Security lapses in Trump assassination force US Secret Service director to resign | El Diario Vasco

US Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle resigned on Tuesday after admitting the “failure” of the security detail for Donald Trump during the campaign rally in Pennsylvania where he was the victim of an assassination attempt.

The former director of the Secret Service has issued a statement acknowledging that the department failed in its mission to protect the nation’s leaders, and taking responsibility for what happened on July 13 in Pennsylvania, when a shooter shot the former president, wounding him in the ear.

“However, this incident does not define us. We remain an organization built on integrity and staffed by exceptionally talented and dedicated personnel. The Secret Service will continue to pursue our investigative and protective mission steadfastly. We do not back down from challenges,” Cheatle said.

Cheatle has expressed his hope that the “difficult decision” to resign – which he has taken “with great regret” – does not constitute “a distraction from the great work” of the department and has asserted that, during his nearly 30-year career at the federal agency, he has “always” put the interests of the Secret Service before his own.

For its part, the White House has issued a statement in which US President Joe Biden has expressed his gratitude to Cheatle for “decades of public service” and his “selfless” dedication to protecting the United States at the head of the Secret Service, which he took the reins of in September 2022.

“The independent review to get to the bottom of what happened on July 13 continues, and I look forward to evaluating its findings. We all know that what happened that day can never happen again,” Biden added, referring to the date on which former President Trump suffered the assassination attempt.

Inadequate protection

The reactions were not long in coming, and Trump himself soon published a message on his official profile on the social network Truth Social in which he insisted that the Biden Administration had not protected him “adequately.” “I was forced to take a bullet for democracy. It was a great honor to do so,” he said.

For his part, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Republican Mike Johnson, welcomed the news, although he criticized the “delay” in Cheatle’s decision. “He should have done it at least a week ago. I am glad to see that he has heeded the call of both Republicans and Democrats,” he said.

Johnson said it was now time for US authorities to “pick up the pieces” and try to “rebuild the faith and trust of the American people in the Secret Service,” according to information collected by CNN.

Cheatle was questioned on Monday by the House Oversight Committee, where she acknowledged that what happened was “the most important failure in decades.” Several Republican leaders, including the House speaker himself, had demanded her resignation.

In fact, Johnson has reached an agreement with the Democratic minority leader in the chamber, Hakeem Jeffries, to set up a task force made up of members of both parties to investigate what happened at the rally and determine responsibility for the attempted assassination of the former president.

The attack, in which the former president was slightly wounded in his right ear after the bullet grazed him, resulted in the death of one supporter and two others injured. The attacker, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was shot dead seconds later by a Secret Service sniper.