(WASHINGTON) – Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle said Monday that her agency failed in its mission to protect former President Donald Trump during a highly contentious congressional hearing with lawmakers from both major political parties demanding that she resigned due to security failures that allowed a gunman to climb a roof and open fire at a campaign rally.
In his first congressional hearing into the July 13 assassination attempt, Cheatle repeatedly angered lawmakers by avoiding questions, citing ongoing investigations. She called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades. Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was informed of a suspicious person “between two and five times” before the shooting.
However, Cheatle has given no indication that he intends to resign, although he said he takes “full responsibility” for any security failures at the Pennsylvania rally. Cheatle promised to “move heaven and earth” to ensure nothing like this happened again.
“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13, we failed,” Cheatle said.
Lawmakers peppered Cheatle with questions about how the shooter could get so close to the Republican presidential candidate when he should have been carefully guarded and about why Trump was allowed on stage after local authorities identified Thomas Matthew Crooks as a suspect.
See more information: What to know about the victims of the Trump rally shooting
Cheatle acknowledged that Crooks was seen by local authorities before the shooting with a rangefinder, a small binocular-like device that hunters use to measure the distance to a target. She said the Secret Service would have broken up the rally if agents had been told there was a “real threat,” but said there is a difference between someone identified as a suspect and someone identified as a true threat.
Asked why there were no agents on the roof where the shooter was located or whether the Secret Service used drones to monitor the area, Cheatle said she was still waiting for the investigation to unfold, drawing groans and outbursts from committee members.
“Director Cheatle, because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent,” said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio.
Cheatle, who spent nearly three decades at the agency, continued to challenge that he was the “right person” to lead the Secret Service despite its failures. Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., noted that the Secret Service director who presided over the agency when there was an assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan later resigned.
“The only thing we need to have in this country are agencies that transcend politics and have the trust of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives and conservatives,” Khanna said, adding that the Secret Service was no longer one of those agencies.
Trump was injured in the ear, a rally attendee was killed, and two other attendees were injured after Crooks climbed onto the roof of a nearby building and opened fire with an AR-style rifle shortly after Trump began speaking at the July 13 rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The Secret Service acknowledged it had denied some requests from the Trump campaign to increase security at its events in the years before the assassination attempt. But Cheatle said there were “no goods denied” for the rally.
See more information: Eyewitness accounts of Trump rally shooting
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas called what happened a “failure,” while several lawmakers called on Cheatle to resign or for President Joe Biden to fire her. The Secret Service said Cheatle does not intend to resign. So far, she maintains the support of Biden, a Democrat, and Mayorkas.
Before the shooting, local authorities noticed Crooks walking around the edges of the rally, looking through the lens of a rangefinder toward rooftops behind the stage where the president later stood, officials told the Associated Press. An image of Crooks was released by officers stationed outside the security perimeter.
Witnesses later saw him climbing the side of an industrial building that was 135 meters (157 yards) from the stage. He then assembled his rifle and lay down on the roof, with a detonator in his pocket to detonate rudimentary explosive devices that were hidden in his car parked nearby.
The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security failures by the agency that have drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.
Authorities have been searching for clues about what motivated Crooks, but have not found any ideological bent that could help explain his actions. Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, Biden and other senior administration officials and discovered that he had looked up the dates of the Democratic National Convention as well as Trump’s appearances. He also looked for information about major depressive disorder.
This story originally appeared on Time.com read the full story
