Democrats joined Republicans on Monday in calling for Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to resign after she admitted to Congress the agency didn’t protect former President Donald Trump at a recent campaign rally, but failed to answer key questions about how it happened.
Her lack of answers and frequent referral to the Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) frustrated both Republican and Democrat members of the House Oversight Committee, and by the end of the hearing, several Democrats on the committee had joined Republicans in calls for her resignation.
Ranking Member Jamie Raskin (D-MD) told Cheatle in his closing statement:
I will be joining the chairman in calling for the resignation of the director just because I think that 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 very quickly move beyond this.
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) was the first Democrat on the committee to call for her resignation.
“I just don’t think this is partisan. If you have an assassination attempt on a president, former president or a candidate, you need to resign,” Khanna said.
He also quizzed her on what then-Secret Service Director Stuart Knight’s resignation after the assassination attempt of then-President Ronald Reagan.
“You know what Stuart Knight did when he was in charge at the time of the Secret Service? You know what he did afterwards?” Khanna asked her. “He remained on duty,” Cheatle responded.
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“He resigned. He resigned,” Khanna corrected her. “That’s what Stuart Knight did. He was a Republican appointee. And he took responsibility. And I think you need to reflect.”
However, Cheatle remained firmly against resigning, even saying that she believed she was the “best person” to be in the job at that time.
After the hearing, Chairman James Comer (R-KY) and Raskin, whose committee has oversight over the Secret Service, put their request for her resignation in a formal letter. They wrote:
On July 13, 2024, the United States Secret Service under your leadership failed to protect former President Donald Trump from an assassination attempt that took the life of Corey Comperatore and seriously injured at least two other people.
Today, you failed to provide answers to basic questions regarding that stunning operational failure and to reassure the American people that the Secret Service has learned its lessons and begun to correct its systemic blunders and failures. In the middle of a presidential election, the Committee and the American people demand serious institutional accountability and transparency that you are not providing. We call on you to resign as Director as a first step to allowing new leadership to swiftly address this crisis and rebuild the trust of a truly concerned Congress and the American people.
President Biden, who announced on Sunday he would no longer seek re-election, has been reportedly convalescing in Rehoboth Beach from another bout of the coronavirus and has not been seen by the press for several days.
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