MILWAUKEE — House Speaker Mike Johnson has called on President Biden to fire U.S. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle, blaming her “incompetence” for what nearly led to the assassination of former President Donald Trump last Saturday.
Rep. Johnson (R-Louisiana) told Fox Business on Thursday morning, following a briefing with Rep. Cheatle and FBI Director Christopher Wray, that House members are no closer to understanding what caused the security failures that allowed suspect Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, to have a good enough view to open fire on President Trump during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I am prepared this morning to call on President Biden to fire Secretary Cheatle,” the House speaker said, adding that neither he nor Wray had provided “satisfactory answers to some very important questions.”
“I said yesterday that she should resign. It’s clear that she has no intention of resigning, but the oversight, the error and the incompetence here, whatever it may have been, is inexcusable,” Johnson added.
“We almost lost the life of a former president. I think responsibility has to start at the top. This is absurd.”
“Mr. Cheatle has no intention of resigning,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
“She has deep respect for members of Congress and is committed to leading the Secret Service with transparency through our internal investigations and strengthening the agency through lessons learned in these important internal and external investigations,” Guglielmi added.
House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent a letter to Wray on Thursday saying a Secret Service whistleblower told the committee that five days before the rally, authorities knew that Secret Service and security partners had “limited resources” to cover the rally and another event with First Lady Jill Biden in Pittsburgh on July 13.
Spokespeople for the FBI and Secret Service declined to comment on the letter.
House Republican Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik of New York, in a statement on Wednesday, denounced the “massive security failure” that led to the near assassination of the 45th president and also called for Cheatle’s immediate resignation.
“The USSS Secretary and Joe Biden’s Department of Homeland Security have completely failed to provide the immediate transparency and answers they are owed to the American people,” Stefanik said.
Johnson on Wednesday announced the creation of a special team to determine all the facts surrounding the assassination attempt, even as both House and Senate members have expressed frustration that they have received few details from the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, which are leading the investigation into the incident.
“I was on the phone with (Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas) within hours of the incident last Saturday because, at the end of the day, the responsibility is on his desk,” Johnson also said on Fox Business on Thursday. “He didn’t have a lot of information.”
“What we’ll be doing with this task force is getting answers from Mayorkas, from Cheatle and from all of the people involved,” he added, noting that the FBI has confirmed that Crooks “acted alone.”
U.S. authorities learned of the Iranian plot to assassinate Trump weeks before Crux fired shots at a campaign event in Pennsylvania, shooting the Republican candidate in the right ear, killing rally-goer Corey Comperatore and wounding two others.
The House Oversight, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees are each investigating aspects of the shooting, with Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) calling Cheatle’s leadership a “total failure” and issuing a subpoena for him to testify at a July 22 hearing.
Cheatle fended off the four senators on Wednesday night after confronting them in a suite at the Fiserv Forum during the Republican National Convention.
“We all had questions we wanted to ask, and we didn’t think we got any of the answers we needed,” said Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).
“You must either resign tonight or begin answering our questions about the death threats against President Trump and his permission to appear on stage,” he added.
“I don’t think this is the place to have this discussion,” Cheatle responded. “This hospitality suite is to thank our partners for their hard work in making the Republican National Convention possible.”
Barrasso and Republican Sens. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, James Lankford of Oklahoma and Kevin Cramer of North Dakota said she, Deputy Director of the Secret Service Ronald Rowe Jr. and FBI Deputy Director Paul Abbate revealed shocking security lapses during the call.
The details included that Crooks had scouted the Butler Farm Show grounds, where the rally was being held, several days earlier and had been flagged as a “suspicious individual” by the Secret Service at least an hour before he climbed to the roof of a building 130 yards away and took aim.
“This is an assassination attempt. You owe the public an explanation. You owe President Trump an explanation,” Blackburn yelled at Cheatle as other senators chased the Secret Service director.
“You cannot run away from your responsibility to America,” Barrasso insisted, while another person shouted: “Hold us accountable.”
The White House and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
