‘Agency Needs To Be Adequately Resourced’: Secret Service Chief In Her Testimony

Washington: Secret Service Chief Kimberly Cheatle, in her first testimony on the assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump on Monday, faced withering criticism from Republicans and Democrats alike, with lawmakers furious over her unwillingness to answer questions about the security failures at the rally in Pennsylvania’s Butler. Amidst demands for her resignation over the shooting incident, Cheatle tried to put some light on the resources that the agency lacks and called to fulfil it.

Cheatle also praised her policies being implemented during her tenure saying that the processes she has implemented over the past 20 months as the director has positioned the agency to be stronger.

In her testimony, the Secret Service Director stated, “Our agency needs to be adequately resourced in order to serve our current mission requirements and to anticipate future requirements. The heightened and dynamic threat environment, detailed in the September DHS Homeland Security, threat assessment and subsequent warnings by DHS and the FBI that the threat landscape was elevated, shows no signs of abating.”

Emphasizing on the challenges that the agency is set to handle, Kimberly Cheatle said, “The coming years will bring another Presidential campaign, the 2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games – which have been designated as a National Special Security Event, and thousands of events in between.”

Committee Demands For Resignation

Cheatle told members of the House Oversight Committee that the attack was the "most significant operational failure" for the Secret Service in decades, and repeatedly said she takes full responsibility for the security lapses. But her promise for accountability did little to quiet the calls for her to resign. Several Democrats on the committee, including ranking member Jamie Raskin of Maryland, joined Republicans in calling for her to step down.

"This relationship is irretrievable at this point and I think that the director has lost the confidence of Congress at a very urgent and tender moment in the history of the country, and we need to quickly move beyond this," Raskin said.

Cheatle Declined To Answer On Several Occasions

Throughout the heated four-hour hearing, Cheatle fielded questions about why Trump was allowed to take the stage at the rally when the shooter, identified by the FBI as 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, had been deemed suspicious by law enforcement, and defended the number of agents assigned to protect the former president at the campaign event.

She repeatedly cited the FBI's ongoing criminal investigation into the assassination attempt when declining to discuss the specifics of the gunman's actions leading up to the attack.

‘Best Person To Lead’: Cheatle

Cheatle also told lawmakers that she believes she is the "best person to lead the Secret Service at this time," but acknowledged that the agency failed in its mission to protect the nation's leaders.

"We must learn what happened and I will move heaven and earth to ensure an incident like July 13th does not happen again," she said.