Ahead of Monday hearing, more lawmakers call on Secret Service director to resign

The embattled director of the U.S. Secret Service, Kimberly Cheatle, is facing new calls to resign from what has become a bipartisan group of lawmakers after news that top agency officials repeatedly denied requests for additional resources and personnel sought by former president Donald Trump’s security detail.

The Washington Post first reported on Saturday the news about the rejected requests – several times made in writing – as well as the agency’s acknowledgment that it had indeed denied some requests for additional security for Trump’s detail in the two years leading up to his attempted assassination at a rally in Pennsylvania after a spokesman had several days earlier insisted otherwise.

Cheatle is scheduled to appear Monday morning at a House Oversight Committee hearing. Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), who chairs the committee, said on Fox News on Sunday morning that the hearing “will serve as the beginning of that process to get answers for the American people as to what went wrong with an agency that has a no-fail mission.”

Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) on Saturday became the first Democrat in Congress to call for Cheatle’s resignation. In a statement shared on social media, he wrote, “The evidence coming to light has shown unacceptable operational failures.”

A gunman was able to fire rounds from an AR-15-style rifle from a rooftop about 150 yards from the former president at the July 13 rally. Trump was injured, a man in the crowd was killed, and two more were wounded. Cheatle has said several times that she will not resign but said that she takes responsibility for her agency’s failure to prevent the attack.

Cheatle has been in extensive hearing preparation for the past two days and is not planning to resign immediately, according to two U.S. officials with knowledge of her preparation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) called on Biden to fire her.

“We absolutely must ensure accountability so the American people can trust that this job will be done, that we will protect our presidents and former presidents. It’s the No. 1 job of the Secret Service, not anything else. And I think Director Cheatle has shown the world and said that she has different priorities,” he said Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.” “She needs to go.”

The chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Michael R. Turner (R-Ohio), on Sunday described the security failures as “absolutely outrageous and incredible.”

“Is this a failure of resources? Is this a failure of protocols or a failure of management? And it appears that now we know that it’s all three,” Turner, who is also calling on Biden to fire Cheatle, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

On Fox, Comer said the Secret Service has a budget of more than $3 billion, contending that it was “more than enough to provide adequate protection for the presidential candidate. So we have a lot of questions as to how they’re managing their money.”

Other congressional committees are investigating the shooting as well. Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), chair of the House Committee on Homeland Security, has requested documents, details and a briefing of the security plan for Trump’s Pennsylvania rally. Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, announced a separate investigation.

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that he plans to issue a preliminary report on his work as the top Republican on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

Ron Johnson said his Democratic counterpart on the subcommittee, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), “completely agrees with me that we must start doing transcribed interviews with all the witnesses now while memories are fresh.”

Some Republicans gave oxygen to unfounded theories surrounding the assassination attempt.

Ron Johnson raised the possibility of a second shooter, a theory that originated online and that conflicts with information released by law enforcement about the shooting.

“I’m not an expert, … but we can’t trust the FBI and Secret Service to do an honest and open, transparent investigation,” he said.

Eric Trump, one of the sons of the former president, said in an interview on “Sunday Morning Futures” that he has said “several times” that there should be more security for his father.

There was “no politics involved,” he said, in the issue of growing concerns about Cheatle’s competence in leading the agency. But he then suggested without evidence that Democrats were somehow involved in the assassination attempt.

Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Tex.) said on “Sunday Morning Futures” that he had spoken “months and months ago” to Trump’s detail, who told him that they were unsatisfied with the resources being provided by their agency and thought it was “politically motivated.”

Trump advisers’ anger deepened after the agency publicly denied that any requests for additional security requested by Trump or his detail had ever been rejected.

“I was in the meeting with the Secret Service director with the president this [past] week, and she has a lot to answer for,” Jackson said. “She lied to me in the meeting. I asked her specifically if they had backed down or denied resources for the president at any point, and she said no.”

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Josh Dawsey contributed to this report.