The Director of the United States Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatleacknowledged Monday, July 22, 2024, that the agency failed in its mission to prevent the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, but rejected calls for him to resign.
>>>Young man who tried to kill Trump had written: “July 13th will be my big debut”
“We failed”“As director of the United States Secret Service, I take full responsibility for any security failures,” Cheatle told the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.
Cheatle said the July 13 assassination attempt on Trump, who was slightly wounded in the right ear, was “the most significant operational failure of the Secret Service in decades.”
“Clearly a mistake occurred and we will make every effort to ensure this does not happen again.“, he claimed.
Gunman Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, shot Trump with an AR-style rifle minutes after the presidential candidate began a speech at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Crooks was killed by a Secret Service sniper 26 seconds after he fired eight shots.
The investigation determined that Crooks, who lived 50 miles from Butler, acted alone and could not identify any strong ideological or political motivation.
Firefighter Corey Comperatore, 50, was killed and two Trump supporters were seriously injured.
“This tragedy could have been prevented” and “in my opinion, Director Cheatle should resign,” he said. Republican Committee Chairman James Comer when opening the hearing.
“The Secret Service has a zero-failure mission, but it failed on July 13 and in the days leading up to the rally” added Comer, for whom the Service “has now become the face of incompetence.”
Loss of confidence after attack on Donald Trump
Republican and Democratic lawmakers on the committee also urged Cheatle to resign.
Republican Michael Turner said she “should not only resign, but if she refuses to do so, President Biden needs to fire her because his life, Donald Trump’s life and the lives of all the people you protect are at risk.”
Jamie Raskin, the Democratic representative on the committee, agreed.
“I don’t want to make the director’s terrible, horrible, very bad day worse, but I join the chair in calling for her resignation,” Raskin said.
“I think the director has lost the confidence of Congress and it is very urgent and delicate at this moment in the country’s history,” he added.
Cheatle rejects those requests. “I think I’m the best person to lead the Secret Service at this time,” he said.
The agency’s director declined to answer several specific questions from lawmakers about the attack, saying they are still the subject of multiple ongoing investigations.
“I can speak to you in general terms,” Cheatle said, irritating lawmakers on the committee.
Prior to the shooting, the Secret Service was alerted “two to five times” of a “suspicious individual” at the rally, but it was not immediately classified as a “threat.”
“There were teams that were sent to identify and question that individual,” he said, but they were unable to locate him before he opened fire.
Trump’s former doctor said over the weekend that the two-centimeter wound to the former president’s right ear caused by the gunshot has begun to heal.
Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician and now a far-right congressman from Texas, gave the first detailed account of the 78-year-old Trump’s injury.
The bullet was just millimeters from “entering his head and struck the top of his right ear,” Jackson wrote, explaining that he visited Trump in New Jersey the night of the rally and has been treating him ever since.
Cheatle served as a Secret Service agent for 27 years before leaving the post in 2021 to take over as PepsiCo’s North American security chief. In 2022, she was appointed by Biden to head the agency.
>>>Video may prove Secret Service was alerted to man who shot Trump
Source: https://www.noticiascaracol.com/mundo/servicio-secreto-de-ee-uu-fracaso-en-proteger-a-donald-trump-reconocio-su-directora-cb20
