When a shot struck just feet away from killing former President Trump, killing a witness, and injuring at least two people at a protest in Pennsylvania on Saturday afternoon, House Oversight Committee Republicans had been looking into the Secret Service for several months.
Recriminations against the Secret Service began almost immediately after the assassination attempt, despite Trump and his household members claiming that the specific agents and a counter rifle assigned to his safe details had saved his life and perhaps some others.
Americans may witness for themselves how the officials and soldiers traveling with Trump on Saturday acted bravely, falling on the previous president after his proper ear was pierced by a shot and returning large caliber gunshots, killing the 20-year-old sniper, Thomas Crooks. However, how Crooks managed to seat himself on a local top and come close to killing Trump is still a mystery, renewing previous criticisms of the once-humbled agency’s history of security breaches, employee misconduct, and unequal discipline practices.
Rep. James Comer, who chairs the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, has called on Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to witness at a reading on Monday, July 22.
Player tweeted on Saturday night that” Americans demand solutions about President Trump’s death try.”
In a text to Cheatle, Comer was far more eloquent of the company’s activities.
The extraordinary bravery of the individual United States Secret Service agents who protected President Trump [, ] ended the gunman and possibly prevented further loss of life cannot be overstated,” he said.
In late May, as RealClearPolitics first reported, Comer’s commission had , launched an investigation , into a past incident that took place in April involving a feminine Secret Service agent, tasked with protecting Vice President Kamala Harris, who was removed from her responsibilities after suffering an obvious mental collapse and attacking better agents.
The call signs for the president’s and vice president’s Boeing aircraft were just before Harris was scheduled to leave Joint Base Andrews, where Air Force One and Air Force Two reside. ( Harris was not at the airport when the altercation occurred. )
After the attempted assassination on Saturday, when live images of Trump holding a bloody ear and raising his fist in protest appeared on cable news and social media, critics began to wonder why Secret Service snipers had n’t opened fire sooner in response to reports that onlookers were pointing to Crooks, who was positioned and crawling on a nearby roof, before the shots rang out.
A source within the Secret Service community claims to tells RCP that the agency’s policies in this situation are to wait until the president is shot before firing someone back.  ,
You want to take a shot, and then discover that the man was teleporting? the source asked. By nature, The Secret Service is reactive, and you need to act quickly when you do, or you’ll be f—d.
Any counter sniper who is aware of a potential shooter must radio directly to the intelligence division team to respond and conduct an investigation in accordance with Secret Service protocol. The shooter may have cut short the investigation in this instance, so the counter sniper then fired as quickly as possible in response.  ,
The source praised the counter sniper who acquired the target and responded within three seconds, calling their performance “incredible” . ,
” The counter snipers are highly trained and extremely accurate”, he said.
Others with backgrounds in law enforcement and the military want to know whether the Secret Service used drones to provide detailed situational awareness and, if not, why that choice was made. The agency has been having a contentious conversation about drone use since at least 2016, according to a source who spoke to RCP. Implementing drones would have identified the rooftop as a potential threat area and provided detailed line-of-site analysis and aerial surveillance.  ,
The military expert told RCP that” the USSS has access to all the best imagery and elevation data.” ” I’m not saying they did n’t ]use drones], but it’s an open question” . ,
Other critics claim that the agency denied requests for more security from Secret Service supervisors on Trump’s protective detail, including conservative media personality Dan Bongino, a former senior special agent with the Secret Service who is close to his family and top advisers.
Anthony Guglielmi, a spokesman for the Secret Service, denied that such a request and denial occurred.
” There’s an untrue assertion that a member of the former President’s team requested additional security resources &, that those were rebuffed”, Guglielmi , posted , late Saturday night on X.com. ” This is absolutely false. In fact, we added protective resources &, technology &, capabilities as part of the increased campaign travel tempo”.
The FBI, another organization that has been impacted by negative publicity, and specifically, evidence of anti-Trump animus at the highest levels, has taken over the investigation into the Trump assassination attempt. Special agents of the FBI Pittsburgh Field Office responded “immediately” after the shooting, the agency said in a statement.
The FBI said,” We will continue to support this investigation with the full resources of the FBI, along with our partners at the U.S. Secret Service and state and local enforcement.”
The Secret Service lost some of its former respect after a string of fence-jumping incidents, other security lapses, and discipline issues came to light during the Obama administration. At the beginning of the Trump administration, a senior special agent in the Secret Service came under fire for suggesting in a Facebook post that she would n’t  , “take a bullet” for Trump. Former agent Kelly O’Grady took administrative leave, but she still had the right to retire with full benefits and her security clearance intact.
Some Secret Service employees have lost their security clearances and at least some of their retirement benefits, which has resentment among them.
The agency, more recently, has come under scrutiny for its , diversity, equity, and inclusion policies , after the female agent’s apparent mental breakdown at Joint Base Andrews.
An agency spokesman called the issue a “medical incident”, but other members of the Secret Service launched a petition over the agency ‘s , DEI hiring and vetting policies during the Biden administration, as , first reported by RCP.
Cheatle, in 2021, signed onto a new initiative to increase the number of women in the Secret Service workforce. The 30-30 initiative, an effort to increase the representation of women in all branches of policing across the country to 30 % of the workforce by 2030, is one of the numerous federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies that have signed onto it.
Guglielmi refuted claims that DEI policy had an impact on agency readiness in early May.
” Claims that the Secret Service’s standards have  , been lowered , as a result of our signing this pledge are categorically false”, Guglielmi told RCP. Comer and Secret Service officials had their first meeting over that April incident on June 24. Afterward, an Oversight Committee spokesperson said the briefing was” thorough”, but “questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training and morale at the agency”.
The USSS gave staff on Friday a thorough briefing for the committee, and we appreciate their time and continued cooperation as we continue to monitor how well the Secret Service is carrying out its duties, the spokesperson told RCP. ” Questions remain regarding recruiting, vetting, training, and morale at the agency and the Committee looks forward to receiving additional information from the agency soon”.
Conservatives on social media also criticized Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, for earlier this year introducing a bill co-sponsored by several other Democrats that would have denied Trump access to Secret Service if he had been found guilty of a felony following his attempted assassination on Saturday night. In the House, which is controlled by Republicans, the measure never gained traction.  , The Secret Service falls under the Department of Homeland Security.
After the attempted assassination, which killed one innocent spectator and injured at least two others, Thompson tweeted that he is “glad that the former president is safe” and is “grateful for law enforcement’s fast response” . ,
This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics. Since that publication, other sources have said the counter sniper “did not need approval to shoot”.
Susan Crabtree is RealClearPolitics ‘ national political correspondent.
