. Cheatle will be asked how her agency failed to stop the attempt on former President Trump’s life on July 13. It will be her first time before Congress since the assassination attempt. The Secret Service has pledged complete cooperation with Congress.