President Mike Johnson asks Secret Service director to resign after assassination attempt on Trump

WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans are calling for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign, days after a gunman tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.

“I’m going to resign,” Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday in a Fox News appearance at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “Look, I think it’s inexcusable. … Her explanation to the media that there was a slope in the roof, so there were safety concerns – it doesn’t wash. And I think she showed what her priorities are.”

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., Johnson’s top lieutenant, called for Cheatle’s resignation on Tuesday.

Johnson’s call for resignation came just hours before top law enforcement officials briefed House and Senate lawmakers in separate, unclassified virtual briefings on Saturday’s shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a man gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, shot Trump as he addressed rally attendees. One spectator died and two were seriously injured. Trump was injured in the right ear.

FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate and Secret Service Deputy Director Ronald Rowe are on the informant list. Cheatle is not on the House’s shortlist, but he did appear on the Senate’s list.

The House Oversight Committee said it plans to subpoena Cheatle if she refuses to attend a public hearing Monday focused on the security breach.

In the Fox News interview, Johnson also said he will create a special House task force to investigate the shootings and security failures when lawmakers return on Monday, an effort to streamline Congress’ multiple investigations.

“The reason we’re going to do this is because it’s a more precise attack. It will be faster, there won’t be a lot of procedural hurdles, and it will also have subpoena authority for that task force,” Johnson said. “It will be a compilation of Republicans and Democrats to figure this out quickly so the American people can get the answers they deserve.”

Lawmakers have countless questions about Saturday’s stunning assassination attempt. Most critical, perhaps, is why the roof of a building 500 feet from Trump was not secured by the Secret Service or local authorities. They also want to know why Secret Service snipers on another rooftop in the area only attacked the shooter after Crooks fired several times.

Speaking with ABC news This week, Cheatle said he would not resign, but declared: “The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service.”

She said the Secret Service was responsible for securing the rally’s inner perimeter, while local authorities were responsible for securing the area outside the rally, which included the building accessed by Crooks. And Republicans focused on remarks Cheatle made to ABC News, where she said the building Crooks climbed had a “sloping roof at the highest point” and “we wouldn’t want to put someone on a sloping roof.”

Cheatle has had inconsistencies in his public comments. Cheatle told ABC News that local police were inside the building where the gunman fired after accessing the roof. A Secret Service official then told NBC News on Wednesday that the local SWAT team was not in the building, but rather in another building in the same complex.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News on Wednesday that Cheatle was referring to the AGR Glass “building,” a large industrial complex made up of interconnected residences.

This raises new questions about the level of planning and communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement and whether the local team was in the best position to secure the outer perimeter or whether the local sniper team could have had a even better view of the roof than the shooter used if he was in a building facing the roof.

Johnson told Fox News that “within hours” of Saturday’s shooting, he was on the phone with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who “had no satisfactory answers at that time.” he said he also spoke with FBI Director Wray and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.

“The answers haven’t come. I think they’re collecting data. We’re going to do that too. We have to be held accountable for this. It was inexcusable,” Johnson said. “Obviously, there were security breaches. You don’t need to be a special operations expert to understand that, and we’re going to figure it out quickly.”