The Secret Service is under fire for what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has repeatedly called a “failure” that allowed a gunman to shoot former President Donald Trump over the weekend, but the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, reiterated she had no plans. To resign from office despite calls from an increasing number of elected officials.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said Wednesday night that Cheatle had “no goal of resigning” and stressed the importance of “continuity” of leadership.
He said Cheatle “fiercely committed to transparency by leading the secret service through internal investigation and strengthening the company through the lessons learned from those vital internal and external reviews. “
The House Oversight Committee issued a subpoena Wednesday to Cheatle, who agreed to a request from Rep. James Comer, R-Ky. , to testify at a hearing on July 22.
Comer said that “the lack of transparency and lack of cooperation” with the committee “tests [his] ability to run the secret service. “
House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. , joined House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La. , and several leaders in calling for Cheatle’s resignation after he defended the House’s response. The Secret Service responded to the shooting at Trump’s rally on Saturday and said he has no plans to leave his post.
Johnson told Fox News he would start a bipartisan task force in the House of Representatives to investigate the assassination attempt and said there were still “real questions” about the agency’s handling of the incident. Mysteries.
More major points continue to emerge about the security breaches that allowed a shooter to land on a construction site near the demonstration site, adding that the construction was being used as an army staging area. police tactical equipment and that 3 Local Police snipers were stationed inside with orders to remain vigilant. the collection from the windows.
CBS News reported that an officer saw the alleged shooter using a rangefinder and “examining” the roof, but he was still able to scale the construction and climb onto the roof, in all likelihood an air conditioning unit, without being apprehended.
CNN reported Monday that the Secret Service did not sweep the building where police say Crooks was perched on the roof with an AR-15 rifle, despite being less than two hundred yards from where the shooting was taking place. electoral rally, and instead trusted local authorities. Police to provide security at the site.
Local authorities blamed security failures on a lack of staff and “extremely poor planning. ”
The roof from which Crooks controlled to shoot Trump has been known to the Secret Service as a security vulnerability, NBC News reported Sunday night, citing two anonymous sources.
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Johnson; Scale; Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. ; Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo. ; Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla. ; Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas; Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo; Eric Trump, son of Donald Trump; Billionaire Elon Musk and Trump campaign manager Chris LaCivita have everything to get Cheatle to resign or be fired.
The Secret Service reportedly beefed up coverage of Trump ahead of Saturday’s election campaign, in reaction to an unrelated alleged Iranian assassination plot. While there is no indication that Saturday’s shooting was related to the Iranian plot, it raises more questions about how a lone gunman like Crooks was able to bring up his own assassination attempt. On Sunday, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the company had recently added resources to Trump’s security services, but made no mention of an Iranian plot and said the adjustments were made in reaction to “the increased speed of movement. ” of the campaign”. Sources also told CNN that Trump has been continually warned by his security team about the danger of holding outdoor election rallies.
In the days after the shooting, videos and accounts circulated from protest participants showing members of the public noticing scammers stationed on the nearby rooftop and seeking to alert the government. One video, which circulated widely on Twitter, showed other people noticing the thieves and yelling at them. The police “are on the roof, right here,” while several others pointed in his direction. One participant, named Ben Maser, said he saw the alleged shooter move “from roof to roof” and reported him to a police officer several times before the shooting began. Another witness, Greg Smith, told the BBC he reported the shooter to police and tried to alert the government 3 or 4 minutes before the shooting.
“I wonder, ‘Why is Trump still talking? Why didn’t they take him off the stage?'” Smith said. “The next thing you know, five shots are fired. “
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee announced Monday that it would open a bipartisan investigation into the attempted assassination of Trump, and its chairman, Sen. Gary Peters, D-Mich. , said he hoped to “expedite” the proceedings that will conclude by August. The House Oversight Committee also opened an investigation and Cheatle was called to testify before the committee on July 22. Mayorkas told CNN on Monday that the government would “provide answers to other Americans to the fullest extent possible” and find tactics to do so. “ensure this does not happen again”, after an independent review of the government’s reaction. The Secret Service focused on how Saturday’s shooting occurred. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said Wednesday that the office would “evaluate U. S. Secret Service procedures to ensure the former. ” President Trump” and plans for him ahead of Saturday’s campaign. The task is indexed among the department’s “assignments in progress” website in the Counterterrorism and Domestic Threats assignments subsection.
When asked if anyone in the Secret Service was about to lose their job because of the security breach that enabled the shooting, Mayorkas said he had “100% confidence” in Cheatle and said the firm “focused on learning from the occasion and building on the principles that were in place. ” lessons to be more powerful and better. On Monday, Cheatle spoke about the incident for the first time and praised parts of the company’s response, adding Crooks’ shooting through a sniper team, while promising to cooperate fully with an independent investigation ordered through President Joe Biden. He is “strongly confident” in the security measures that have been put in place for this week’s Republican National Convention and that the Secret Service has made adjustments to Trump’s main security points since Saturday.
What additional resources the Secret Service is asking Congress for. In an interview with NPR on Tuesday, Mayorkas said the Secret Service would seek assistance from Congress to execute a new order from President Joe Biden to expand the agency’s coverage to independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. after Trump’s assassination attempt. ” The Secret Service has faced difficulties in terms of resources and we have asked Congress to supplement those resources, and we will once again renew our appeals,” Mayorkas said. What we are doing “It is a construction of other functions of the sector and the federal government as a whole. “
Trump, 78, was shot shortly after 6 p. m. Saturday, when a lone gunman, later known to the FBI as 20-year-old Crooks, fired several shots from the roof of a building outside his military rally. Trump obscured a podium and was temporarily surrounded by Secret Service agents, who removed him from the stage. Blood was visible on the right side of Trump’s face as he raised his fist in the air. Trump later said that he was “hit by a bullet that pierced the top of my right ear. ” One person, a 50-year-old man named Corey Comperatore, was shot and killed while protecting his wife and daughter from gunfire. Two other Pennsylvania reagents were in critical but sound condition Sunday afternoon. Army snipers and an FBI investigation into the shooting are underway. Crooks was a registered Republican who was too young to have voted in a pre-election election. Authorities said they discovered explosive cloth in the young man’s car and home, but they said. They don’t know what motivated the criminals to shoot Trump.
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