Director of the United States Secret Service Kimberly Cheatle will have to answer a litany of questions when she appears before the House Oversight Committee on Monday, alone and under subpoena. The questions are basically all the same: How did the Secret Service's largest failure in forty years occur under her watch?
Cheatle has given very few interviews and no news conferences since the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump in the last few days. The hearing on Monday will be the first chance to examine in detail the security lapses at Trump's event on July 13.
James Comer, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, stated on Sunday that the hearing will be in-depth and thorough.
Comer stated on "Fox News Sunday" that Cheatle "will have about a six-hour hearing, and she's going to have hundreds of questions that she's going to have to answer."
Comer stated in his opening remarks on Monday, which were made public before the hearing, that Cheatle ought to step down and that she has thus far declined to do so.
In his opening remarks, Comer claims that "the Secret Service has a zero fail mission, but it failed on July 13 and in the days leading up to the rally." The fact is that we doubt anybody is secure under Director Cheatle's direction. Not the First Lady, not the White House, not President Biden, and not any presidential contenders.
Relatively little information has surfaced in the week following the Butler, Pennsylvania, event on the purpose of the gunman, how he was able to obtain a weapon like an AR-15, and why Trump's team was not alerted to a possible danger.
The absence of responses has infuriated Republican members in particular, and some of them have demanded Cheatle's resignation.
Although Cheatle has stated that "the buck stops with me," there has also been finger-pointing on who was in charge of what and whether or not all the necessary resources were available between the Secret Service and local law enforcement.
Why was there no warning of a possible threat to Trump's team?
Before the shooting, Thomas Matthew Crooks, the shooter, was seen several times using a rangefinder, a hunting tool that computes distance and looks like a pair of binoculars. In addition, a picture that the police had taken of him had been shared.
According to a source who spoke with CNN, law enforcement was looking for Crooks around 19 minutes prior to the shooting, but they were unable to find him until he was on the roof.
Tom Knights, the manager of Butler Township, told CNN that just before Trump came for his Pennsylvania event on Saturday, at least 10 minutes before he spoke, police responded to a report of a "suspicious male."
But, as they were getting the former president ready to go on stage, Trump's entourage was unaware that law enforcement was looking for Crooks.
Furthermore, according to others who were with Trump at the gathering, there was no discussion about whether he ought to have held off on entering.
According to a source who was with Trump, "We would have never let him go out there if we thought there was a threat to him," CNN said.
Crooks had been "deemed a suspicious person, but that doesn't necessarily mean that there was any indication that he was an immediate threat," according to a Secret Service source with knowledge of the event who spoke with CNN just before the shooting.
At Trump rallies, strange individuals are not unusual. According to a source close to the Secret Service, on Saturday, "a guy tried to come in with a goat" and a lady appeared "riding a horse with a giant Trump flag," and both were also deemed suspects.
Why hadn't the roof been fastened?
From a roof about 150 yards distant from Trump's podium, Crooks fired multiple bullets at the president. He fired from the roof of a structure that housed a local sniper squad on the second story and functioned as a tactical support team staging place during the event.
Cheatle said to ABC News last week that the building's slope prevented a sniper team from being stationed there.
Cheatle told ABC News, "That building in particular has a sloped roof, at its highest point." "Therefore, we wouldn't want to place someone up on a steep roof due to safety concerns. Thus, it was decided to fortify the structure from the inside.
Why did law enforcement not set up shop there if the roof's slope didn't prevent the gunman from opening fire? It was apparently no difficulty for Secret Service snipers, including the ones who murdered Crooks, to be placed on a rooftop with a significantly higher gradient.
The building was not within the security cordon, despite its vicinity.
Cheatle stated that the perimeter "encompassed the area that we needed to secure the event that we had on that day" in a CNN interview.
The Secret Service normally has drone capabilities, but a senior law enforcement official told CNN on Saturday that the agency did not have drone support at the protest. The insider claimed that instead of using drones, the CIA used counter-sniper squads.
Were any assets turned down?
Over the previous two years, Trump's security detail had claimed that the Secret Service was understaffed and underfunded; last weekend, the agency accepted the complaint.
A spokesman for the Secret Service stated in a statement on Saturday that the organization has in the past supplied alternative security measures, such as those from regional partners, rather than specific resources.
Examples of these adjustments, according to a Secret Service official speaking to CNN, include the deployment of local sniper teams in situations where the agency was unable to provide its own, the use of hand-held magnetometers at specific events in lieu of larger, walk-through magnetometers, and other measures.
The details of an alleged Iranian conspiracy to assassinate Trump were also revealed last week. Furthermore, it begs the issue of how secure Trump events are, even if there is no proof linking it to the gunman.
"We have been doing that over a series of several months, to include on that day," the director responded when asked if the Secret Service has boosted the security it offers to the former president as a consequence.
Cheatle did not, however, specify if the threat posed by Iran was the reason behind the rise in the former president's detail.
What drove this?
Legislators will put pressure on Cheatle to provide further details on the shooting's motivation.
Authorities are perplexed as to why Crooks attacked them, given his evolving profile more than a week after the shooting. Investigators surmise that his motivations may have been more about taking down the most prominent target in his immediate vicinity than they were about politics.
Officials warn that the inquiry is still in its early phases. Nevertheless, Crooks resembles a number of other young guys who have recently caused mayhem around the US with powerful assault-style firearms. According to CNN conversations with law enforcement and a review of documents from a briefing to Congress, he had few close friends, frequently went shooting at a nearby firing range, and didn't appear to have strongly held beliefs that would imply a politically motivated assassination.
It has now come to light that he may have even flown a drone over the location on the day of the shooting and that he visited the protest venue twice after it was advertised.
What is the duration of Cheatle's tenure as director?
Cheatle has worked for the Secret Service for almost thirty years. During that time, he held positions in several field offices and vice presidential details, including Vice President Joe Biden's detail. As the Assistant Director of the Office of Protective Operations when the Secret Service sprung into action on January 6, 2021, to defend then-Vice President Mike Pence from rioters, Cheatle left the agency in 2021.
Cheatle has been urged to step down by a number of Republican leaders, including House Speaker Mike Johnson.
House Speaker Mike Johnson said to Fox News last week, "I don't think she's fit to lead at this critical time. I don't understand her decision-making process."
Another Democrat from Pennsylvania, Rep. Brendan Boyle, stated that Cheatle must go.
"I regret to inform you that I do not trust the leadership of the United States Secret Service. Boyle said on X, "I hereby call for Kimberly Cheatle's resignation."
