Kimberly Cheatle, director of the U.S. Secret Service, said she will not resign from her role after what she called the “unacceptable” assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump at his campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
In an interview with ABC, Cheatle said the attack on Saturday is “something that shouldn’t happen again.”
Cheatle said she understood her responsibility as the director of the Secret Service but refused to step down, telling ABC she would not resign from her post.
“The buck stops with me,” Cheatle said. “I am the director of the Secret Service, and I need to make sure that we are performing a review and that we are giving resources to our personnel as necessary.”
Bullets rang out at the Trump campaign event in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, with one hitting the former president in the ear in an assassination attempt. One rallygoer — a husband, father, and firefighter — was struck fatally, and two other attendees were injured.
“It was obviously a situation that as a Secret Service agent, no one ever wants to occur in their career,” Cheatle said.
Calls for Cheatle’s resignation come after the Secret Service did not adequately prepare for the protection of Trump and rallygoers. As The Federalist’s John Daniel Davidson wrote, “As far as sniper assassination attempts go, this might be the most telegraphed attack in history”:
Olivia Rinaldi of CBS News posted on X Monday evening that snipers were stationed inside the building where the would-be assassin staged his attack. They saw him beforehand, outside looking up at the roof. He left and came back and they watched him use a range finder. They took a picture of him and called it in to the command post. He came back a third time with a backpack and then disappeared around behind the back of the building. … [V]ideo footage from rally attendees confirms that a bunch of people saw the shooter well before he fired from the rooftop and struck Trump in the ear. They filmed it. In the video clips, people yell, “He’s on the roof!” “He’s got a gun!”
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., introduced legislation to hold Cheatle accountable for her actions, starting with withholding the director’s salary. “Either this was intentional or the Secret Service was grossly incompetent on Saturday,” Boebert wrote on X. “Director Cheatle has got to go!”
While Cheatle said Trump’s team had not requested additional security, a source previously told The Federalist that the former president’s security detail had requested additional resources and protection but was denied by the Biden administration’s Department of Homeland Security. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has also repeatedly been denied requests for a Secret Service detail.
Cheatle is expected to testify next week before the Republican-led House Oversight Committee, which sent a letter to Cheatle on Monday requesting information the Secret Service has concerning the assassination attempt.
In the ABC interview, Cheatle appeared to blame local law enforcement, saying they were in the building where the shooter aimed at the former president.
“There was local police in that building — there was local police in the area that were responsible for the outer perimeter of the building,” she said.
