After one of the worst company failures since the 1981 shooting of President Ronald Reagan, the Secret Service director is refusing to step over. Former president Donald Trump had a portion of his ear blown off on Saturday as a result of federal officials ‘ refusal to secure a building’s rooftop just 450 feet from a Pennsylvania rally platform.
Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle told ABC News on Monday,” I do plan to stay on.”
The agency’s director continued to chastise Pennsylvania’s local law enforcement for the string of security woes that eventually led to the Republican nominee receiving a gunshot to the ear and just recovering miraculously. In the execution effort, two rallygoers were hurt, and one died.
The Secret Service commander stressed that local police had the responsibility to secure the tower from which a gunman killed Trump during her meeting with ABC News.
We did share aid for that particular page in this particular situation, and the Secret Service was in charge of the internal perimeter, she said. ” Then we turned to our neighborhood rivals for advice on the outer perimeter.” Local authorities were present in that building and were in charge of the building’s exterior perimeter.
The Secret Service, however, is ultimately in charge of the entire security plan, and , according , to The Washington Post, “also has primary responsibility for addressing the risk of a long-range sniper and blocking traces of vision, including by instructing local authorities to secure or stand watch at properties that could provide an option for an intruder”.
Three counter-snipers were , positioned , in the developing underneath the roof from which Saturday’s shooter fired several shots. Law enforcement nearly an hour before Trump was hit, according to Channel 11 News, a regional store in Pennsylvania. According to NBC News, the Secret Service was also “days” before the event when it was reported that the building was a unique threat, but the Secret Service chief claimed that the reason law enforcement did not secure the top was because it was” slanted.”
]RELATED: Any Roofer Worth His Salt Knows Secret Service’s ‘ Slanted’ Roof Excuse Is Full Bullshit ]
A source also told The Federalist that Trump’s team had repeatedly pleaded with the Secret Service and the Department of Homeland Security ( DHS) to improve security for months but were repeatedly rejected. Dan Bongino, a former Secret Service agent, claimed on Tuesday that an “unimpeachable source” had informed him that a security guard was supposed to be standing on the roof but “did n’t show up.”
” They’re then coming up with excuses,” they said. No one knows why the post did n’t show up, according to my source, Bongino said.
NEW: Dan Bongino claims an “unimpeachable source” informs him that a person was supposed to be on the roof where Thomas Crooks was shot but “did n’t show up.”
Bongino asserted that the USSS director should keep her lips shut if she wants to keep her… picture. twitter.com/1ZZL1cWaG1
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg ) July 17, 2024
Obama’s Secret Service Chief Resigned for Less
In 2014, then-President Barack Obama’s Secret Service producer, Julia Pierson, stepped down after” an military man managed to jump the White House gate and provide the Executive Mansion”. The incident came after a report of an military security guard who had allegedly escorted the president to an airplane without being adequately checked by the company.
In recent years, there have been so many Secret Service crises that The Atlantic published a list of company errors in 2015. In 2011, gunshots, which the Secret Service mistook for gang-related crossfire, hit the White House, but agents did n’t notice until “four days later”. Roughly a dozen agents returned from a trip to Colombia in 2012 after hiring up to 20 brothels. A officer on an elite squad was discovered trying to join a person’s hotel room in 2013 because he had left a bullet in the area. According to an investigation, the officer and another female officer left “inappropriate messages to a female subordinate.” Three officials were found drunk in a hotel doorway in Amsterdam during a presidential visit to the Netherlands in 2014, and three of them were returned home.
Four Secret Service associate executives were fired in 2015. A five had now retired. All of this was done prior to Donald Trump’s election as president.
Agent Prefers ‘ Jail Over a Bullet’ for Trump
One of the most powerful agents in the country in 2017 stated in a Facebook post that she “would get prison time over a bullet” for President Trump, or “what I believe to be disaster for this country and the powerful and amazing people and immigrants who live here.”
” Hatch Act be damned”, wrote Kerry O’Grady. ” I am with Her”.
O’Grady was eventually fired from her position as the agency’s Denver operations manager.
Purge of J6 Text Messages
When the since-disbanded House Select Committee on Jan. 6 requested text messages from the Secret Service between Jan. 5, 2021, and Jan. 6, 2021, lawmakers were shocked to receive just one conversation. Just eleven days after the Capitol riot, the agency apparently erased the agency’s texts from cell phones.
A 2022 article on the disappearing text messages on X was republished on Monday by journalist Julie Kelly, who stated that” the purge did not occur while Trump or his Homeland Security chief were in charge.”
” Why the subterfuge? Would the texts finally explain Kamala Harris’s desire to visit the Democratic National Committee headquarters on January 6, the same location where a pipe bomb allegedly was discovered that afternoon? She was under Secret Service protection at the time. Kelly asked. How did agents miss the explosive while conducting a security check before she arrived? How did Harris remain in the building until law enforcement allegedly located the device for more than an hour while agents did not find it?
The Cocaine Mystery Is Not a Mystery
While President Joe Biden and his family were at Camp David in Maryland last summer, a small bag of cocaine discovered inside the White House sparked an immediate evacuation. A search was launched for the bag’s owner as a result of the discovery. However, the investigation into how the illicit substance got settled in what is meant to be one of the world’s safest buildings came to an end in less than two weeks without ever identifying a true suspect.
The Secret Service stated at the time that” the investigation will not be able to identify a person of interest from the hundreds of people who passed through the vestibule where the cocaine was discovered.”
The most obvious suspect also had a father in the Oval Office and a plea deal on the line.
President Biden’s son Hunter had received a plea deal with federal prosecutors in Delaware that included amnesty for a federal gun charge after 24 consecutive months of sobriety just weeks before the cocaine came out. Later in the summer, the plea deal was voided, and Hunter Biden was found guilty of three federal firearms charges because he purchased a gun as a drug user.
Before a federal judge entered a plea deal in late July, the Secret Service might have derailed Hunter Biden’s plea deal by providing proof that the mysterious cocaine found at the White House belonged to him. He has written extensively about his struggles with drug addiction.
When Politico reported that agents visited the gun store from where a firearm that was later discarded was purchased, the president’s security detail had been accused of trying to cover for Hunter Biden’s gun crimes three years prior. The agents allegedly “asked to take the sales paperwork.” The shopkeeper, however, kept access to Hunter Biden’s Firearms Transaction Record because he believed that” Secret Service officers wanted to conceal Hunter’s ownership of the missing gun in case it were involved in a crime.” Shortly after the Politico report from 2021, Senate Republicans began an investigation into the organization’s behavior.
House Republicans Investigate What They Were Already Investigating
House Republicans have announced a cascade of new inquiries into the Secret Service failures that have put a strain on national stability months before the fall election.
On Monday, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, led by Chairman James Comer of Kentucky, demanded documents from the Secret Service to be delivered to congressional investigators by Thursday. Additionally, the House Judiciary Committee, led by Ohio’s Chairman Jim Jordan, made it known on Wednesday that lawmakers would hold a hearing with the FBI director the following week.
In addition to the Secret Service director and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., invited FBI Director Christopher Wray and House Director to testify before his own panel. Green declined to speak with Green for this article.
On Wednesday, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced another investigation into the Secret Service.
The USSS must provide the American people with a thorough and accurate accounting to ensure that the Secret Service is fully and effectively carrying out its main mission, which is protection, according to Grassley.
Other lawmakers, including Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., and Jim Banks, R-Ind., have called on their colleagues to open up a Select Committee to investigate the failed assassination attempt. However, according to Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics Reporter, the House Oversight Committee had already been looking into the Secret Service” for several months” before the slate of new congressional investigations began following Trump’s near-fatal shooting.
According to Crabtree, Comer’s committee opened an investigation into a previous incident that occurred in April that involved a female Secret Service agent tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris after she allegedly had a mental breakdown and attacked top agents, as RealClearPolitics first reported. The president and vice president’s call signs for the Boeing aircraft used by them read,” Just before Harris was scheduled to leave Joint Base Andrews, the home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two,” the incident occurred.
This article has been updated since publication.
