WASHINGTON — House Speaker Mike Johnson and other top Republicans are calling for the resignation of Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle days after a gunman tried to assassinate former President Donald Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“I’m going to call for resignation,” Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday in an appearance on Fox News at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. “Look, I think it’s inexcusable. … Her explanation to the media that there was a slant on the roof, so there was safety concern — it doesn’t wash. And I think she’s shown what her priorities are.”
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., Johnson’s top lieutenant, called for Cheatle to resign on Tuesday.
Johnson’s call for resignation came just hours before top law enforcement officials are expected to brief House and Senate lawmakers in separate, unclassified virtual briefings about Saturday’s shooting in Butler, Pennsylvania, where a gunman, identified as Thomas Matthew Crooks, fired at Trump as he addressed rallygoers. One spectator was killed and two were seriously injured. Trump was wounded in his right ear.
FBI Director Christopher Wray, Deputy Director Paul Abbate and Secret Service Deputy Director Ronald Rowe are on the list of briefers. Cheatle is not on the House briefer list but appeared on the Senate list.
The House Oversight Committee said it plans to subpoena Cheatle if she refuses to appear at a public hearing Monday focused on the security breach.
In the Fox News interview, Johnson also said he will create a special House task force to investigate the shooting and security breakdowns when lawmakers return on Monday, an effort to streamline multiple congressional investigations.
“The reason we’re going to do it that way is because that is a more precision strike. It goes quicker, there’s not a lot of the procedural hurdles, and it will have subpoena authority for that task force as well,” Johnson said. “It will be compiled of Republicans and Democrats to get down the bottom of this quickly so the American people can get the answers that they deserve.”
Lawmakers have numerous questions about Saturday’s stunning assassination attempt. The most critical, perhaps, is why the roof of a building within 150 yards of Trump wasn’t secured by the Secret Service or local law enforcement. They also want to know why Secret Service snipers on another roof in the area didn’t engage the shooter until after Crooks had fired multiple times.
Speaking to ABC News this week, Cheatle said she would not resign but declared: “The buck stops with me. I am the director of the Secret Service.”
She said that Secret Service was responsible for securing the inner perimeter of the rally, while local law enforcement was responsible for securing the area outside the rally, which included the building accessed by Crooks. And Republicans have zeroed in on remarks Cheatle made to ABC News, where she said the building Crooks climbed had a “sloped roof at its highest point” and “we wouldn’t want to put somebody up on a sloped roof.”
Cheatle has had inconsistencies in her public remarks. Cheatle told ABC News that local police were inside the building that the gunman fired from after accessing the roof. A Secret Service official then told NBC News on Wednesday that the local SWAT team was not in the building, but rather was in another building in the same complex.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told NBC News on Wednesday that Cheatle was referring to the AGR Glass “building,” a large manufacturing complex made up of interconnected dwellings.
This raises new questions about the level of planning and communication between the Secret Service and local law enforcement officials and whether the local team was in the best position to secure the outer perimeter or whether the local sniper team could have had an even better view of the roof the shooter used if they were in a building that looked down on the roof.
Johnson told Fox News that “within hours” of Saturday’s shooting, he was on the phone with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who “did not have satisfactory answers at that time.” he said he’s also spoken with FBI Director Wray and Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines.
“The answers have not been forthcoming. I think they’re gathering data. We’re going to do it as well. We have to have accountability for this. It was inexcusable,” Johnson said. “Obviously, there were security lapses. You don’t have to be a special ops expert to understand that, and we’re gonna get down to the bottom of it quickly.”
Ali Vitali, Frank Thorp V and Julie Tsirkin contributed.
